It has been a few days since I blogged about my experiences - I’ve been extremely busy with schoolwork, my twenty first birthday, and exploring - but this will get me all caught back up!!
Sunday 1/8 was a very laid back day because we had stayed out extremely late the night before enjoying what the locals call “Sweatro” (really called Metro), a cool little night club that loves playing American dance music and apparently has zero ventilation…hence the SWEATro haha. After sleeping in a bit though, I decided to take some time to myself and walked around Derry for about 3 hours exploring the parts of town I had yet to see, including the Derry Peace Bridge, which was just recently erected and opened to the public on June 25, 2011. It was wild because the Bridge is an “S” shape, which is representative of a handshake across the River Foyle. I then went to Wetherspoons (I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but it’s like the UK version of Applebees, but it has cheap drinks and free wi-fi which is hard to come by!) because I had to begin preparing for a massive exam we took yesterday. I then ended the evening by going to see Sherlock Holmes…except that didn’t turn out to be the end…When we returned to the hotel later that night, we were informed by our roommate that he had just had an extremely screwed up experience, in which he was invited into a bar for a beer that turned out to be a hardcore Catholic Nationalist Republican hangout. As the night progressed he got continually messed with and ended up getting his drink spiked! The poor guy :[ We spent the next few hours that night trying to help him settle down and ended up having to take him to the hospital to make sure they hadn’t given him something that could seriously hurt him - we think it was cocaine. Everything ended up okay and he turned out alright, but it was still a scary experience and it definitely reminded us to be careful and that the memories of the Troubles are still very much a part of the culture here in Northern Ireland.
Monday 1/9 was far more uneventful because we were exhausted from staying up late with Eric the night before, so I ended up just studying for the exam.
Tuesday 1/10 was my twenty first birthday!!! It definitely did not feel like it though because again, the whole day was spent in class and studying for the exam that was to come. I literally did nothing fun to celebrate, but while studying that afternoon, myself, Anna, and Stacey met a gentleman named Kevin who shared a number of his personal stories about the Troubles with us. Kevin shared with us a recent story about an event that had occurred about 5 years ago in his hometown of Ballymena, which he said is a town with about a 50-50 split between Catholic and Protestant. A fifteen year old boy from town was walking home one night wearing a Catholic soccer team scarf and was approached by 5 young men carrying baseball bats, who then proceeded to beat the kid to death. The worst part is that Kevin told us the boy made it home to his family, only to pass into a coma and die shortly thereafter. He said that the story was all over the news and that it the “last straw” for his town and ever since then the community there had really grown close. Also, I found it interesting because Kevin commented on the fact that the Troubles were a very unique conflict because the two key players are so similar. He said, “we’re all Christians, so I don’t even understand why we were fighting in the first place.” Such an awful thing - it was pretty amazing that he wanted so badly to share with us about his experiences though.
Wednesday 1/11 was the day of the awful exam, which concluded our “classroom” portion of the trip. I ended up writing sixteen flipping pages on communication and political science concepts specifically applied within the context of N Ireland and the Troubles. After the grueling, awfulness of our exam, that is when we all had voted would be my official birthday celebration. We went out to dinner with the whole crew where they sang happy birthday to me over the loudspeakers in the restaurant - the best part: our amazing professor Amanda Feller bought everyone dinner and their first drinks to kick off the night! We then came back to the hotel to play a round of King’s Cup and get a solid buzz before going out (we are broke college students after all…we can’t afford those expensive club drink prices!). The festivities were completed by Catherine and Becca bringing in a whole cake that they had searched every convenience store in Derry for, in addition to a huge pink cowboy hat and a massive button that read, “It’s My Birthday!”. After all, it wouldn’t be a proper 21st birthday without some kind of ridicule and embarrassment haha. We then went out to our favorite spot, Metro to go dancing and for more drinks. Literally every Irish person I met that found out it was my birthday insisted on buying me a drink - it was great! haha. I even met a dude that kissed me first on the cheek, then the lips, proceeded to introduce me to his girlfriend who did the same, and then bought a me a round of drinks! Gotta love the Irish hahaha. It was a splendid way to celebrate my 21st - the only thing I was missing though was my DreDre who would’ve been raging next to me!
Thursday 1/12. Today was a recovery day for EVERYONE because we ALL celebrated hard last night, but it was perfect because we got to listen to four amazing guest speakers. They shared a wide range of stories about their experiences either during or after the Troubles. One of the most moving stories came from a fellow named Charlie McMenamin, an Irish Republican Nationalist. Charlie told us about a woman that shared at one of his first dialogue opportunities about how her daughter had been killed in the Omagh Bombing. She had begun her story with the comment that, “my story is not nearly as bad as any of yours…” This detail really stood out to him because he couldn’t imagine losing his daughter to something like that, yet the older lady did not recognize this loss as even comparable to the stories he and the others had shared. He retold how when the lady found out about the loss of her daughter, she said “all she wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up the next morning having dreamt that she lost her daughter.” He told us a number of other stories, but this one in particular was extremely powerful and emotional - it was definitely upsetting to me to hear his retelling, but it’s also one of the major reasons why I am here. When else in my life will I have the opportunity to learn about the deeply divided nation of Northern Ireland on such a personal, intimate level? This experience has literally been once-in-a-lifetime so far!!!
More to come soon and hopefully I will actually have time to post photos! Otherwise, it’s off to Dublin for the weekend. WAHOOO!!!
