I am here...

Well, after one very very long day of traveling and more than 24 hours without sleep, I have arrived in Wolverhampton, England! I can honestly say that it feels a little weird to be here, but I am sure that is due to my lack of sleep and/or the stress of wondering around airports in countries you don't live. But if your wondering why I mention the stress of airports, let me elaborate...

We (myself, Sarah, Heather) started the day off great by making incredible time into JFK and made it to our gate without a hitch. The same continued for the flight, which went by much faster that anticipated and was a rather pleasant flight. However, it was running 10 minutes late to Dublin...

This is when all hell broke lose! When we arrived in Dublin, we were told to go through customs/immigration and make our way to our connecting gate (keep in mind that we only had an hour lay over to begin with). Easy, right? Well, customs was no problem and I received my first stamp in my passport, but that is were the fun ended. Before and after customs we had no choice but to follow the line, which we thought would eventually take us to the terminal, rather it took us to baggage claim. All the sudden I had my first moment of panic! We quickly (thank god for English!) figured out that we needed to go through security and make our way to the gate, which was conveniently not on our boarding pass. As we briskly moved through security I glanced up and found our gate number...so I thought. When we arrived at the gate I was relieved to see people still standing in line, but quickly was filled with terror when the gate agent handed my ticket back to me saying, "We're not Aer Lingus." I had managed to look at the only other 6:30 flight to Birmingham and missed the flight numbers. At this point we have no idea where we are supposed to be, since the monitors in each terminal only show its flights. We are in a dead sprint back through the terminal when we round the corner only to find our selves back at baggage claim! Which at this point we all about lost it! We took a deep breath and made our way to the ticket counter to be rescheduled for the 9:30 flight. Only to add insult to injury, during the now 2 hour wait, I managed to spill an enitre cup of coffee on Heather and sit in the single coldest terminal I have ever been in! But needless to say, it was truly my first European adventure and I am here safely!

This afternoon we had lunch at our first English Pub (which we later found out was one we should steer clear of) and did a little shopping. Overall it was a looooong day, but I all ready have some great stories and experiences.

Hopefully this week I will have a mailing address and some other contact information, but for now feel free to email me or leave a comment. Check back here offten for new posts, pictures, and such.

Cheers,
Justin