irielife.net

Note: This is the text of Rusty’s first email since arriving in Ireland. It was sent 3/29/04.

Hey everybody –

We are here! Today was my first day of work. I am just finishing up and none of you are probably even awake yet. We just had daylight savings time here on Saturday Night and our clocks went forward an hour. That makes us 9 hours ahead of California, I’ll let the rest of you do the math.

We got to London without a hitch (That’s Irish for problem) and then had a bit of a hiccup at immigration. It seems there was an English lady there who wanted to throw her weight around, and tried to stop us from coming across the border since I didn’t have any official documentation detailing my job here in Ireland. Well, she took our passports and walked into the back room and left us sitting there for a half hour. We couldn’t get upset because then she could do who knows what with us, so we just had to sit and wait and pretend that it wasn’t bothering us…

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Well, she came back and told us some bad news. That the Irish government wasn’t going to let us in the country to work. So, I gave her the names of some folks at Medtronic to call and she went back. We waited for another half hour. I am sure that she sat back there and sat on her hands for another 20 minutes. She finally came out, 2 minutes before our plane was scheduled to depart and says, “Well, good news, you can catch your flight now. It’s a bit of a walk, so you better hurry now.” And then she stamped our passports and let us go. Today at work, I heard about the other end of the phone call, apparently, there was never a problem, immigration never implied that they weren’t going to let us in, and we were fine coming into the country as long as we would like considering the work that I am doing. Oh well. Maybe we won’t be visiting London after all.

A taxi driver met us at the airport and was very nice. Gave Sally a very European kiss on the cheek, and then helped us with our luggage. I went to climb into the passenger seat and the steering wheel got in my way. It took a little getting used to being on the wrong side of the car. We eventually got to our apartment after passing tons of sheep, cattle, castles, and rock walls. We’ll send pictures of what it looks like later on.

We fell asleep a little after getting into the apartment. Fortunately Medtronic had loaded us up with bread, meat, and a few staples.

The apartment is really nice. Hardwood floors throughout. Top notch accomodations. And we aren’t far from some shopping. We tried to get some chinese food, and the sweet and sour sauce wasn’t exactly the way we remembered it… neither was the ketchup or the McChicken sandwich. But, we are getting by. We have a telephone now. To find us, you have to dial the country code: 011, followed by the following: 91-70-53-57

We will have a mobile phone in another day or two… about the same time that we get cable tv… Medtronic is being very good to us, and we should be able to access the internet once I get home with the laptop.

Ryan likes to wake up for about 3 hours at night… jetlag hit him the hardest… and the other headache is trying to figure out when the water is going to be hot or not. The water heater turns on automatically for two hours sometime in the morning and then again in the evening, but the rest of the day, all you get is cold water.

It is a little harder to get used to living here than we expected, but we are having fun and getting used to life without best buy and target.

Love,
Rusty and Sally and Ryan.