"A Wee Separate Bit"

It’s been a busy week here, one full of excursions and lots of time in the classroom. We just had our last day of seminars in Coleraine and had a phenomenal lunch at the home of our program director, Nigel, where we were spoiled with homemade soups, bread, scones, and sweets as well as hanging out with his two adorable, ‘wee’ children. After lunch, Nigel drove us to a beach called Benone beach to the west of where we’re staying. The short drive along the coast was beautiful and reminded me somewhat of Big Sur in California or the Oregon coast, we saw a few waterfalls coming out of the basalt rocks and a crumbling palace of an old archbishop. The beach itself was absolutely gorgeous, stretching for miles in either direction, most of us dipped out feet in and got a bit wet before taking some photos and enjoying our last day together before the 5 Derry and 2 Ballycastle interns leave tomorrow.

It’s been an incredibly challenging and fascinating few weeks and I honestly feel that I’ve learned more in the last month than I do in some entire semesters. I’m really enjoying getting to spend so much time focusing on learning about many aspects of one place and all that’s happened here. We’ve spent most of our days in class at the university with a wide array of speakers and discussions, examining different aspects of the history of Northern Ireland and the conflict.

They have been long days, but really rewarding in that I feel as though every session brings a new set of questions and constantly challenges what I’m thinking about. In addition, we spent two days on field trips, learning about the cities of Derry and Belfast and speaking with individuals from different communities. The only way to describe the situation and all that we’ve learned is that it’s completely overwhelming and challenging but in a lot of ways really exciting to be able to grapple with so many dimensions of conflict, history, violence, peace, communities, traditions, and so on.

A few notes on Derry/Londonderry (Protestant/Unionists refer to it as Londonderry because it was renamed for the London Company but Catholic/Nationalists just call it Derry and purely because its easier to just write Derry, that’s what I’m doing here): Derry is the second largest city in Northern Ireland but with only about 80,000 people and essentially no buildings over 3 stories high, it feels much more like a large town. Though Derry/Londonderry is mostly Catholic today, the city is very important for Protestants/Unionists because of the Siege of Derry in 1690. In the Siege, Protestants defended the city for over 100 days from a Catholic army with the motto “never surrender.” This mentality is still very strong in the Protestant community in Derry even though the city is majority Catholic today.

We spent time with a local tour guide on the city walls, in the Unionist Fountain housing community, and in the Catholic Bogside. We spent most of our time in the Bogside where we visited the Bloody Sunday memorial, the famous murals of the Bogside Artists’ murals depicting different aspects of the Troubles, the Museum of Free Derry, and had lunch and discussion in a community center promoting healthy living. It was an incredibly moving afternoon that raised many questions about how individuals and communities deal with trauma, violence, and justice. We were definitely all pretty drained but managed to enjoy ourselves on the way back to Portrush in the mini-bus, affectionately dubbed ‘the beast.’ Nigel has been playing music for us on many of the rides we take, speaking about what the songs refer to and where the musicians are coming from. We’ve been listening to a wide array of genres and artists but Wednesday night on our way home, Nigel cranked Semisonic’s “Closing Time” and (nearly) everyone sang along. It’s nice to have a group of people experiencing and processing along with me and I’ve really appreciated the diversity of opinion and perspective in discussions.

Belfast on Wednesday was a very different, but equally as thought-provoking and interesting, experience. We met in the morning with representatives from a Catholic Republican organization that gives political tours of the Falls Road, a Nationalist/Republican heartland. On the tour we visited a number of political murals, memorials, the Sinn Fein headquarters (Sinn Fein is the Nationalist political party), and a cemetery where the Republican plots are. We ate lunch at the Republican Club and had a Q&A with our guide and another representative who are both former IRA political prisoners.

After lunch, we hopped over to the Protestant, Loyalist Shankhill Road neighborhood, directly parallel and very close to the Falls, where we toured the area with a former UVF political prisoner. In the Shankhill, we saw murals, memorials, peace walls, and community spaces that parallel those in the Falls but express a very different sentiment. I think the tours of the Falls and the Shankhill, particularly our experience with our guide in the Shankhill, challenged many of us to think about different perspectives and facets to the conflict. I know I was personally challenged to think about notions of what peace means, the psychology behind being a former prisoner and perpetrator of violence, and the legacy of some of these ideologies and memories. In other words, it was another emotionally and mentally taxing but crucial day that ended with the Beast bumbling back towards Portrush.

This post is crazy, crazy long… I guess the only things left to say are about food and fun:

1. Smarties flavored McFlurries: would be better in Dairy Queen blizzard form.

2. Scones just keep getting better.

3. Mr. Chips fish and chips are going to kill us all.

4. When you ask for a lemonade at a sketchy Chinese restaurant in Portrush, they’ll bring you 7-Up.

5. Last weekend we experienced some serious Northern Irish partygoers both nights out, but particularly at Kelly’s, the dance club we went to Saturday night where one of my flat-mates summed it up best as the most of the girls “look like they left half of their clothes at the Jersey Shore” …

Castles and Coastlines

Hello loyal blog readers! It feels like months since I last posted but I guess it was really only last week... Since then, we've gone on a retreat, explored the North Coast, and started classes at the University. We took off bright and early Monday morning to the Knockyland branch of an organization called Corrymeela where we spent the next two days. We learned more about Northern Ireland, what we'll be doing here, spent a bunch of time outside looking at sheep and breathing the fresh air, and determined who would be going to which internship site. I'll be going to an environmental action organization in Belfast located on a peace line. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing there but I'm really excited to see what they do and how their work is influenced by where they are located.

Last week we had a tourist day of fun and went to the Giant’s Causeway, which was formed by a volcano and basically looks like a huge jetty made entirely out of hexagonal rock pillars. It was beautiful and really great, again, to be right on the sea. After that we had some fish and chips (greasy, fatty, delicious) and went to the Bushmill’s Distillery- the oldest legal whiskey distillery in Ireland. We got a tour and had a sample and while it was cool to hear about and see the process, it wasn’t as exciting as I had imagined. After the distillery, we went to Dunluce Castle.

The castle is on a beautiful cliff overlooking the sea and was built hundreds of years ago. It hasn’t been in use since the 1600’s when the cliff fell into the ocean, taking the kitchen, dinner, and some servants down with it. We had a great tour guide who told us tons about the castle’s history and showed us what parts of the castle would have been used for what purposes. He also told us that one day when it was too windy for tours to see the castle, he and some of his co-workers built a fire in the fireplace and had a barbeque in this castle ruin! Some of us talked about how different that experience was from historical sites in the US. You would never go and just start cooking dinner in Paul Revere’s house or ring the Liberty Bell… it’s interesting to think about how history is just a part of the landscape here. It’s a completely integrated part of the landscape. Naturally, history is a part of the landscape across the US but I think we tend to mark or highlight certain parts of our history as “more historic” than others.

The rest of the week and into this week we have seminars all day at the University. While they are pretty long days (I don’t think I’ve been in a classroom this long since fifth grade practically), I definitely feel like I’m learning a lot- or at least getting a lot of facts about the history of Northern Ireland and the relationships between the different groups here.

One highlight of this weekend was watching the Ireland-France 6 Nations rugby game at one of the bars in Portrush. The tournament has been going on since we got here and I’ve really enjoyed watching the games on TV. I thought rugby would be a lot more like football, but its so much more enjoyable to watch because it doesn’t keep starting and stopping. The players are so fast and there seems to be more teamwork than most other sports I’ve seen. Not to mention the rugby players- on both sides- are not torturous to look at. Ireland lost but I had fun nonetheless and look forward to catching some more matches while we’re here and hopefully going to one myself.

The rest of this week will be more seminars and a visit to Derry/Londonderry where 5 of our group will be interning. I’m excited to be in a city and see some of the places we’ve been talking about and hear more from people outside the classroom. Derry is also pretty famous for its political murals- I’m pretty jazzed. Before we go to Belfast in a few weeks some of the group and I are thinking about going to Galway in the Republic for a few days. It’s supposed to be a really great city, full of young people and live music. Anyone have any good Galway suggestions?

This post is getting pretty long but a little food update: There is a chain grocery/convenience store called Spar where we probably go at least once a day to buy food-which goes quickly given the miniature nature of our fridge...So, digestives: still delicious, still confusingly named. Fish and chips: greasy, delicious, heart disease. On the crisp (re: potato chips) front: salt and vinegar Tayto or HunkyDory chips are most delicious. I’ve tried cheese and onion, bacon, and prawn cocktail. So far I’m just enjoying everything smothered in vinegar. I also had some homemade Irish stew at a café in Coleraine- so hearty!

A Wee Bit of News

Greetings from Coleraine, Northern Ireland! This post is mostly for those with mothering tendencies and I'll post more in the next week after I've had a little more time to think and more to say...

So, I'm writing this from the University of Ulster campus library on a mildly gloomy, albeit warm, Saturday afternoon and it feels like I've been here for much more than two days. A quick recap: The flight (my first trans-Atlantic one) wasn't bad except for the fact that I didn't sleep much so I was pretty tired and jet lagged Thursday and yesterday, getting really tired for a short period before being really energetic. It was interesting to leave Newark at night, flying over New York City, Connecticut, Providence, and Boston and landing in Belfast in the morning. The area between New York and Boston (what up megalopolis) is so dense and bright and urban, especially this time of year. On the other end of the pond, the first thing I noticed once we broke the cloud cover was how green everything was. Yeah, I know, its the Emerald Isle and all of that but I wasn't expecting it to be SO green in February! This fact was only compounded by how rural it is here. While I've flown across the Midwest many times, the landscape here is much more similar to rural New England (minus the trees) than the large industrial looking farms of the Midwest. Plus, most of these tracts don't seem to actually be farmed, more like grazing pastures except I've only seen a couple of sheep and a handful of cows :(

Moving right along: After we met our program director, Nigel (extremely sarcastic and very helpful), we took about an hour bus to Portrush on the North Coast of the island. Portrush is part of the "triangle" of Portrush, Coleraine, and Portstewart. For the first 3 weeks we'll be taking classes at the University of Ulster in Coleraine and commuting by train (yes!) about10 minutes one way. Portrush is pretty sleepy and a little rough around the edges- we've been told it used to be the height of seaside tourism in decades past but now everyone just goes to Spain or Italy or other actually warm places.

The 15 of us are split between 4 flats, which are very pleasant and cozy. The best part is that we're about 10 seconds from the sea. So far, we've explored a bit of Portrush, including a couple coffee shops, bars, and restaurants, and gone for some walks on the "strands" (re: beaches). Yesterday we came to campus for the first time and did a bunch of administrative stuff before heading into the town of Coleraine, which seems to the most happening of the three towns. We got our phones (and lots of intel on the local scene), wandered around a bit, and had lunch before heading back to our flats. Last night we all went out to a bar where there was a cover band playing lots of songs we all knew (with a singer who looked exactly like Alec Baldwin minus the star treatment). We all had some drinks and danced and had a good time- it was a little odd, or so we all thought, because very, very few people were dancing on the dance floor or even with their friends. So far, everyone I've met or spoken to has been really nice and friendly, giving lots of information about places to go and things to do. We certainly stick out, particularly when we travel in a pack, but so far people have been really accommodating, if not amused, by us. This weekend, I'm planing on fully unpacking, exploring Portstewart, finding myself some fish and chips, and definitely going for another walk on the beach. I think that's all for now, hope to hear from all of you soon!

Oh! I've decided at the end of each post to make a few notes on food and drink that I try. That said, In the past few days not much of note has been consumed other than my first pint of Guinness- delicious, a hard cider called Magners- also delicious, and the chocolate digestives (basically graham cracker cookies with a chocolate covering) which sort of creeped me out by name but are pretty tasty (and sadly have all been eaten). Next up: Fish and Chips!