Overcoming Culture Shock: Journal reflection

From Syria via Turkey and Greece to ultimately Ireland, it has been a very long journey full of ups and downs, tears of frustration and dismay, the odd glimmer of hope. Eleven months on roads and cross country, living in tents and the odd night under a proper roof, it was a long and tortuous road that finally took me and 129 other Syrians to Dublin. It was December 2016 when we landed at Dublin airport, cheerful and hopeful and greatly relieved. It was the beginning of the honeymoon phase in Ireland as new arrivals - or at least it was for me. [...]