Rebecca-- Week 2 (International Student Teaching Spring 2009)

Can I just say that I love two week Easter holidays? Friday was a short day. It was a really fun day where we just got to play with the kids and celebrate Easter with them. A couple of the students gave me cards, which melted me heart! We sent the students off at school at 12:15 and then all of the staff went out to lunch. Saturday, I went on a tour with the other American students to the North of Ireland. As you may know, Northern Ireland is not apart of the Republic of Ireland but is still part of Great Britain. Therefore, I was literally in a different country.

The tour started with supposedly catching a bus called the “Aircoach” at around 3:55 in the morning–not even kidding. So we get to the bus…it ONLY goes to the airport. It wouldn’t let us get off in Dublin…losers. Luckily, Nick’s most gracious and wonderful host mom picked us up and took us into Dublin at 4:00 in the morning. We sat at the Paddywagon hostel until around 6:00 am when we caught a bus to take us into Belfast. This is a long drive and as much as I really wanted to watch the scenery, I was too tired and slept much of the way there. We arrived in Belfast around 8:30 and from the bus station, we caught the Paddywagon bus which headed even farther North. The weather that morning was miserable. It was freezing cold, extremely windy, and raining sideways.

Our first stop was in the tippy top corner of the country at a rope bridge. The bridge was closed because of the rain, but we hiked up to the area, which was lovely despite the weather.
Next, we left the bridge to a place called The Giant’s Causeway. This is just cool. It is a natural rock formation that looks like a bridge that was built by the hands of a giant…hence the name.

It actually comes from a legend about a man named Finn McCool. In short, he was a giant of a man who wanted to fight a rival in Scotland whom he had actually never seen. His rival wouldn’t come so he built this “causeway” for him to travel over. When he finally did, Finn encountered a man 10 times his own size, so his wife hatched a plan where she dressed Finn up as a baby. When his Scottish rival came to the house, Finn’s wife told him that Finn was out and would be back to fight him later. When he saw their “son” in the corner he shuddered at the thought that if that was the size of their son, there was no telling how tall Finn was, so he left and destroyed the bridge behind him, leaving only a bit in Ireland and a bit in Scotland.

The weather wasn’t quite as bad there, and the rock formations were just incredible. It was clear to me that it wasn’t Finn McCool who placed those stones there, but God who formed them perfectly. Next we made a photo stop at Dunluce castle which is precariously perched on the edge of a cliff, but it was quite “photogenic.”

Finally, we drove into Derry, a city that has seen many struggles throughout its history and the site of the Bloody Sunday incident in the 1970s. There is a large division of Republicans (those who want Northern Ireland to be apart of the Republic) and loyalists (those who are loyal to England) in the city. Derry is still called by its English name, Londonderry, by its loyalists citizens. Unfortunately, we got to the city more than an hour after we were supposed to and we didn’t have much time at all to explore it as I would have liked :( . I thought this was a bit of shame just because it is such an important city to Irish history. Instead, we walked the wall of the city. Hopefully I will have a chance to visit again, if not this trip, then sometime in the future.

After leaving Derry, we returned to Belfast, where we only had just enough time to grab a coffee before hitting the trail back to Dublin. Again, I really wish I could have seen more of the city--it has such a rich and troubled history--and am considering taking another tour to go back one weekend before I go home. We arrived back in Dublin about 8:30 and went to a pub to get some dinner before going home. It was a long, long day, but it was overall, a completely wonderful trip.

And that's just the first weekend!

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