September 22, 2004

I arrived in Belfast last night, exhausted and disoriented after a nearly 24-hour journey. I'm not usually a last-minute sort of person, but my packing and preparations for this semester abroad were done rather hastily in the last two days before I left. I've been very excited about this trip for a long time, but all summer I’ve been clinging to my friends and my normal social routines, sort of in denial that everything was going to change very soon.

Now that I'm here, it has hit me. Things will not be the same for the next three months. Old friends and old routines must be put aside for a while.

It's a fantastic challenge – I'm alone in a foreign country, with no familiar faces around, and I have to find a way to survive in a new and environment and reinvent myself from scratch. I expect every day to be a journey into the unknown.
 
As we flew over Ireland on the way into the airport, it was a clear day, which is apparently quite rare here. I got to see the beautiful green landscape from the sky, and it was certainly a heavenly sight: rolling hills, misty rivers, and farming pastures, all in the brightest colors. When I arrived at the airport, I was relieved to find that two students were there to

pick me up and take me to campus. As we drove and started chatting, they tried to guess which part of America I was