August 30th, 2015 | Uncategorized
I’d never seen so much green. From the green clover painted on the wing of my plane to the green lights littering the runways of the Dublin airport to the rolling green hills that are the Irish countryside, it seemed like everything in Ireland was green. Before to my arrival, I’d heard from others that Ireland was a beautiful country. After seeing it first hand, I can only agree with them. I spent the entire two-hour bus ride to Belfast glued to my window, trying to catch glimpses of the magnificent landscape behind the immediate trees and shrubbery. I slightly regretted this decision later on in the day when the jet lag began to catch up with me and I realized that those two hours on the bus were the only time that I could have taken a nap. Nonetheless, my fellow Victory Scholars and I pushed through our sleepiness and had a wonderful first day.
We met much of the Sport Changes Life crew, who were simply amazing. They made us feel so welcome and at ease in a completely new country. Once all the scholars had arrived (aside from Staats, whose flight had gotten canceled and who was flying in the following day), we were given a short tour of the Ulster campus, where we would be staying for the week. I found out very quickly on this tour that “wee” was a favorite word of our SCL tour guides. Marc even managed to use it about four or five times in one sentence; I believe he was telling us about a wee coffee shop just a wee walk down the road where we could buy a wee coffee for a wee bit of a pick-me-up. Marc has this saying, “Everything is everything,” which I think means basically that nothing is as big a deal as it may seem and it is more important to slow down and enjoy things in life rather than to stress out about them. However, after the tour of Ulster, I was beginning to think that the saying should really be “Everything is wee.”
By the end of the first day, all of the Scholars were exhausted. The day had been quite busy and the jet lag was really catching up with us by nightfall. Even though I felt like a walking zombie for most of the evening, when I laid down in bed and thought about the amazing opportunity that I have to live in Ireland for a year, it helped to put everything into perspective. Picturing the green landscape, the smiling, caring faces of the SCL crew and the other Victory Scholars, and the adventures yet to come as I follow this journey wherever it may lead me, it was very easy for me to write off my exhaustion and simply say, “It’s just a wee bit of jet lag.”
Victory Scholar: Katie Fox
Present University: Waterford IT
US League: NEC
Club/Community Partner: Waterford Wildcats
Alma Mater: St. Francis College
Sponsored by: Teamwear Ireland
