Good craic

Well, I can't write much at the moment because I'm sitting in Heathrow waiting for John and Kyla to pick me up (apparently they're stuck in terrible traffic!) but I just read that Kenneth Foster's sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment! So, I thought I should mention that after my earlier post on him.

On my last day in Dublin, I got to go to court! Much to the dismay of my inner tourist, there were no wigs and gowns worn (the courts are closed and it was an emergency session), but it was still really interesting. In the afternoon, Catherine, my boss from FLAC, dropped by NCLC to wish me luck, and it was nice to see her again.

It was a little bit sad to leave Dublin, especially parting with my roommates. We had a good night out last night, though - some "good craic" before I took off. I think Aoife might come visit in Bath for a weekend! I would love that. I'm excited to be here now, and I am really looking forward to my visit with Kyla and John.

More later!

Last Week in Dublin

I wish I had some exciting news to report, but in this last week in Dublin, I have mostly been hanging out with my roommates (and Anne, the girl I'm subletting from, who is back in town and staying with her boyfriend until I move out), running errands, working, and getting packed up. I leave for London Saturday evening, where I will visit with Kyla and John for about a week before I fly out to meet James in Budapest. I am really looking forward to all of my future travels, but I am a little bit sad to leave Dublin behind! I have enjoyed both of my jobs so much, and the people have been great. I feel like I've just settled in at the NCLC: I really enjoy all the people I work with, the girls in the canteen know my name, and I've actually gotten some good, substantial work done. The Sampson Fellowship has been such a great experience, I have a hard time believing that practicing law can really be this good!

Sunny Days

The last couple of days have actually been hot and sunny! Which makes me wonder why I am staying late at work on Friday...it's nice to have the free Internet, anyway.

On Wednesday, Moya (the solicitor I work for) took me out to lunch in another part of North Dublin, and we actually got to sit outside at a cafe, which was such a treat. She told me about some nice beaches just outside of the city, and said that I should ask Pauline, the legal secretary, for directions, as she lives out near there. When I asked Pauline, she offered to give me a ride, and she drove me up to Malahide and showed me around, and then dropped me in Portmarnock to walk along the beach. It was an absolutely beautiful day (unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera!), and I rolled up my jeans and walked in the water for awhile. I could see the next village down, so I thought I'd go ahead and walk all the way there, but after about an hour and a half of walking, when the village was plainly in view, I came to an estuary! The only way to get across would have been to swim. So I turned and walked all the way back, which wasn't too bad because it was a beautiful night.

I mentioned to Colin, the director of NCLC, that I was interested in immigration law, so he arranged for me to meet one of the barristers at the Immigrant Council of Ireland, a local NGO that provides migrants with advice and advocacy. So, yesterday morning I went downtown and met with her. They are really busy down there - the waiting room was packed - but she took a lot of time with me, and told me all about the kind of work that they do, and how she came to work there, and it was really nice. They do a lot of policy work as well as representing clients, so it was great to get a glimpse of that.

Today during lunch, I booked the hostels for my Eastern Europe trip with James. I am so excited, and can't believe it's only 2 weeks away!

I think that brings us up to date! It is Friday night, and I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. I have to go home and help my roommate Katie get ready - she's meeting her new boyfriend's family tonight. Very exciting.

I'll try to get on and post some pictures later.

Belfast

Ok, finally, here's a summary of my trip to Belfast:

Emily Jarvis met me at the train station around 1 and we walked from there down to the area around Queen's University to see about some lunch. Queen's is a beautiful tudor building, and there's a Botanic Garden next door, and in the middle of the garden is the Ulster Museum, which we were hoping to visit after lunch. We found this great little dusty bookstore/cafe - just my kind of place - and had big cups of tea and sandwiches for under £5 - again, just my kind of place. Everyone in Belfast is so friendly: forget what they tell you about being British, because everywhere we went, people were as chatty and welcoming as any Irish person outside of Dublin. Actually, Dublin is so full of foreigners, both workers and tourists, that sometimes it seems like you never run into any Irish people in the city center. Every single waiter, shopkeeper, etc speaks with a foreign accent, and many of them struggle with the English language, and you have to dodge big groups of Italians and Spaniards just to walk down the street. (This is not true of the neighborhood where I work, which has hardly any immigrants and no tourists.) But in Belfast, there were hardly any tourists or foreign workers at all, which gave it this really nice small-town, local feel. (On the flip side, a headline in the Irish newspaper a couple of weeks ago announced: "Belfast NOT the most racist city in Europe." When that statement needs to be made, you know there's a problem.)

After lunch, we walked around in the gardens and headed up toward the museum, which turned out to be closed for renovations until 2009 (a lot of the city seems to be in the process of construction or renovation). We hopped on a bus that took us south of the city, to the Lagan (that's the name of the major river) National Park. It being a relatively nice day, our plan was to walk around the Japanese gardens in the Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park and then to hike out to the Giant's Circle, which is an ancient burial site. We never found the circle, but got utterly and completely lost, and had a wonderful riverside hike out to Shaw's Bridge instead. We must have walked for 4 or 5 miles, which was unexpected and pleasant. When we finally found civilization again, we were starving and went out for fish and chips. We were meeting Emily Alvarado at 9 at her local pub, as she had some work-related trip all day. We headed out that day and met up with her, and all caught up over some bottles of very cheap wine (despite using the pound, Belfast is much cheaper than Dublin).

On Saturday, we went to St. George's Market for a few hours of people-watching and lots of eating. Belfast is such a small community that we ran into a handful of people that Emily knows from work or from hanging around, and at every single stall, our accents were noted and we were asked where we were from, what we were doing in Belfast, etc, and everyone apologized for the weather (apparently this is the worst summer in living memory). We bought souvenirs, and ate breakfast, lunch, and dessert. There were a couple of guys with guitars, and the whole atmosphere was really nice.

That afternoon, we called and arranged a Black Taxi tour of the city. Our guide was a Catholic who grew up near the Divis Flats off the Falls Road, and the Troubles started when he was 9. He told us that his childhood best friend was the first child to be killed. He drove us up into North Belfast, and we stopped to look at all the murals, and he told us the history of the conflict and explained the symbolism of the images. We saw the old Courthouse, which is now in ruins, and the prison, which is also disused. Then he took us down through the Shankill, where we were not allowed to get out of the car, and it was pretty horrible. While the Catholic neighborhoods were relatively clean and the murals depicted historical events and allegorical images, the paintings and graffiti in that neighborhood were all slogans of the different paramilitary groups and pictures of warriors. There were Union Jack flags strung up across the streets and hanging from windows, and there was a lot of garbage everywhere, and big lots where houses had been bulldozed that just looked like garbage dumps. To be fair, there are probably some Catholic neighborhoods that look like that, too, but we didn't see them.

The Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in West Belfast are right next to each other, but we had to drive all the way around because of the big wall in between. You can see it above and between the houses, and while there are gates, they are still locked after 6pm on weeknights and all weekend. When we drove to the end of the wall to go around, I realized we were right behind the big shopping mall in the center of town. The "war-zones" are literally right next to the downtown. Middle-class Belfast residents going shopping on the high street and going to work are just a few blocks away from these ghettos. I couldn't believe the proximity. We went just a little way up the Falls Road and saw the Divis Tower, which is the only building that remains of the Divis Flats, and saw the wall from the other side. It was pretty wild.

Saturday night, we were all pretty pooped, so we decided to go to dinner and then to the movies. We had Indian food in celebration of their Independence Day (that was our excuse, anyway), and then went to the movie theatre. The only thing that looked remotely good was Waitress, so we went to see that, and it was perfect for a girls' night out.

On Sunday, we made brunch at Emily Alvarado's house, and then Emily Jarvis had to go catch her flight. Alvarado and I went to a big sports bar near the university to watch the Liverpool-Chelsea game (she was a really good sport about it). This was the perfect bar to watch it in: there were three different big rooms, one playing our game, one playing the Arsenal-Blackburn game, and one playing the Cork-Meath Gaelic Football game. All of the rooms were totally packed, and ours was packed mostly with Liverpool fans, who were incredibly raucous. It was great. We cheered, and sang songs, and drank some beers, and chatted with people, and it was a lot of fun (although they ended up tying because of a penalty that should never have happened - but we won't dwell on it).

So, all in all it was a great weekend, and I promise to post some pictures soon!

Howth

The pictures above are from my visit to Howth last Sunday. Howth (rhymes with Both) is a seaside village just north of Dublin. I had hoped to take a long walk up to the summit, but it was raining on and off, so I wandered up into the village instead. That was a stroke of luck, because I stumbled on the beautiful ruins of an old abbey! The top picture is of some islands right off the coast, and the rest were taken in Howth Village.

This weekend, Emily Jarvis and I are going to Belfast to visit Emily Alvarado. I have never been to Northern Ireland before, and I am really looking forward to it. I am reading a wonderful book about the Troubles that was recommended to me by a friend, called Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life. It's by an American journalist, John Conroy, who lived in West Belfast in the early 1980's and really got to know the whole situation. I am looking forward to seeing where all the events took place. It's an exciting time in Northern Ireland right now, with all the progress they've been making, and it'll be great to have Emily to show us around.

Tonight my roommates and I are going to see The Bourne Ultimatum. Very exciting. It seems women all over the world love Matt Damon.