Northern Lights

I don't even know where to begin in recounting the weekend I just spent in Northern Ireland. It may have to be one of those experiences that lives on in my head, forever indescribable, and told only through the bazillion photos that we all took in an attempt to capture the un-capturable...

But I would feel like a big, fat loser if I didn't at least try to share some of it, so here goes nothing. Last Thursday, my fellow IFSA-Butlerettes and myself took off for the first of the weekend-long trips that the program plans for us throughout the semester...coinciding, not accidentally, with a graceful little period that the folks in study-abroad-land deem the "six week slump." Apparently, after the honeymoon period ends and the quirks that we've been finding absolutely adorable up to this point (in our case, broken glass on the floor... all the time) start to become unbearable, it's normal for students to begin to feel the first inky pangs of homesickness. I have to admit, even though I've been happier here than I would have ever imagined possible, I've had mornings where I've had to physically leave the apartment in order to avoid wasting the day on Facebook, stalking friends from home and wallowing in my absence from their colorful, smily lives.

Anyhow, what the nice people at IFSA do in these weekend trips is remind us that we, in fact, have the smiliest, most-colorfullest lives of all--we're in Ireland, for Bog's sakes!--and that this entire, gorgeous country is traversable by bus. We all met on Thursday morning (ironically, one of the warmest days I've seen in Galway thus far...what better way to spend it than on a bus with no toilet?) and set off for Belfast, which is about 6 hours away if you head due East to Dublin, and then across the "border" to Northern Ireland. I do not use the quotation marks arbitrarily, because classifying the territory we were heading into proved to be more difficult than any of us anticipated. It's amazing how many of us--in the first of many quandaries about the Republic and what is technically the U.K.--wondered whether we'd need a passport to get in. The answer was no, but all the same... no one knew. We felt half stupid for wondering, and half curious about how many experiences during the weekend would be punctured by confusion over what is, and not, a legitimate question about the politics of the North. Other than money, what would we need to change? Would we need to listen, speak, and act differently?

As it turns out, we didn't have to work too hard to appear well-versed in the intricacies of Republic/U.K relations, because there was never any doubt as to our status as completely UNknowledgeable. It would seem that spending half the day on a guided tour with cameras sticking out of our (most likely Patagonia) jackets is a dead-ringer for Americanness, which in most places, equates with some degree of ignorance. While normally this would bug the crap out of me, I found it to be a relief in some cases: I'm an American, and no, I don't understand your political situation. No, I have no idea what you just said, would you please repeat it? Your accent makes it sound like you're speaking to me from beneath a rock, in the bottom of a crater, with a dozen marshmallows in your mouth. Would you mind repeating that...slowly?

Anyhow, the first night we were there, we were all exhausted (it's amazing how sitting on your butt all day takes it out of you), but were treated to the first of many free meals that the weekend offered and knew better than to turn down free food. You would think we're storing up for the winter, the way we eat over here. It gave us the temporary energy needed to rally and hit the streets, which we did, albeit with timid feet...after living in Galway, the city felt impersonal and oddly corporate. We stumbled across a few interesting things, including a group of students protesting the rise in university fees...which I was awed by because I've never seen anything like it in the States. It seems to me that when they raise our university fees, we complain about it and then fork it over. It's a different mindset over here. After we passed them, we strolled down the street to a pub called Lavery's, which ended up becoming our home for the next three nights. It was fantastic, with at least four separate sprawling rooms full of people, and the type of old-fashioned saloon light fixtures that are a staple in Belfast. Victoria and I ended up going upstairs, which serendipitously turned out to be a showcase of some of the best young musical talent in Northern Ireland (SONI, or Sounds of Northern Ireland)...we got to see everything from a young singer-songwriter with an Elliott Smith sound to a punky rocker chick, who did the best rendition of "Somebody to Love" this side of Freddy Mercury. It was awesome.

It was even more awesome the next morning when we boarded the bus at 8:30 sharp, and got to be among the few who were not hungover from the night before... I think we actually enjoyed the bus ride, whereas a significant portion of people on the bus looked like they'd rather curl up in a ball and die than endure the speedbumps in County Antrim We started the day passing through the gorgeous green countryside, which despite the rain, looked like something straight out of Beatrix Potter...I lost count of the sheep at roughly ten bajillion (you think I'm kidding, but I'm not). We then made our way to the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, which overlooked some of the most stunning ocean I've ever seen...aquamarine blue, which looked magical next to the wild, green cliffs. My legs were jelly when I crossed the bridge, and I loved it. We went to Dunluce Castle after that, and finished the day at Giant's Causeway--which, true to the legend, is one of the most awe-inspiring places I've ever seen! The pictures tell the story far better than I ever could.

Saturday was our last day in Belfast, and we started it by taking one of the historical Black Taxi tours... led by one of the most engaging, knowledgeable, and incredible people I've met so far in Ireland. The group split into a whole parade of taxis, but 5 others and myself happened to end up with the tour guide of the century; his accent was actually comprehensible, and he steered clear of those godawful spiels that make places like the Disneyland Jungle Cruise something akin to hell on earth. This man was amazing. We began in Shankhill, the Protestant side of the city, and saw the first round of murals: Oliver Cromwell, the Red Hand of Ulster, and a particularly chilling depiction of a gunman whose lethal eye follows you wherever you stand. Maggie, being Catholic, was visibly shaken the whole time we were there--and I have to say, so was I. Never in my life has my attention been drawn so clearly to the fact that I don't know what I am, I don't know where my spirituality falls on the spectrum of belief...but here I was, face-to-face with dozens of depictions of men who had murdered countless people because of that very spectrum. The scariest part was the modernity; I think I expected to see paintings of men in wigs and tights wielding swords, not in baseball caps with rifles. We stopped at the "Peace Wall" next, which divides the Catholic community from the Protestants--to this day, there are bricks lodged in the tippy-top of it, on their way over to hit someone on the other side--and we signed our names. I hope to go back someday and look at it again. We jumped back in the cab and went over to the Catholic side, and maybe I imagined it, but it seemed like our driver breathed a little sigh of relief: he told us he was Catholic, and though he said the folks in Shankhill know him by now, I think he was only half kidding when he said that if we saw him running...well, that we should probably run as well. So we parked on the opposite side of the wall that only minutes before, we were scribbling with peace signs and John Lennon lyrics, and walked into the courtyard commemorating the Catholic martyrs and those who died in the Bombay Street violence. My stomach did flips when our guide passed around the rubber bullets used by the military during the Troubles, and almost passed right up out of my mouth when I saw that the final name on the stone plaque--the most recent death associated with the violence--was 2004. What was I doing in 2004? Back in the cab, our driver told us about his childhood, and what it was like to go to sleep each night not knowing if an armed gunman would break into your house--which they did quite often--demanding that you prove your identity, your involvement, or lack thereof. He recounted what it was like to watch his best friend get gunned down in front of him. And like most Irish, he told these stories with composure, like someone might tell you about a particularly nasty bout with the flu...not the type of life or death situation that takes a lifetime to recover from. We were sitting on the edge of our seats as he spoke, doing all we could not to leap up and smother him with a bear hug and our tears...but our driver, also in typical Irish form, ended his final anecdote about a break-in by saying "it's okay, 'cos we hit him over the head with our boom-box."

Right.

I spent much of the afternoon that day just wandering around the city, getting lost and people-watching, at a loss for what to do with all the information I'd just digested. I've never felt quite so lucky in my entire life to be exposed to so much history and so much passion, and to be exactly where I am (in my little self) right in the middle of it all. I think about this time last year, and I'm flooded with awe and relief at how much can change in only three-hundred-and sixty-five days... how many hours is that? Approximately how many songs? I can only smile, and thank my lucky stars for whatever alignment they took on to allow me to be here, right now, exactly as I am.

I ended the weekend on a happy note, napping the afternoon away in our fancy shmancy hotel room and eating freshly-baked bread with homemade jam and lemon curd--which tasted especially great on the bus the next day, all six hours of it, as we buzzed back through the countryside full of the same sheep, doing the same thing, about twelve inches from the spot they were sitting in the first time we passed them.

Then again, sometimes twelve inches is a long way to go.