Playing with kids

So as I've alluded to a couple of times, I'll be spending my Tuesdays and Thursdays over at a local integrated school, helping out with a class of nine year olds. I've had two days over there already, both of which were a lot of fun. First, some background on the school, though. As I mentioned, this is an integrated school, which means that it has both Protestant and Catholic students and faculty. Such integrated schools comprise less than five percent of the schools here in Northern Ireland, and are a very recent innovation. The school that I am at has been going for fifteen years. The goal of these schools is to try to ease the sectarian tension between Catholics and Protestants by having the kids grow up along side each other and make friends with each other. As it stands now, it's hard to see the effect that this is having on the peace process. The principal of the school explained to us that their charter requires that at any given time the student population must be at least forty percent Catholic and forty percent Protestant. The same holds true for the teachers and staff as well. While the original intent of the integration was merely to bring Catholic and Protestant kids together, they have also opened their doors to the few minority students that are in the area, as well as many kids with learning disabilities. They have a strong concept of the educational rights a student is entitled to, and have posted all over the school Articles out of something called The Convention, so that kids can learn what their rights as students are. I was impressed by this, and am trying to track down a full copy of The Convention.

The first day that we arrived happened to be Sport Day. This is an all day event for the older kids, and includes basic track races and creative group games, all aimed at earning points in competition with other teams. The kids are split up into Houses, which they stay members of for their time at Oakgrove Primary, and whichever House has the most points at the end of the day gets the House Cup. I was originally supposed to work with the music teacher here, but since because of Sport Day there were no music classes, the Principal put me with Bann House for the day. Mostly I helped the other teachers try to keep the chaos at a minimal level, while encouraging the kids in their competitions. The kids needed little encouragement, however, as throughout all the races and games they would scream their House songs at the top of their lungs, as well as cheering wildly for their fellow teammates. During recess I got to talk with some of the kids, who were very excited to learn that I was from the U.S. One girl, Puja, took it upon herself to lead me around the playground and introduce me to everyone. She wasn't kidding when she said everyone, and there is no way I will ever remember the fifty some names and faces that were flashed past me. Several of the kids eagerly asked me questions about the U.S, like where in the country different landmarks were, and if I had ever been bitten by a mosquito (I somehow managed not to laugh out loud when asked this). The vote was split on whether the way I spoke was cool or weird, and most agreed that the U.S. was a far more exciting place than Northern Ireland. In the afternoon I helped run the group games the teachers had set up, such as the Spud Run, Net Shoot, Free Point Shot, and Bean Bag Toss. Bann House ended up coming in second, which they seemed satisfied with. The big upset came when Crana House, which according to the kids had won the House Cup for the past several years, came in last place. I think the kids were more excited by this than they were with their own ranking.

Yesterday I was with Mrs. Mahon and her class of eight and nine year olds. I started off making circuits for them in their electricity lesson coming up. The teacher explained that it was going to be an exploratory lesson, in which the kids would be split into groups and given a basket with two lead wires, a bulb, and a battery, and told to make the lightbulb light up. I wasn't told how many were needed, so I dutifully kept making them until Mrs. Mahon came out and asked how it was coming. I proudly said that I had made eighteen circuits. Turns out she only needed six or eight. Oh well, now the whole grade level has circuits. I went out with the kids for their PE lesson, in which I got them in small groups and played baseball with them. Most picked up on it quickly, and were excited to play an American sport. The only part they didn't quite get was the idea of staying on a base so they could throw the ball to each other, as every time the ball was hit my entire infield would go dashing off for it. It was pretty funny to watch. In the afternoon I took the kids to their library session, where they can pick out books to read during the next week, and took two of the kids off to work on their spelling and sentence structure. The teacher said that they were having trouble with it and needed some extra help. I found that they were capable enough, but were just easily distracted. Working on the lessons with just the two of them I was able to keep them focused by asking questions about the lesson, and they finished it up without much trouble. At that point Mrs. Mahon let them out early for a half hour or so of recess before the buses came to pick them up, so I took them outside and made up some games for them to play with the balls and racquets we had. At three o'clock I saw them off to their buses, with the promise that I would be back on Thursday.

Wandering about the countryside

This past weekend we spent traveling out, visiting some of the sights of Northern Ireland. Before we took off, though, we did have some excitement here in town that we weren't expecting. We were at a bar downtown when a fight broke out about five feet from us. We couldn't see much, but we heard glass break, and one of the security guards came back from escorting the offenders out with blood all down the front of his shirt. The major event, though, was when we were walking back to the flats. We came across the tail end of a fight that had broken out on the main street between some of the college-aged kids. The cops were apparently waiting just around the corner for it to start, and broke it up immediately, at which point the kids turned on the cops. Talking to one of the cops afterwards, he explained that this was the real goal of it. They would start a fight, the cops would come in to break it up, and then they would all turn on the cops. Most of the people here have grown up with the police (being entirely protestant) being the enemy, and so really don't have any respect for them. Events like this are so common (pretty much every weekend night) that the police force has a special unit trained to deal with exactly this kind of thing. The festivities ended earlier than usual when someone took a blow to the head and was knocked out cold. They called in an ambulance and loaded the rest of the group up into the back of the police cars (which, by the way, look more like tanks. They're fully armored to protect against thrown rocks).

The rest of the weekend was much more light hearted. On Saturday we went out to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope bridge, a bridge put up each year to an island just off the coast that the locals use for fishing. After hanging out around there for a while we moved on to the Giant's Causeway, a really cool natural rock formation where the basalt, pushed up from ancient volcano flows, forms whole fields of perfectly interconnecting hexagon pillars. You can go out and climb around on them, right along the edge of the shore. Our last stop was at the ruins of Dunluce Castle. The castle is situated right at the edge of a cliff which, sometime in the 1700s I think, proved to be its undoing when, in the middle of a party, the kitchen fell off the cliff into the waters below. We got to walk around inside the ruins, and then went down to the cave under the castle that opens out to the water. On the way back we stopped at Magilligan's Point, an overlook at the top of the hill from which you could see the countryside for miles around. The wind was the strongest I have ever encountered, and came close to knocking several of the smaller girls in our group off of their feet. The countryside out here in incredibly beautiful, and just as lush and green as all of the travel brochures say. There are also sheep everywhere. I'm convinced that I have seen more sheep than people, and I'm living in a major city.

Sunday we went over to County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. We stopped at a shrine to St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary that was on the side of the road. The locals had festooned the statues with small offerings and tokens, hoping to receive blessings in return. The scene struck me as familiar, but it wasn't until later that I realized why. The shrine here was almost identical to the countless Shinto shrines that I saw while I was in Japan. It was the same set up, with a small statue or Tori gate off the side of the road, and a variety of small tokens and knick-knacks left in offering. We then moved on to the Northernmost coastline of Ireland, and wandered around the cliffs along the edge of the water. I got climbing in around the rocks at the edge of the coast, which was a lot of fun for me, and apparently very entertaining for those who stayed up on the hill and watched. We had lunch there on the cliffs and then moved on to a nearby beach, where we waded and admired our surroundings. Our final visit was to the Gianan of Aileach, a two thousand year old ringfort. The entrance was fenced off for construction work (they're putting in some supports to keep the structure upright), but the old stone wall proved perfect for foot and handholds, so it didn't take us long to get inside. Inside the fort you could go up to the walkway along the top of the walls, as well as crawl into the small passages within the walls.

Today's excursion was over to Belfast, where we took a bus tour of all of the political murals that have been put up over the past decade. Most were rather intimidating, as they depicted images of paramilitary troops with their guns, and symbols of the ongoing war. A few of the newest ones were geared a little more at peace, but those were few. The city itself was beautiful, with lots of old architecture in the pubs and churches (probably the two most common types of buildings here in Northern Ireland). On the way back we stopped at a set of stone circles that were estimated to have been put up around 2000 BC. As we have no recorded history of that time, it's a mystery as to why these stones were put there. They are very precise, though, marking out various patterns and designs. Some theories are that they were used to deep track of celestial events and druidic ceremonies. Many of the old Celtic myths warn people against stepping into them, as they are said to be gateways into the world of the Tuatha de Danaan, the Fairy folk (the side that I mentioned earlier). Professor Flack commented that he had to see anyone disappear into one, but that there's a first time for everything.

The rest of the evening has been pretty laid back. I go back for my second day at the primary school tomorrow, so I'll post soon about how that's going. Until then...

History of the Troubles 101, pt. 2

The start of the Troubles is marked by the Battle of the Bogside, a three day riot/battle between the Army and the Catholics in 1969. It started when the Protestants tried to push their July 16th (a Unionist holiday) into the Bogside, a Catholic area. The parade was ambushed, and the Army called in. When the army arrived, almost everyone in the Bogside came out to drive them off. Bars became mass producers of Petrol bombs, of which several thousand were thrown at the advancing army. After three days the army retreated, and the Catholics errected barricades of concrete and steel to the entrances of the Bogside and declared the area Free Derry. It became known to the army as the No Go Zone, and the Catholics were left largely alone. The IRA continued their bombing campaign from the safety of the No Go Zone, as well as policing the area, protecting the citizens from thieves and drug dealers.
Then, in 1972 during an anti-internment march, the British Army tried to stop the march from coming into the city center here in Derry. Most of the marchers redirected to another location, but some stopped to throw stones and bottles at the British army. This is where it gets hazy. The British maintain to this day that some in the crowd were IRA gunmen who shot first. Others insist that no guns were found on any of the bodies, and that the British were trying to draw out the IRA into a gunfight. One way or another, the Army opened fire into the crowd, killing fourteen wounding fifteen more. This event became known as Bloody Sunday. Listening to the stories of the people here, it's hard to imagine the level of sheer chaos that was running rampant through this city. Overnight it became the site of a civil war as, enraged by Bloody Sunday, young men by the hundreds lined up to join the IRA. In one night the IRA became an army, passing out guns to anyone who wanted them. A year later the army forced their way back into the Bogside, but the violence continued. Whenever the army was spotted coming in, women would start banging trash can lids on the walls and ground, sending up the alarm, and people would gather to the spot to throw rocks and petrol bombs. Things carried on this way until 1998, when, which the extensive help of President Bill Clinton, the Good Friday Agreement was written up. In an attempt to discourage the Agreement from being accepted, the IRA bombed the small town of Omagh. A mistake was made, however, involving the location of the bomb that had been called in ahead of time so that the police could evacuate the people. They cleared the wrong location and directed people right next to where the bomb actually went off. Over twenty people were killed, and the ensuing backlash against the IRA, even from the Republican populace, was such that the Good Friday Agreement was signed. This signing marks the end of the Troubles.
Since then there has still been some violence, but nothing that comes close to the levels of the Troubles. Across the thirty years between the start of the Troubles and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, 3600 people were killed in sectarian violence. That's the proportional equivalent of half a million people in the United States. 1976 was the worst, with over four hundred deaths just that year. Even with peace talks in effect and all parties invovled working hard towards a peaceful solution, it is still apparent that tensions are running high here in Derry, though that's for another post. That concludes today's lecture, any questions?

History of the Troubles 101, pt. 1

I'm having trouble posting this, possibly because it's so long. So I'll try it in two shots.

I have noticed, while talking to a lot of my friends back home about my trip, that there are several fundamental flaws in their understanding of the situation over here in Northern Ireland. The largets of these I'll dispel here and now. The Protestant/Catholic conflict here in Norther Ireland is not a holy war. It is not based on confliting ideologies, nor led by religious fanatics...ok, so Ian Paisley might be considered a religious fanatic, but that's besides the point. This conflict is about two very seperate cultures with two very different views of what their country should be being forced to live in each other's laps. History has shown us repeatedly that whenever this situation occurs, it's not long before stuff starts getting blown up.
So today, in order to let you all have a better understanding of the country that I'm in, we'll start with a brief history lesson. Ireland was a Catholic nation, thanks to the work of St. Patrick, along with many other missionaries. In fact, Ireland was the refuge of the Christian faith during the Dark Ages, and succeeded in effectively reeducating Europe. In the 1600s, Britain decided that it didn't like have another country at its back, and so began its conquest. It took them a while, but eventually they did take it, with the Flight of the Earls marking the last of Irish resistance. Britain moved in, but they only really controled about half of the island, known as the Pale. Everything beyond this area was thought too wild and the people too savage to deal with (Hence the term "Beyond the Pale" meaning something that's really out there and bizarre). There were numerous uprisings and revolts, but none were successful until the 1916 uprising, which resulted in the partitioning of Ireland in 1921. Most of the island became the Republic of Ireland, while the northern corner became Northern Ireland, and remained a part of Britain. This was because so many of the people in that area were of British descent and wanted to remain in Ireland while still staying in their homes in Ireland. This is what leads us to the present day conflict. See, in order to maintain order, the British had been "planting" British and Scottish settlers into the area. These settlers were Protestant (The British Anglican and the Scottish Prepyterian), and became an aristocratic minority, ruling over the Irish Catholic. While the Catholics were the majority, the Protestant British used a system of Gerrymandering to rig the voting such that the Irish Catholics could never gain power. England then instituted a series of laws which were designed specifically to keep the Protestant British in power, and to keep the two cultures from merging. This segregation of cultures worked so well that even today less than five percent of marriges in Northern Ireland cross the religion/cultural barrier. The worst of these laws were the Penal Laws, which enforced such things as giving the Protestants first pick of land and housing (to the extent of being able to kick any Irish Catholic out of their home if a Protestant wanted it), restricting what jobs Catholics could get and the quality of horse they could own (not worth more than five pounds).
Jump ahead to the mid 1960s. Ispired by the American Civil Rights movement, the Irish Catholics (known as Republicans for their desire to become part of the Republic of Ireland) began their own Civil Rights movement, organizing marches and demonstrations in an effort to gain equality. At the same time, some Republicans decided to take it a step farther, and began a campaign of bombing the British police. This group became known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In an attempt the quell the IRA, the police (all British) started Operation Motorman, which was aimed at gathering up all of the young men they could find, to the extent of raiding houses in the middle of the night, and interring them without trial. The Republicans took up this issue along with their civil rights marches. The Protestants (called Unionists) called in the British Army, hoping they could better control the people. Other paramility groups also formed to combat the IRA, and caused as many deaths, if not more, than the IRA themselves.

I dedicate this post to the FedEx lady.

I would like to start this with a huge thank you to several people who were instrumental in actually getting me here, despite my being screwed over by passport services. For those of you who have not heard the story, the gist of it is that after numerous guarantees across several weeks from multiple different employees that my passport would arrive in plenty of time for my departure, Passport Services waited until the last possible day to print my passport, and then miscounted the days to ship it to me, resulting in the scheduled delivery of my passport being the day after my scheduled departure. This is also after I had sent them a check to pay for overnight mail. But no, they wanted to handle it themselves through FedEx. "But don't worry, we'll put it in one day delivery, you’ll have it in time." ...They seem to have forgotten that FedEx does not deliver on Saturdays unless specifically asked to...which Passport Services didn't do, and then refused to take any responsibility for or attempt to help fix. Anyway, the first thank you goes to my parents, who spent all day Friday on the phones with Passport Services, FedEx, and the International Education office at Bucknell while I was at work and unable to make the calls myself. They worked their way up the FedEx Trace Office in at the Memphis Headquarters. Which brings me to my next thank you, to a woman named Tina Tailor, who my parents talked to and who took it upon herself to find my package and go around FedEx policy/rules to upgrade me to a Saturday deliver, thus ensuring my getting it in time. I also have to thank Lisa over at the International Education Office who put the full resources of her staff behind me and had backup plans and flights lined up and ready for me if the passport hadn't come in.

So, after much drama and many long distance phone calls, I am here in Derry City. We had a solid day's worth of traveling, starting at 3pm Sunday with a three hour drive to the airport, where we had a two hour wait before boarding the plane for a six hour ride across the Atlantic. Finally, a two hour drive took us from Belfast International to Derry, arriving just after 11am Monday. True to form, it was raining when we landed, and has proceeded to rain at least five times a day for the past two days. What's funny is that you can tell this is normal, since the locals don't even seem to notice it until the wind has it going sideways. (We've been hailed on too, but the locals say that they're just as confused by that as we are). Upon arriving in Derry we moved into the flats. We each have a single room which shares a kitchen/common area and two bathrooms with four others. The flats are in a residential area of town, just outside the city center. We met as a group for dinner, where most of us, predictably, tried the Guinness. It is indeed different here than in the states, being stronger and even more bitter. I liked it, but I seem to be in the minority.

Today was our day of tours, starting with the University of Ulster Magee Campus, which is where we'll be having our lectures for the next three weeks, and then a walking tour of the city via the city walls. Between the two we met the Mayor of Derry and the Junior Mayor, who is a kid no older than 20 who leads a council of youths aged 16-21 who deal with issues affecting those of their age bracket. I was surprised that they gave such power to the youths of the city, but the Mayor explained that Derry is a very young city (by population, not its own age, being one of the oldest cities in Europe), such that the 16-21 year olds make up a significant percentage of the city populace. After the tour, we all dove right into work, as our first assignment is due tomorrow, at the beginning of our first lecture. They sure aren't wasting any time with this.

This evening I got my first taste of the Irish Pub culture. We started at the Ice Wharf, which was nice, but not all that interesting. After a drink or two there we moved on to a small pub called O’Donnell’s. This place was exactly as I had pictured an old Irish pub to be. It was packed to the gills with locals, all talking and yelling to each other. The whole place couldn't have been more than thirty yards (meters, I should say) long, and the bar took up half of the width. The best part was the trio of live musicians playing old Irish pub songs and ballads (and the occasional Pink Floyd). There was a guitar player and an accordion player who were both good, but by far the show stealer was the violin player. She was a girl in her early to mid twenties, and her fingers just flew across the fingerboard, while her foot enthusiastically stomped to the beat. You could tell she was loving every minute that she was playing. My only disappointment was that after years of her playing at that bar four or five nights a week, tonight was her last night there until September. Blast. Oh well, there's bound to be more fiddle players floating around this town somewhere.

Well met, all. Welcome to my travel blog, where I will be relating my adventures (or misadventure) during my time in Derry (or Londonderry, depending on who you ask). I'll be here for the next three weeks with the Bucknell in Northern Ireland program, studying the Troubles and helping at a local school, as well as seeing as much of Northern Ireland as I can. Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments!


P.S. For those confused by the title, Side (pronounced "Shee") is the Irish name for the Fairy Folk, who Irish myth says were the first creatures to come to Ireland.