introduction

Hello, my name is Becca. I've decided to keep a blog while away from home for four months mostly because I have no real reason not to when people ask me if I will. Plus, everyone likes to write about themselves, right? However, it is a bit overwhelming to imagine writing to such a diverse audience as my grandparents, best friends, classmates and optometrist all at once. But I think it will be overall beneficial and maybe even entertaining? Anyway, here it goes.

I've been in Belfast, Northern Ireland now for about five days on a stop over before heading to Paris, France for four months. Here are the journal entries of a few of my first experiences. I apologize if some of the vocabulary is funny- being surrounded by Belfast accents has left me thinking in a Belfast accent, as well as adapting some new slang.

Please do not leave your baggage unattended

(I added the title. I don't normally title journal entries)

January 5, 2010
First Parisien adventure: leaving my glasses on my vol (flight). Yes, I did. I took them off while I was sleeping and they must have fallen off my lap. And by the time I realized their absence, I had walked through those automatic, double door, one -way hallways. I skirted my way back through the first one but could not get through the second because the motion sensor was on the other side of the door and all of the other passengers were avoiding me. So I rejoined the proper flow of traffic, asking several uniformed personnel what I should do and getting vaguely consistent responses (en francais!). After passing through the border police, as I made my way to the information desk, about a half dozen police begin herding everyone toward the baggage carousels. The reason: worker's strike. I had been twenty minutes in Paris and was experiencing my first french strike. Good thing I'd been warned (thanks, pinckney palace). There was a single, inexplicable gunshot. After twenty minutes,  the police released us.  The women at the information desk called my airplane, finding no glasses.  I was seeing double and had thirty minutes until my next flight. Reluctantly I decided to deal with the vision problem later and try to make my flight so I got in line for customs, endured a thorough pat-down at security and ran to my gate with belt and laptop in arm. Fortunately the airline women let me through despite the, "Boarding closed" sign, and as she returned my ticket and passport to me, asked, "Rebecca? Are zeses your glasses?" whilst producing my very glasses from behind the desk.
Really. What the heck!

Bus: Dublin-->Belfast
Sheep! It's sunny in Ireland in January, is that supposed to happen? The world is way too big to even consider knowing and loving it all. I love Atwater Beach, but probably not until about the 700th time I went there. How could I ever discover all the brilliant places in the world? The small number of significant places are way more important. This countryside makes me want to listen to Once. 


January 6, 2010
This time I almost lost my luggage. I left it on the bus and walked away. None of the station workers could find it and they told me to file a police report. Somehow, someway, as I recounted the situation to Becky Long, my friend/host in Belfast, the bag appeared, sitting in the middle of the hallway I had traversed three times looking for it. Becky's mum asked me skeptically, "Have you ever travelled alone before?"Yes. Embarrassing. My mum told me that my guardian angel must be really worn out when I travel. "There she goes again, losing her glasses. Now it's the whole suitcase!"  It's really too bad because I've been trying to nix the image people have of me of being absentminded. But the evidence leaves me quite guilty. It sort of humbles me, and reminds me of this verse that kept coming up as I prepared for the trip : Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD (Zechariah 4:6). No matter what image I'm trying to fit into, or more generally no matter what plans I have for this semester, reality always reveals to me that I have no control over life, what happens to me. So I'm continually giving these four months up to the Lord, because he does have control. And I want what he wants.
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My laptop battery is about to die and I haven't got a UK charge converter. So I'll leave off with a promise to describe my actual trip soon! I can honestly say that I'm really sad to be leaving Belfast after five days. I just started meeting some wonderful people and getting to know the Longs a bit better. On the Dublin.