First Days in Ireland/Northern Ireland Trip

We arrived in Ireland around one thirty pm local time on Friday. Our flight was delayed from seven thirty to eleven o'clock pm because of all the snow in new york. Once on the plane we sat on the runway for about two hours. Over all getting to Ireland was stressful and tiring but now that we're here I have no complaints.

Day one was spent unpacking and trying to stay awake to adjust to the five hour ahead time change. Saturday and Sunday we spent the day at the beach, exploring the town and visiting friends from our last visit. Tully Cross is a tiny town in Co. Gallway. Only eighty people live in Tully Cross and the surrounding area. The town has a small hotel (only open during the summer), two pubs, a tiny general store that sells cereal, candy, cookies, tea and not much else, a church and the small tourist cottages that we call home. Our cottage is very different from our home in East. First none of the cottages and most homes in Ireland don't have a dryer. Although trying to dry clothes on a line in between rain storms seems ridiculous to us "yanks" the Irish don't seem to mind. Everything here just seems to move at a slower pace. A second major difference between our cottage in Ireland and our house in the U.S. is how the two houses are heated. At home we have a furnace that runs to keep our house at a constant temperature all day during the winter. In Ireland we have a furnace that we only turn on when we are home and even then only for short periods of time. Instead of using only our furnace for all of our heat we burn peat. Peat is basically compacted moss and dirt that has been dug up and set out to dry. Building a peat fire is a tedious task but once it gets going it really does help heat our cottage. Although Ireland's winters are warmer than the U.S. the damp cold combined with our poorly heated house keeps us bundled up even while inside. Another difference between Ireland and America is that Ireland is on the metric system like most of the rest of the world. This takes some getting use to when you ask a Irish person the weather for tomorrow and they tell you "oh only zero degrees." Another difference is food. The Irish eat lots of beef and root veggies because fruit and other fresh foods not grown locally are very expensive. Some juice comes concentrated so that less energy is wasted transporting something that you can just add water to.

Monday morning we got up early to be on the bus by ten o'clock. Although this doesn't sound too bad we are still not quite use to the time change which leads to lots of time staring at the ceiling around two o'clock am. Our destination was the Inch house where we will be staying until Monday. On the way we stopped at William Butler Yates' grave, Creevykeel (a ancient burial site from the Neolithic period), and the Foxford mills. The Inch house is located about ten minutes by bus from the city of Derry~LondonDerry. Derry is located in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a different country from Ireland and is still a part of England. On Wednesday we took a walking tour of Derry to learn about the political struggles of the Northern Ireland. Our guide was one of the teenagers who was fired at during Bloody Sunday. He ended our tour by taking us to the place where one of his friends was killed during a attempt to flee from the British solders on Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday happened on January 30, 1972 when a group of unarmed citizens were marching for civil rights. British solders opened fire on the marchers and killed thirteen people the youngest being seventeen in the Bogside area of Derry Northern Ireland. We walked around the city and it seemed like at every street corner our guide knew someone killed walking home from school, work, or the store. One of the most striking stories was one of a fourteen year old girl who was shot dead walking home from school. She was the hundredth person killed during the civil unrest in Northern Ireland. Over all our tour of Derry was very eyeopening to how recently Northern Ireland was facing terrible political problems.

Tonight we met the mayor of Derry. He was the youngest mayor of the city had ever had. Unlike in the United States the mayor only serves for one year. Because of this he has little power and seems to be more of a figurehead than anything. He wants the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to become one country.

Before heading back home to Tully Cross we are going to the Giant's Causeway and Belfast. Over all Northern Ireland has been a good experience but, I'm ready to head home to little Tully Cross and go to my new school. I hope everyone enjoyed their snowdays! Good luck with the American History Idol projects.