Travelling Adventures

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on here. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks: turned in the dissertation, got to climb a mountain and visit Donegal - two things I hadn't had the chance to do all year. JBU's semester team arrived at Lakeside, I said goodbye to friends, and so much more. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, with many a 2am morning.

As I type this, I'm laying on the couch in my sister and brother-in-law's beautiful apartment, watching, of all things, 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' on arabic t.v. (an edited version, as they all are here) - and I could be watching anything from BBC World news to CNN to Al Jazeera to SAT 7. The mashup of cultures just blows my mind - as our world struggles to cope with/adjust/change/absorb/process globalization. Even in writing my dissertation about 1947-8, I was amazed at the level of globalization in the years following WWII - and here we are 60 years after that. Oh, to prove the point further, I wasn't in my sister and brother-in-law's apartment for 15 min before a friend from the US called about a possible job opening. It was so crazy to be hearing the voice of a great friend from AR on a phone in the middle east, having just left N. Ireland this morning.

Now that I have a week to rest and relax, I'll probably be posting about our adventures and sharing pictures. The first story, as I bring this to a close, was a bizarre cultural experience on the plane tonight.

My seat on the 6 hour flight from London Heathrow was 15c, an aisle seat. I took my seat next to an elderly couple. A couple hours into the flight, the man, sitting next to me, gets up and starts walking up and down the aisle. Shortly after he begins this routine, the guy across the aisle to my right gets up to go to the bathroom. The guy that was sitting right next to me with his wife plops down in this other guy's chair that's across the aisle from me, as if it was no big deal. I mean, the guy had his own personal things in the seat back pocket and underneath the seat - and yet the guy next to me had sat down in this stranger's seat as if it was no big deal. Come to find out, it was a cultural thing, because the guy returned and didn't seem too fussed about it - but I don't think they knew each other.

In the first four hours of the flight, the guy must have been up and down about half-a-dozen times. About four hours in, he and his wife both get out. When the husband returns he pushes me over to the window seat - where his wife had been. He doesn't speak English and I know enough about Arabic culture to know that you respect elders, but I wasn't really excited about moving or having someone else sit in the seat with my ipod and backpack right in front of them. Well, the wife comes back, and the husband just scoots over and I'm stuck in the window seat for the next two hours.

What made it slightly worse was the cultural differences in body odor. Needless to say, to an American nose, the BO wasn't the most wonderful smell in the world. Well, when he pushed me over to the window seat where his wife had been sitting, I just felt like I sunk into this fog of it as the smell settled over me. Bleh.

As we began to decend for our landing, the husband then leaned over me every couple of minutes to see if he could see lights and the city. In my mind I was like, 'If you wanted to see the lights, you could have kept the window seat?'

It was definitely a cultural experience in personal space, smell, and so many other things. It was my welcome back to this wonderful place that I got to spend 7 weeks in a few years ago. A very, very different place then Belfast or the USA, but so very wonderful in its own way.

Making it all the more wonderful is my 5 month old nephew Ben that I got to see for the first time tonight - which was amazing!! He's so adorable and his smile is the best thing in the world! His dad, Allen, was holding him and said, 'Here's your Uncle Daniel' - and Ben instantly reached out his arms to me and gave me a big hug. Oh man, it was amazing!! He's so adorable, loves hugs, and has this great smile. I'm so excited to get to be here for these 6 days with him and with my sister and her husband, love on them and get to rest in their company.