Northern Ireland.

Thursday morning our study abroad coordinator Elizabeth took all 43 of us American students to Northern Ireland. For those of you who don't know, Northern Ireland is not just a region but a completely different country that is part of the UK. I was pretty excited for this trip because we had plans to stay in nice hotels and pretty much all of our meals were paid for.

Before reaching our destination of Derry, we stopped in a small town called Bushmills which is home to the Giant's Causeway. The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It was BEAUTIFUL. Below are a few pictures, but the pictures don't even do this place justice.

After trekking around the Giant's Causeway for about 2 hours, we headed to the city of Derry to check into our hotel. We got to dine (for free!) in the hotel restaurant and were served a three course meal. On Friday morning, we stuffed ourselves again with the breakfast buffet (to offset the cost of paying for our own lunch) and we headed out to walk the walls of Derry. The city of Derry has been a location of much suffering because of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Coincidentally, we were there on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday which took place in Derry. We got to see the Bloody Sunday museum along with meeting a man whose brother's died in the march that day. It was very depressing to say the least. Below is a picture of our tour guide Nole telling us about the history of conflict in Northern Ireland. You can also see a mural in the background. There were murals speaking of the conflict ALL OVER. Pretty much on any wall you saw there was a mural of some sort. Later that day, we got on a bus and headed to the city of Belfast where we would stay for the next two nights.

Once in Belfast, we had some free time to explore. The city center itself wasn't much different than Dublin but the overall feel of the city was. It's hard to pin point exactly what made it different, but I think the combination of their raw (and pretty recent) conflicts and their attitude towards Americans that made it a little less comfortable. Saturday morning we woke up for another walking tour hosted by Nole around the city. This was a less than pleasant experience. We ventured out of the city and into neighborhoods that were obviously divided by religious beliefs. We saw many anti-American murals and we definitely felt very unwelcome as cars passing by would honk at us for no reason (and it wasn't in a I think you're attractive so I'm honking at you kind of way). We toured around for about three hours. I can't say I enjoyed this part at all. None of what we saw was picturesqe and the things we were learning about the city were very heavy.

Later that evening we got to enjoy another free meal, and then a few of us headed out to experience the Belfast night life. We ended up making friends with a group of guys from Wales and had a really fun night laughing and talking with them.

Sunday before heading home we stopped at the shipyard where the Titanic was built. For those of you who don't know Titanic is one of my favorite movies so this was a really cool thing to see. It was kind of surreal to be standing where the actual ship was built. Below is a picture of me with the space they held the ship while it was being made. It was HUGE.

Although the trip was fun and all the free things were nice, I'm glad to be back in Dublin. I feel at home here and a hundred times more welcome. Also, it snowed today, a total rarity in Dublin. Kind of exciting!