Reclining seats lead to murderous thoughts

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After 14 hours on a plane (throughout which time I had the only murderous thoughts I can recall in my lifetime when some irritating lady, to whom courtesy was clearly an alien concept, decided to recline her chair to an almost horizontal position.. pinning me to the back of my seat) we arrived in Edmonton. After being practically force-fed aeroplane meals every thrity minutes by overly cheerful air hostesses and the aforementioned incident of the reclining chair, I was not in the most joyful of moods but this was a bad start to what would be one of the most amazing travel experiences I have had so far.
I was travelling to Edmonton from Northern Ireland with a group of 9 other young people (5 Protestants and 5 Catholics, 5 boys, 5 girls) as part of a cross community programme called the Spirit of Enniskillen (www.soetrust.org). The two week trip was the culmination of a lot of planning, team building and hard work. It's aim was to discuss some controversial issues surrounding sectarianism in Northern Ireland, develop leadership and personal skills whilst looking at conflict in our host country and working with similar organisations to the Spirit of Enniskillen. It was also a lot of fun and I now work for the organisation on a voluntary basis... and the people I went away with are some of my best friends.
We arrived at the airport to be greeted by the director of Youcan (the organisation who we would be working with) and his assistant Tara (who turned out to be one of the craziest people of planet Earth) At 3am in the morning.. the sight of Tara with her cascades of curly arfo hair, an insane grin and boxes of doughnuts is a little disturbing. The first thing I noticed about Edmonton was the size of the cars.. not your average clio or peugeot 107 like home.. they all drove monster trucks and massive vans... it turned out that pretty much everything was supersized.
On arrival at the Youcan centre (home for the next two weeks) we literally fell into bed without discussion. The staff had converted the upstairs floor of the office into two rooms for us.. with walls made from bin-bags and fairy lights strung around the windows...we also had hand-made individual quilts to cover our airbeds.. which a charity had made for us (mine is still on my bed at home). I felt a long way from a home.. and was acutely aware that I was spending the next two weeks with people I didn't really know.. but extreme fatigue reigned and I slept.

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Photos

Catherine, Karen and I in Dublin airport
before any murderous thoughts

Adam and Eithne at the airport
These two are polar opposites in term of opinions, cultures and political backgrounds.. but they turned out to be really good friends

Karen on her first ever flight
My fellow blonde on the trip and a true legend, although I would like to add... I was the only natural one. It was amazing to share this first experience with her

Peter and Tara doing some crazy dancing in the Youcan office
Peter - was my co-ordinator/mentor for the trip
Tara - crazy girl who worked in the office