Wednesday May 27, 2009

First stop of the day was picking up Haddon at his house somewhere about 20 minutes away.  He lives in a cute, Irish house and as the Irish do, we were invited in for tea and biscuits.  The biscuits turned out to be mini pancakes, blueberry scones, cookies (biscuits), and tea or coffee.  I chose coffee since it is somewhat hard to get here at the house as what we get is tea, tea, tea!  After enjoying our coffee and scones, we headed off to Downpatrick to a cathedral where Saint Patrick is buried, or at least part of him is.  We saw his grave and the cathedral that hosts it.  This cathedral was smaller, but felt a lot older.  It smelled musty and had stone for the floor and an organ in the middle of the naive, which turns out to be a great location for acoustics.  A short walk from the cathedral is a museum of sorts.  We walked around a little bit and saw the old jail cells and Phil and Andrew played life-sized chess.  Then we drove through some country roads to the site of an ancient abbey.  We ate lunch, then walked through the abbey, which is now broken stone walls.  Many of the adventurous climbed to the top of the walls, I took pictures.  That is probably the coolest sight I have seen yet because it is very old and not taken over by some park service or company.  We drove up to it and walked around at our own leisure.  It is amazing that it is still standing.  After enjoying the climbing, we went to Saint Patrick's Memorial Church in Saul.  An uphill walk led us to an overgrown grave-sight and a small chapel that is still in use.  We spent some time sketching and reflecting then drove home. It was a busy day, but one of the best so far.

Tuesday May 26, 2009

Tuesdays are the day that we have class all day.  I am taking Art, Irish Literature, and Christian Life and each class is about an hour and 45 minutes.  By the time I was done all my classes I was tired and was tired since we stayed up the night before doing homework because none of us had really worked in the whole homework thing yet.  We will have all of it done earlier next week though!

Monday May25, 2009

The weather today was cool and rainy, which was a total surprise... We loaded up the van early, once Haddon, our Irish professor arrived, and left for Armagh.  Today we saw two cathedrals.  The first cathedral was on the sight where Saint Patrick originally built his cathedral when he came to Ireland, today it is a Protestant cathedral.  It was beautiful inside, but not as ornate as many Catholic cathedrals are.  We spent some time walking around and learned a little bit about the architecture from our Art professor, Neil.  After that we walked down into the town for lunch at a small cafe.  I had quiche, mash (mashed potatoes), and vegetables.  After lunch we drove to the other Saint Patrick Cathedral, which is a Catholic cathedral.  Inside was beautiful with mosaics covering the floors all the way to the ceiling.  There was also the twelve stations of the cross throughout the naive.  We spent some time looking around the cathedral and then drove through narrow country roads to a place called Navan.  Today, Navan is to the unlearned eye just a grassy mound.  We learned, though, that it is an ancient site of worship that has since been overgrown.  We climbed up to the top of the Navan mound and from there could see small farms with sheep and cows grazing.  It is just amazing to me that the houses throughout Ireland look so old even the more modern ones.  They are also all made of cement and they think that making houses out of wood is "silly," but don't be "cross" because they probably need cement to hold their houses together since it rains 90 inches a year here.

Saturday May 23, 2009

After breakfast we went with Billy to Shankill Road and Falls Road. Billy lived on Shankill road growing up and experienced the violence that took place between the Protestants (UVF) and Catholics (IRA). His father was involved in the UVF and Billy experienced first hand the fear of living in a place where everyday people were being brutally killed by bombs and other terrorist activities. Billy first took us through Shankill Road to show us the murals that have been painted to show the history of the conflicts as well as memorialize those who died for the cause. Billy told us when we got out of the van to be careful because last year the group from JBU was stoned while walking around - simply because the people living there are just full of hate and animosity. There are many Protestant churches in Ireland that have been abandoned or turned into Muslim churches, which is the largest growing religion in Ireland. We passed by an abandoned church near Shankill Road where a couple of kids who walked by and looked a little rough who picked up large stones and began throwing them at the church, this made our group really nervous, but luckily we were not harmed. Over at the Falls Road there were Catholic murals as well as a memorial to the young Catholics who died. Over 50% of the deaths caused in this struggle took place in the small block of Belfast where Shankill and Falls Road create a boundary.

In the afternoon we passed by a fish and chips shop called Beatties where Billy grew up eating at. He bought us chips to share and they were awesome. They came wrapped in paper.

That night Andrew, Kelsey, Phil and I spent many hours playing the card game called Spades.

Friday May 23, 2009

Our first day at Lakeside Manor, a former retirement home that was turned into our home, started out a bit relaxed.  On google maps our plot of land is HUGE compared to anything else near us.  We started out the day with really healthy cereal and milk that tastes different than it does here (but not bad).  The cereal here is very grain-like, not the fruit loops and captain crunch that is are American staples.  After breakfast we had an introduction (basically the syllabus day) in all of our classes and then we had a free day and we probably took a nap.  That night we watched an Irish movie called "Mickeybo & Me" which is about the conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics which took place on the streets Shankhill and Falls.

Leave for Ireland - May 20, 2009

Phil and I woke up at the break of dawn, or 6:45am in order to eat breakfast and finish last minute packing, unplugging, and saying goodbye to our apartment.  I was not totally stressed out, I am always just a little bit worried that I have forgotten something vitally important that I will not be able to replace on the trip.  At about 7:30am Andrew, his wife Kelsey, and their baby Ella came to pick us up and we all crammed into their car to make the drive to the airport.  Our first flight from XNA to Atlanta went well and we met up with Kyle who was in our group, during our layover in Atlanta we ate Chick-fil-a for lunch.  Everything was on-time from Atlanta to JFK and then we had like 30 minutes until we boarded our flight to Dublin.  The flight to Dublin was cool, we each had our own mini tv screen and there were like 9 movies to choose from as well as shows and games, etc.  Phil and I watched "Marley and Me," it was really "okay".  We were served dinner of pasta, bread, cheese, roll, and a double chocolate brownie.  We tried to sleep, that didn't really happen.  With two hours left on the plane we were served a warm bagel with cream cheese and a banana.  Overall, it was a good fight.  Our whole team, minus Heather, the girl who forgot to check her passport until 2 days before we were to leave and found out that it expired the day we left, were on the flight from JFK to Dublin.  In Dublin after going through customs etc, we waited to be picked up.  None of us really knew if anyone was going to be there when we got off the plane, but Billy and Mindi were there.  We loaded the buses with luggage and people and then drove to Belfast.  We ate sandwiches for lunch and then all went to bed.  We were awoken an hour and a half before we thought dinner was going to be to be taken out to a nice restaurant by some guy who I am not entirely sure who he is.  I got some kind of seafood dish with shrimp, crab, and garlic cream sauce, as well as curly fries (which were called something different of course).  When we were back from dinner we slept some more.