Where to begin?
I can already see how writing one of these every day or even every other day, as the case may be, may be something of a challenge. I wish I had some amazing spiritual insight and wisdom to share every day. But, alas, I think most of these posts will be more about our daily adventures and less about conveying revelation. ... maybe a little revelation.
Our adventure yesterday turned into a bit of a financial crisis. Basically, we didn't bring a lot of cash, intending to use our credit cards mostly. Ethan has an "international" card, but I knew my bank would panic and flag my card if it came up overseas, so I had to have my mom call them and reassure them that it was all on the level. The bank doesn't open until 8 am. That's 2 pm our time.
Luckily, in one fell swoop we overcame jet lag in a single twelve hour sleep session and woke up near abouts 10 in the morning. Then I spent the time researching the area (Wikipedia was surprsingly helpful) until I could get in contact with my mom via Facebook to get in contact with the bank.
When that particular hurdle was overcome, we were both hungry, so we walked to the city (it's recently been clocked as about a 40 minute walk from our hostel). It was a bank holiday (all the banks, government buildings, and most local places were closed), so we went to good 'ole reliable Subway. After we had them put together two foot long subs, we discovered, to our horror, that they didn't take cards. The lady at the counter directed us back ten minutes up the way we came to the Spar (kind of like Brookshire Bros.) where there was an ATM.
The ATM didn't like our cards. Neither did the cash register. The Spar people brought over who I assume was an expert in all things economy who promptly informed us that our American cards were outdated (no chip and PIN), and that even if they weren't, they'd never work because they're Debit and not Credit. I distinctly remembered using mine last summer, and I brought this up, but he seemed to think I was mistaken. Still, they managed to swipe Ethan's card somehow and get him 10 pounds.
We then returned to Subway, where they had already done away with our sandwiches. (Do they disassemble those, give them away, or just throw them out?) We explained our situation, and could only afford one sandwich, that we'd split between us. The girls at the counter were really cool about it, and offered to make two different sandwiches out of the halves of the one for us and give us an extra drink and bag of crisps. I was reminded of why I love these people so much.
So, broke and having three hours to kill until we met with our CeLT supervisor, we wandered into Belfast. We found a coffee shop, used the last of Ethan's cash to get a cup of coffee so we didn't look like solicitors (which I think are even more illegal here than in the states, because you actually have to pay a few pence (read: cents) extra to dine in), and used the complimentary wifi to contact my mom again. Or in Ethan's case, to contact my mom to contact his mom.
We hung around the coffee shop until 6 when they closed (even though the sun stays up until around 10, everything shuts down pretty early... I assume it's so people have time to get to the pubs). From there we navigated our way (curtesy of my Sony tablet and Google Earth) to our supervisors hotel, where we surprised him by being an hour early and also having no money.
He explained that the UK had indeed moved away from swiping cards in favor of the chip and PIN system, but that our cards would work if they were swiped. Unfortunately, as we had seen at the Spar earlier, most people don't think to try this, and we would probably have to tell everyone to swipe our cards instead of doing it the faster (by half a second), British way. With that in mind, we tried another ATM with no success, and then went out for a quick mission orientation over Indian food.
Neither Ethan nor I had ever eaten Indian before, but luckily J R (the aforementioned CeLT supervisor) is somewhat of a connoisseur of all things foreign and food-like, so he interpreted the menu for us and ordered an excellent sampling of the basics. I don't know about Ethan, but I was impressed. Turns out I like Indian food. Especially the bread. Apparently they have this super hot oven that they throw dough into... and it sticks to the wall inside... and when it falls off, they know it's done. And it's amazing.
Following this we tested our cards again by seeing Marvel's Avengers Assemble for a second time... third time if you count the shockingly similar movie we saw in the states called Marvel's Avengers. Ethan and I were both stunned that not only do these poor people have to watch a retitled version, but that there's no second scene after the credits. They literally don't know what they're missing. Also, it felt kind of awkward watching Captain America being so heroicized in the UK. I guess they're probably used to it, though, with all the self-obsessed American movies they get coming through the pipeline. Also, also, our cards worked when swiped.
Today the plan is to meet J R at Starbucks for further mission briefing.
- Sam R. Franklin
Day 3 in Belfast
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