Chapter Four: The N.Irish Get Me Sick

My oh my, it's been awhile dear friend. No, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you; oh no, pull up your chair, bundle yourself up in that fancy duvet you've got yourself, and lets hear a tale.

I went to Belfast and got sick. Then I got well.
That story wasn't very good; let me elaborate.

First off, it turns out that the Irish do, in fact, have house parties. What they don't have is drinking games; we did our best to teach them Kings (the great uniter) but they couldn't quite wrap their adorable minds around the concept of waiting to drink until you lose. "How's drinking a punishment?" How indeed, my Irish compatriots, how indeed. That was two Thursdays ago.

The next day, we (60 international students including good friends Patrick and James, James who is a married grad student with the exact same hat as myself and a 3 year old he's teaching to swear- best dad ever) piled into a bus on a trip to Belfast, land of the troubles. I'm going to skip the 9 hour bus ride, just saying that the bus driver probably had a hangover just as large as ours, and jump right into Belfast itself.

For those who don't know, Belfast is the capital of North Ireland, which is it's own country, completely separate from The Republic of Ireland, and part of the U.K. (think of it like this; Ireland hates the Queen, North Ireland loves the Queen). The first think we noticed in Belfast (besides the IRA graffiti tag), was that Belfast felt more like London then Galway, or even Dublin. Wide, straight streets, tall buildings, rude people- it really was a different country. What did we do when we got there? Come now friend, you should know me well enough by now; we went drinking. We hunkered down in this little pub called FibberMagees, the traditional section of a five part "super pub", and settled down for a nice pint. After awhile we made best friends with the old Irish women next to us (Len, oh Len, we love ya) who must have been drinking since 5, and basically we just jawed for hours. There was a club down stairs, which I danced within, then came back up and danced to the house band, which played every 'Irish' song you could think of (from 'Come on Eileen', to 'Zombie' by the Cranberries). One interesting thing about Belfast is that it's fine to smoke inside a pub, which you eventually forget about entirely, until you shake your clothes out the next day, to discover that you had, in fact, partied in flavor country all night. We drank with Americans (Elizabeth and Mel), we drank with french (Jim and Alexandra) there were even lovely Finnish girls (Liisa and Yanicka, my dancing partners). A good time was had by all, until James realized he'd been buying everyone drinks for the evening- we thought he was just being generous.

We took a tour of Belfast the next day; a black cab tour. We all know about the troubles. I mean, we all know that there are troubles, but the specifics escape us. Let me tell you. Belfast has a wall, running between the Protestant and Catholic sections of town. On the protestant side, there's a collection of murals depicting heroes of the Ulster Freedom Force and other such pro-protestant regiments. These include a mural to a man nick-named 'Top Gun', who is a swarthy dude you do not want as an enemy. Well, head down Shankill road, through the wall, and into the Catholic district. The Catholic district has a memorial, with acouple hundred names, everyone who's fallen from the troubles. Our guide pointed out about 10 of the last column- these were people that Top Gun, the man hailed as a hero not a half mile away, had killed. Some of these men were IRA supports, but many where just whoever he could find driving around- an old man coming out for the paper, a woman walking her kids to school. And the IRA is just as bad to the Protestants. That's the Troubles. It kind of floored us.

I found a comic book store in Belfast. Of no interest to anyone, I'm sure, but it was two levels, toys and back issues, a slice of home that made me just abit sick (in the good sense).

The last day we went to the Giant's Causeway, which is the large run of Columnar Joints (I did learn something last year!) that runs from North Ireland into Scotland. The story goes that the Giant Finn McCool built it to challenge the largest Scottish giant to battle, but when he got there, Finn had to run off, because he was clearly outclassed by the much larger Scottish giant. Well, the scotch giant followed him home, and Finn McCool's wife dressed little Finn as a baby, to hide him. When the Scotch giant saw the 'baby', he could only picture how big the Dad must be, and ran off himself, tearing the causeway up behind him. By Irish standards, that's a win.

Needless to say, N.Ireland is a cold, windy place. We all looked forward to the relative warmth of Galway, and we all know how much I've been whining about that. On the bus ride home, I got cold, then shivery, then, yes, feverish. For the next three days I shook and moaned in my cold room, quite sick, and when I eventually made it to the doctor I was told 'Bronchitis'. Bah. I'm fine now, and it makes recounting last week easy-

I did nothing. I was sick.

My computer is being held hostage by Customs. I chafe to know what all my favorite chums are up to, like Jim and Pam, Adama and Starbuck, Matt and Jordan, and who could forget the that adorable tyke J.D.? I also miss real people. But less so. Except for Dan- someone please hug him for me.

Until next time my dearies, have a hot coco for me.