Cross-Cultural Program: Ireland and Northern Ireland -
Journal

As the term progressed this journal grew, with new reports added approximately every week. You may also jump to any of these articles from the outline at the itinerary page.

[Orientation 8/26] [Galway 9/2] [Limerick 9/25] [Dublin 10/2] [Ballycastle 10/16] [Scotland 10/19]
[Belfast 10/25] [Derry 11/8] [Free 11/23] [Corrymeela 12/1] [Debriefing 12/4] [Maps]

Orientation at EMU [itinerary] [top] [maps]

Tuesday August 25 - The group began orientation at 3:00 with a get-acquainted session. We also looked through the overall plan of the orientation week. Students formed into "work groups" for the week, to do various tasks: groups for decoration/cleanup of the meeting space, "light and lively" (break-time tension relievers), academic feedback to the leaders, planning opening/worship times, and more. This work group format for various tasks will probably continue through the semester, giving students the opportunity to build the group life together. During the introductions, some students expressed concerns about the recent bombing in Northern Ireland. We talked through this current issue, and Gloria read a moving e-mail message from a colleague who lives in that area and knows some of the victims. We will of course continue to talk about thoughts and feelings throughout the semester, as we relate our experiences to things we hear in the news. On a lighter note: this was an especially warm day, near 100 degrees F. Earlier the plan had been to hold most of the orientation sessions in EMU's Discipleship Center, but they have been moved to the more comfortable (air-conditioned!) Lehman Board Room in the Campus Center.
Wednesday 26 - This first full day of orientation began at 8:30 with time for worship and singing. This will be a regular activity each orientation day, and at least once or twice a week during the trip. Then we worked through the first of the five syllabi, the requirements for the cross-cultural understandings course. We attended the university convocation at 10:00, which was the kick-off session for the entire campus community for this academic year. We then continued our discussion of academic and record-keeping issues, and moved on to talking about our stereotypes and our expectations about Ireland. After lunch we continued with a video about cross-cultural sensitivity, and talked about some of the things we take for granted in communication. This being the first full academic day after a summer away, students began to glaze over a bit...so we all took a break, and the light and lively group led us in a lively game of "Duck, Duck, Goose." This got us all pepped up for a presentation by Anne Gross about the music and dance of Ireland, followed by a session on cross-cultural learning goals led by Vernon Jantzi. We talked about some of the "culture shock" which we will experience as the term progresses.
Thursday 27 - This morning we met in the library's Cue Room. After the gathering and singing time led by students, we watched a video "Daughters of the Troubles," about women's and children's experiences during the past 30+ years in Northern Ireland. This was catalyst for discussion about lifestyle issues, again getting us to think about our expectations. The morning continued with a talk by UK native Alastair McKay about his perspective on the political situation and history. After lunch, the sophomores and juniors had yearbook pictures taken. We all then met back in the Board Room. The decoration group asked us to bring show 'n' tell items or symbols about people or things we would be sad to leave at home during our trip. We then had a session on planning the individual projects, and continued with other academic material on cultural understanding. We discussed practical traveling issues. The afternoon then concluded with the recent romantic comedy film "The Matchmaker," shown in the Northlawn lounge. This film follows a young American woman's adventures as she gets to know the natives of a western Irish town, and is a fun look at some of the cultural feel and scenery we expect to encounter next week.
Friday 28 - Today we focused mostly on group life. After the singing and prayer time, we quickly looked at the syllabi of the other four courses and a few other assignments. Then the group-life discussion began with a review of the personality surveys which the students and leaders have taken this week. We talked about differences in personal style in "calm" and "storm" conditions. Then after chapel, we had a session on negotiation and introduction to conflict transformation, led by Gloria. A "turtle eggs" exercise gave each student a role to play, negotiating with another student on things their character needed to accomplish: looking for win/win possibilities or reasonable compromises. In the afternoon we worked especially on group decision-making. First we had an exercise where everyone contributed a dollar, and then the group had to come up with a consensus process about what the resultant $30.00 should be used for. This took more than 45 minutes, and was a microcosm of why peace processes and other negotiation situations can be so difficult. This exercise will be (we hope!) a good model for decision-making later in the term, as issues come up about group activities. We followed this with negotiation about the "work groups" students will be in for the first half of the semester: we developed a process where the groups had appropriate numbers and balances in them, and everyone was OK with the group they were in. These group assignments will then be re-negotiated at midterm. Finally, we had a session on packing and traveling tips, collected students' photo albums, and tied up most of the loose ends on outstanding paperwork. It has been a busy week with these full-day meetings!
Monday 31 - We met in the morning only; then we had afternoon and evening off for all the last-minute goodbyes, packing, paperwork, etc. The students prepared over the weekend for the first academic quiz, memorizing the location of the 32 counties and some other geographic features of Ireland and Northern Ireland; we got this quiz out of the way first thing in the morning. Then we reviewed working-group expectations and experiences preparing for the term, and talked about travel, health, and safety issues. EMU's chapel service mid-morning included a commissioning segment for us. In our meeting after this we agreed on student behavioral guidelines and ground rules, then finished with a time for sharing and prayer.
Tuesday September 1 - Time to go! We met at noon at EMU's traffic circle, joined by more than 100 other friends and well-wishers. It was a bright, sunny day. President Joe Lapp gave us a send-off prayer and a box of large chocolate cookies. Then the group loaded onto the Travel Mates bus for the two-hour ride to Dulles airport, rolling out at 12:36. En route the students received their plane tickets, cookie, and money allowance for the first week: 60 Irish punts (about $90) to cover meals and local travel. By 3:00 most of us were already through check-in at the airport. After most of the students had already gone out to the gate to wait with family and friends, a Hollywood crew came to the big destination board to film a scene for an upcoming movie. We don't know yet what that movie is, but this scene included Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck (later note: "Forces of Nature" for 1999 release). We boarded the plane a few minutes before 5:00, and left at about 5:30 for Boston. It was a medium-sized plane, with 3+3 seating: we had the back five rows. This short flight was the first time on a plane for some of the students. Then in Boston we walked the length of the airport to the international terminals, found the Aer Lingus check-in point (and our first direct exposure to Irish accents!), and got onto our plane a few minutes after 8:00. It was a bigger plane this time, 2+4+2 and with several sections front to back. We left the ground at 8:30 and soon received the in-flight meal. We had clear weather and a good tail wind, and the pilot announced that the flight would be just over five hours: less than expected.

Galway (west coast) [itinerary] [top] [maps]

Wednesday September 2 - We awoke just before landing: the sunrise allowed us our first views of Ireland's lattice of green fields. We touched down at 6:33 a.m. local time, five hours after takeoff plus another five hours for the time zone change. Some students were up all night talking or watching the in-flight programmes on the TV screens. And some admitted having had little or no sleep the night before. We'll see what toll the jet lag and tiredness takes! Passport control took a while with the fairly full plane from Boston, but then luggage pickup and customs went quickly. Everyone and everything arrived safely. We stepped out into a gorgeous clear day, with temperature in the low 60's: unseasonably gorgeous, we have been informed. (This has been a record-breaking year for rain in Ireland.) Our guide, Terry Crowe, met us at the gate; he is the husband of Maureen, our contact person in Galway. He loaded us onto the O'Neachtain tour coach he had booked. Almost all the students promptly fell asleep and missed most of the countryside and small towns that we drove through! The drive from Shannon airport to Galway was about two hours, so we stopped midway to stretch our legs in a town called Gort. Nothing was open yet, as this was still only "half 8" (8:30) in the morning. Terry and the bus driver both thought that since we flew from Boston, we might be from Boston. The driver told us a bit of little-known trivia: several generations ago, so many Irish emigrating to America went to Boston, as opposed to other places in the US, because travel to Boston was five dollars cheaper. They enjoyed hearing that this was pretty much the same reason we flew through Boston.... We arrived in Corrib Village at 9:50. This is a university dormitory complex about a mile north of Galway, along the Corrib River. It is also rented out as a B&B for groups such as ours, or to other travellers. We were about an hour ahead of schedule, so the rooms weren't quite ready yet, but soon we got moved in with help from Maureen, Terry, and the village staff. We will be here for about a week, then moving to home stays southwest of town; the leaders will remain at Corrib Village for the three weeks in Galway. There was nothing planned for the rest of the day other than travel recuperation; some of us headed straight to Galway to explore, while others took naps first before going to town. A few took cold showers in the afternoon, not learning until later that the hot water control is on a timer in the lounge of the apartments, and simply hadn't been switched on for those afternoon hours. That will certainly be only the first occasion among many where we run into differences in things we had taken for granted.
Thursday 3 - Jet lag is still present...some showed up at the Corrib Village's restaurant hoping for some breakfast, to find that the lunch menu had already taken effect at noon. But all made it to the afternoon group meeting at 2:30. This was a time to review some of the experiences we had already had, to look over the schedule for the next three weeks, and to plan ahead for working-group activities and field study. Next week the students will travel in their home groups (of 4) to do character sketches of some of the nearby towns, as a cross-cultural course project. We also have guided tours of Galway city and the countryside coming up soon. The rest of today was again free for more exploring. The weather has been so terrific that the buses into town haven't been necessary yet: there is a shortcut walking path from here to the city, taking only about 25 minutes on foot. On a sadder note, this morning's crash of a SwissAir flight shook us up a bit. Also in the news we saw television coverage by the Irish network (RTE) and the BBC of President Clinton's visit to Northern Ireland today.
Friday 4 - After our usual continental breakfast at Corrib Village we met downtown for a 90-minute walking tour of Galway city. This was led by an eminent local historian and archaeologist, Peadar O'Dowd, who gave us fascinating and humorous insights into the developments of the area. We saw the way the ancient city layout is preserved downtown, heard about Christopher Columbus' crucial visit here before going to America, and saw how much of the older architecture is still present but often hidden behind plaster facades. The city was designed to have fourteen streets and fourteen lanes to go with the fourteen tribes or families...and to be twice as impressive as Rome, which has seven of everything. Peadar also debunked some local legends which, sure enough, we heard presented as fact in our afternoon bus tour of the city. Galway city has been a tourist trap for more than a hundred years, as evidenced by a 19th-century plaque about the site where the first "lynching" supposedly took place (by a mayor named Lynch who executed his own son...hanging him in the 15th century from a 16th century window!). Galway has one of the few remaining universities where classes are taught in Irish. Its modern stone cathedral was funded mostly by Americans, and will probably be the last stone cathedral built in Europe for a long time (because of expense). The economy is based mostly on fishing and tourism. Our afternoon tour was on top of a double-decker bus; we rode upstairs in the open air. The city has been undergoing a massive restoration, with derelict areas bought out and renovated to look good for the tourists. Poverty is hidden here, especially in the past ten years. There are large suburbs of government-subsidized housing, and more under construction now...and just down the street toward the waterfront, the tourist trade booms with the luxury hotels, amusement parks, and casino.
Saturday 5 - At 9 a.m. we boarded a bus which took us west along the coast to the port of Rossaveel. There we took the 10:15 ferry to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands. Nobody got completely seasick, but there were some rough moments halfway across Galway Bay. When we got there at 11:00, the weather had cleared up enough that we rented 30 bicycles for the day, instead of taking the easy way out with tour buses. We checked into the Mainistir hostel about a mile up the road from Kilronan, having sent our bags ahead on a bus. Then we headed out either on bikes or walking to explore the island, which is only six miles long and up to three miles wide. The weather held very well, sunny and warm, and most of the group made their way up to the ancient fort "Dunaengus," the highest point of the island. The view was spectacular: concentric walls on the side facing the island, and a sheer 300-foot cliff to the Atlantic Ocean. Inside the concentric walls, the ground is mostly flat rock with deep parallel crevices cut by glaciers; there are also fields of jagged rock placed to foil access from any invaders of the fort. The island itself is a limestone rock, and ancient settlers picked up all the loose stones and formed walls all over the island: no cement necessary. All the soil is imported and so not more than a foot deep. Cattle and sheep graze inside their walled fields. The island has fresh water from wells deep into the lowest layers of the limestone. In addition to the large influx of tourists, there are 900 permanent residents in the several towns. Our bikes were due back at the port by 5:00, and by the time we had been to the shops and walked back up to the hostel, there were still a few hours to wait around for dinner at 8:00. The meal was a gourmet buffet, which some of us liked but others weren't so fond of. The hostel also had some other tourists who joined us for dinner, including a group of loud, very inebriated middle-aged women celebrating someone's birthday with a bash on the island. After dinner some of our students went for walks or joked around outdoors, others played games, others went to catch up on sleep. Accommodations were four rooms with six or eight bunks each. By tourism standards it was all remarkably inexpensive: 13 pounds (about $19) per person including dinner, lodging, and breakfast.
Sunday 6 - We awoke in the morning to a very windy day, with rain. It would be touch-and-go all day, guessing whether our ferry back at 5:00 would actually run or not with those choppy waves out there, and hearing all sorts of rumours. (This weekend was to be the other part of the hurricane which had hit the US east coast last week.) Bikes were right out. Some of the students had not gone all the way to Dunaengus yesterday, others wanted to see other parts of the island or to go up there again, so we hired two tour buses to give us the usual rounds. Mairtin Mullin narrated the trip on his bus, and his young son Colin on the other. After battling the wind up at the fort, we stopped to visit ancient "beehive" huts of free-standing stone where monks spent weeks doing penance for their own or others' sins. And 1300 years ago, remote areas such as this island were the top centers of higher learning in Europe: monks and scholars would retreat with their students to read, meditate, pass on knowledge orally, and copy books, far away from the continental wars. After our tour we grabbed quick lunch in Kilronan and came back up to the hostel for a 1:00 lecture on history of the Irish (Gaelic) language, taught by Padraic Tuairisg. Along with classical Latin and Greek, it is one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which there is a substantial amount of written record. Scholars copying Greek and Latin books and scrolls by hand would scribble their own "glosses" (comments, musings, poems) into the margins, writing in Gaelic; ancient Irish literature and folklore itself is also preserved. In the past 350 years, English has pushed Irish halfway toward extinction, though Irish is still taught in schools and spoken as a vernacular language especially here in the west. After our lecture, we had some free time and learned that our ferry was indeed running, as the weather had cleared up some. We had been prepared to stay another night if compelled to by the weather. Some of the students bought the famous Aran sweaters and hats while on Inishmore. Our ferry ride back was smoother than we expected, though some took double doses of motion sickness pills just in case. Many slept on the bus on the way back, and the evening was free time.
Monday 7 - This was a free day to catch up on assignments, grocery or souvenir shopping, sleep, laundry, or anything else. The weather was gray and rainy much of the day, so it was a good day to stay indoors and write or read. Incidentally, we're all still getting used to many small differences we had never really thought about, and relearning habits. For example: look the opposite way first before crossing the street; on a light switch, down is "on"; the toilet flush lever is on the right; the 5p coin looks like our dime and the 10p coin like our nickel; hearing a rock song and an American country song back to back on the same station; dogs wandering free everywhere; bottled drinks typically have sugar, saccharin, and aspartame (all three at once); weigh and mark your own produce at the grocery store; different vocabulary for hundreds of idiomatic expressions; sentence inflexion; spelling.
Tuesday 8 - The morning was free; we met beginning at 2:30 in the Corrib Village restaurant (our makeshift classroom for the time here in Galway). The first session was a lecture by Anne Byrne, an overview of contemporary Irish social issues. She covered a wide spectrum of topics across the past century: from family structures to church/state interaction to welfare to social classes to legislative developments. The second session today was for general academic matters and group processing of our experiences so far, led by Gloria. The students picked up food and travel allowances for the next week either last night or today in class. They also received a calendar of all the assignments and dates for the term, and turned in their first cross-cultural essays. They will do a village study in their "home groups" of four tomorrow or Thursday, travelling to a nearby town to learn about it. This exercise includes making a budget for their travel, food, and educational use; finding the bus or train and getting there; making a plan for what they wish to learn during the visit; spending the day in their town; then doing a report as a group. It was great to see on the news this evening that the government has worked out an official cease-fire with the group that was responsible for the Omagh bombing.
Wednesday 9 - This was a study day; all the student groups chose to do their village projects today. So all met fairly early downtown to catch buses or trains, and returned in the early evening. The students we met on the way back were beaming about their experiences of the day, and asking to do this type of project again. We will hear the reports next week. Gloria and I took our first real day "off duty" since arriving here, being (for the moment) caught up with the course work and record-keeping. We spent the day exploring the downtown area, visiting the bookshops, and finding a nice cafe for lunch and a coffee shop for late afternoon snack. Our biggest surprise occurred while we were browsing in the world-famous Kenny's Bookshop...Gloria came up with a book that I'm in! My uncle James O. Lehman (librarian and archivist at EMU) wrote it several years ago; it is a biography and genealogy of his Lehman grandparents, my great-grandparents. I don't know that this book was circulated very widely outside the family, so we have no idea how this book found its way to a bookshop in Galway, Ireland.
Thursday 10 - This was again a study day, and most or all the groups worked on writing up their projects from yesterday. In the evening we met as a group to talk. But the session began with a surprise birthday party for Jon Kratz...the celebration group found him a cake and a candle that when lit plays "Happy Birthday." Then we all sat in a circle and talked about anything that was on our minds. Because nobody said much at first as volunteers, we used a Native American tradition to get the talking going. An object is passed around the circle, and the person holding it is the only one allowed to speak, or may pass. This continues with the object moving around as many times as necessary, until it has made a complete rotation with everyone passing in turn, signifying that the sharing time is over. We spoke of what we had learned so far as a group or as individuals, getting to know this culture and working as a group.
Friday 11 - The morning was free; many students attended mass at the cathedral or one of the other churches in town. Last night many had mentioned their new experiences visiting a Roman Catholic church (if Protestant) or going to mass in a cathedral (if Catholic), and others wanted to take part in this as well today. In the late afternoon the students packed up all their belongings and came to the Corrib Village check-in area to meet their host families. They are assigned in pairs (and two threesomes) to stay with these families for a week, getting to know Irish culture from inside a home. Most of the families have young children, which will be a treat for our students. We ourselves spent the evening sampling the cable television programming, as we have done some other evenings. Over the past week on most of the channels we have noticed the immense popularity of American reruns such as "The Simpsons" and "Friends"...but played a few percent faster than usual (music and voices appreciably higher in pitch) to get through the programs more quickly, leaving extra minutes for more commercials. There are also two Irish channels (one in Irish and the other in English), a French-language channel for the fairly large francophone population, BBC One and Two, and MTV. We recalled how our lecturer last weekend pointed out the gradual demise of the Irish language, as English has been used so widely as the language of all "important" business for the past few hundred years. The rise of English-language broadcasting, tourism, and imported culture in this century is especially threatening to the continuance of the Irish language and native culture. Ireland is still struggling to retain some of its centuries-old identity in the face of this imperialistic influence: not just from the UK, either. Our group is beginning to wonder why the popular culture of the United States (via television and music) is held up as an international standard known around the world, but popular culture of other countries is comparatively not very big in the US, as any sort of exchange.
Saturday 12 - This morning as tourists we boarded a bus to take the Connemara scenic tour for the day, as it's a good way to see the land and get all the typical photo opportunities. Connemara is the countryside northwest of Galway, and it really does have some gorgeous views. We went first along the coast to the west, with our tour guide (Don) telling us the first several of many Clinton jokes he had got fresh off the Internet. We had the same driver, Paddy, who had taken us to the ferry. When we got to the town of Spiddal, our student group which had done its project there told us a bit about it. After that we had a stop at a huge souvenir shop, and then continued to a deserted village in which most of the residents had either died or left 150 years ago during the great famine...a huge contrast from wealth to poverty. The land is so rocky that it is difficult to grow much there. We turned inland (north) at Rossaveal, where we had taken the ferry last weekend, and passed the Irish broadcasting station. Our main destination for the day was Kylemore Abbey, an 18th century castle that is now used as a girls' boarding school and is run by nuns. It is built in an extremely picturesque wooded area at the side of a mountain, with a lake. We ate the lunches our host families had packed for us, then visited the abbey and its gothic church. Many other tour companies also take their guests there, and there was quite a crowd today.
We continued to the west coast, breezing through the town of Clifden and heading back east past some of the largest mountains in Ireland. We drove through some of the peat bogs where peat is mined for fuel: the ground sliced into bricks, piled up to dry for a few weeks, then sold or taken to power plants as a source of energy. It's a natural resource, burning the land for heat. We learned last week that owners of houses with thatched roofs often prefer burning peat to coal: coal sends up more sparks which might ignite the roof. We've seen plenty of abandoned houses where the stone frame remains for centuries, but the roof has long since gone from weather or fire. After the bogs we stopped at a Disneyesque commercial shrine to a popular old film made here, "The Quiet Man", early 1950's, starring John Wayne. They have an exhibit building restored as one was in the film, wax figures of the actors, a local person explaining the scene, and of course another gift shop. (We had seen a similar tourist shrine on Inishmore for the even earlier film "Man of Aran".) We passed through Oughterard, where another of our groups did its study project, and we got back to Galway city at about 5:30. Our weather for the day was again surprisingly clear most of the time, though it sprinkled on and off several times and was chilly. There were sheep everywhere, even sometimes standing in the road. We saw at least six or seven rainbows, beautiful over the horizon or mountains. It was a nearly perfect day for this type of "romanticised past" sightseeing. We have more of the same tomorrow, with a similar scenic tour to the south.
Sunday 13 - Once again our good fortune with the weather has held out, and almost could not be any better. We met downtown at 9:30 and noticed that the city is strikingly less busy on a Sunday morning. Our driver for the day was Des, who had also picked us up at the airport last week. Our route was clockwise around Galway Bay to the town of Ballyvaughan (Co. Clare), then narrow winding roads through The Burren. We heard all about oysters as there had been the annual oyster festival along the coast last week. We passed a church where morning mass was in session: a long line of cars parked along the road. Our first stop was at the Dunguaire Castle in Kinvara. This was built in 1520, and has been a popular tourist attraction and banquet hall since 1966. It is not strictly a military castle, but rather a "tower house" typical of a wealthy 16th-century family. We saw a clear view of the countryside after climbing 77 spiral stairs to the top. We continued west to Ballyvaughan and turned south to the Ailwee Caves, Ireland's "premier show caves." We did not go in, though, as we can see plenty of caves near Harrisonburg, and we wanted to hurry along to the cliffs just in case there was any rain to beat. At Ailwee we took a coffee break anyway, and a short visit to its shop where cheese and fudge are made. The view down from this small mountain was beautiful. Soon we were in The Burren, which is a vast expanse of rocky land...like a huge table full of limestone jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered everywhere, with grass and flowers attempting to grow through the cracks. We stopped at a site familiar from picture postcards: Poulnabrone Dolmen, a 5000-year-old free-standing stone tomb. We were surprised that it's just a few feet high, and isolated in a privately-owned rock field; it looks much more imposing in the photographs. We then hurried out toward the coast, noticing that the landscape of this area is as we had seen on Inishmore: all the small rocks have been picked up hundreds of years ago and built into stone walls so the few inches of soil have a chance to grow something.
We ate our sack lunches upon arriving at the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs are a very popular attraction, 700-foot sheer drops to the Atlantic Ocean. There are paths and stairs going up along the edge, mostly fenced with large slabs of stone, but there are always tourists who must venture outside the fences for photos.... Our driver reported proudly that he has been driving this area regularly for two years now, and has never lost a passenger over the edge, but he did warn us sternly and we were careful. Some dark clouds and rain blew in just before we left the cliffs, but that was the only rain we saw all day. The cliffs offered another direct view of the Aran Islands to the west. We drove back inland through Doolin to the town of Lisdoonvarna, famous for its spa. But it is even more famous for its matchmaking festivals every September: parents from all over the western part of Ireland come for the spa, and bring along their 20-30 year old unmarried children to find a spouse. Sure enough, the first dance hall we found was a large place called "The Matchmaker;" we took a look inside for curiosity, and many of the students were given immediate attention from very eager patrons. We spent some time hanging out at the town square or getting afternoon snacks. After we got back onto the bus, it took a while to get through a traffic jam, the town being so crowded this month. We went north to the coast, where again we could see the cliffs in the distance to our left, and stopped at a lighthouse directly across the bay from Spiddle. Most of us climbed out across the boulders for more pictures in the late afternoon sun, or just to sit and watch the waves a few dozen feet below. It was nice to be on a private tour, able to control our own schedule on this day full of interesting places. From here back through Ballyvaughan and around the bay many took naps, missing the 12th-16th century Cistercian monastery that we passed. Several times during the day we noticed the thick growths of fuchsia that line the sides of the road: brilliant red. When we got back to Galway city it was almost 7:00, and our driver very kindly dropped everyone off at our home neighbourhoods.
Monday 14 - This was a free day. In the news, this is the first day of the first all-Ireland assembly: a new forum for trying to resolve some of the hostilities between south and north in this century. The other big thing from the weekend was that the national professional hurling tournament final was yesterday: County Offaly was the winner. We don't know much about hurling yet, but several of the students will be studying it and the local version of soccer as independent projects.
Tuesday 15 - The group was together much of the day. At 10:00 we met at the Corrib Village restaurant, our temporary classroom. Lecturer Mary Harris gave an overview of Irish history: about 1500 years in 80 minutes. We will hear more detail about some of the periods and events in later lectures, and it was good to catch the overall sweep at once. Irish history is certainly complex and can be told from many different points of view. Then after the lunch break, Gloria led a short debriefing session about the homestays, and student groups reported about last week's village studies. There was a time to discuss future assignments and to turn in those due today. The student committees met to plan their next few weeks of activities. Late afternoon was free, and many went back downtown or to their host families for supper. We all met at 7:30 at the Town Hall Theatre to hear a concert by the internationally famous Irish singer/songwriter Luka Bloom. Galway is his first stop on this tour to promote his newest album. The concert began at 8:00 with an opening act: almost an hour of traditional-styled music played by Conor Byrne (Bloom's nephew, playing wooden flute) and Gavin Ross (guitar), much of it written by Byrne. They both played with great agility and expressivity, plus an infectious verve in the fast pieces: delightful. Then after a short intermission, Bloom played and sang for about an hour and a half, with a generally aggressive style on his bright steel-stringed guitars. Many of his songs and spoken introductions have contemporary social themes to them, and he often had the audience chuckling or clapping at his comments. Personally, I found his part of the concert often too loud and fast for my comfort: hard to get his words or pick up significant musical differences between the songs. But many of the students seemed to enjoy his energetic presentation thoroughly just as it was. And it's always a thrill to hear such a popular star.
Wednesday 16 - This was a study day for students to explore the city and culture. Some of the options are: work on community assessment; visit St Nicholas' church; visit the cathedral; go to mass; tour Nora Barnacle's house (she was James Joyce's wife); visit the Galway city museum; visit the Tara china center or Galway crystal factory; find out what "the weir" is.
Thursday 17 - Today was a class day, and Christina Smith's birthday. We met for class at 10:00 a.m. and for the first time, we had a classroom to ourselves that was not also the restaurant. Our lecturer for the morning was Georroid O Tuathaigh, a professor from the History Department of NUIG (National University of Ireland, Galway). His task was to fill in more detail from the history overview on Tuesday. He was energetic and quickly jumped in to detailing causes and results from emigration and the Great Famine. In total, 8 million people left Ireland from 1800-1922 as emigrants, which was proportionately the highest population loss ever in Europe. After our lunch together and a few songs, we met for the Cross Cultural class and to catch up on details for other classes. Students reviewed their explorations the previous day, the Carraroe village study group presented their report, and Gloria clarified the grading system for a variety of assignments. The afternoon lecturer called to postpone because of health problems, so everyone was dismissed early for the day.
Many of the students have figured out how to forward their EMU e-mail ("seoladh ríomhphost" in Gaelic) to accounts they can use here at the internet cafes. It is very expensive to telephone home from here, so this is a good alternative. Regular airmail has been taking about five days, which is a bit faster than we expected. We ourselves have run into the problem of not being able to do our work communications by modem very often, because analogue phone lines are now almost nonexistent in favour of digital (even in private homes); we have to carry our files on diskette downtown to the internet cafes, as well, and even there the service isn't especially reliable. An analogue phone jack seems such a little commonplace thing that one doesn't think about it until it's missing, but the only such accommodations for business travellers are allegedly in the luxury hotels. Surprisingly, today we found one in this classroom anyway, and eagerly downloaded/uploaded the past week's worth of transmissions. We also confirmed with the Corrib Village management that we would be allowed to use this jack again several times in the next week. (But then Monday the 21st, next time we had access to this room, we tried it again and found that its line has been turned off..."D'ohh!" We were told that a local student has been bringing in a personal phone and using it there, so they had to cut off the service over the weekend, and they forgot about our request. This is just one of many broken promises we've run into here, with breakfast service closed unexpectedly, rented rooms unavailable at the last minute, our own room's phone cut off without warning, etc...we'll be glad to move on and try our luck at the next place.)
Friday 18 - First thing this morning we all met downtown at the Great Western House, the hostel where students will be staying for the next week. The rooms were not ready yet, so students stored all their things in a separate room at the hostel. The hostel is large, hosting more than 200 visitors at a time; we have eight twin rooms and three quad rooms. It is just off Eyre Square, the cultural center of Galway city. At 10:30 we all boarded a bus for a tour in County Offaly, directly east of Galway. The two main destinations were Clonmacnoise and Blackwater Bog. The monastery of Clonmacnoise was one of the intellectual centers of the country (and indeed, of Europe) for many centuries, as monks and students came here to study, meditate, and copy books. It was founded by Ciaran, one of the earliest Christian missionaries to Ireland, in the mid-6th century (soon after St. Patrick). It was once a prosperous little town formed around a church, but was attacked many times over the years, and has been left in ruins since the 12th century. Today it is a pilgrimage spot: several old buildings including a church and a high tower, and a graveyard full of high crosses in the familiar Irish style: a cross with a ring around the crossing-point, all intricately carved with depictions of biblical stories. In the afternoon we took a narrow-gauge train ride through Blackwater Bog. The bog was formed 9000 years ago: it is now a very rich, dark, acidic mass of sphagnum moss up to seven metres deep. The land is very soft and squishy to walk on, as it is 80% water, but not muddy...a strange texture. Typically it has been dug by hand into briquets that are dried for about two months, then compressed or sold "as is" for fuel. This particular bog of many acres is now a strip-mining operation that produces a million tons of peat per year, about 4% of the island's electricity. They expect to get about 50 useful years out of each bog, and this one still has 20 years left in it...9000 years to form it, 50 to burn it. Interesting ancient things have been found buried in bogs, with their coolness and lack of air: perfectly preserved bodies, utensils, even some still-fresh butter many centuries old. When we got back to Galway, the hostel was ready for us.
Saturday 19 - Today we rode north through County Mayo to County Sligo, for a day about William Butler Yeats and his area. Our guide, Martin Enright, met us in Ballysadare just south of Sligo city, and showed us Yeats' boyhood home and the waterways there. Then we headed into the city to a deluxe hotel where we had a lecture in a downstairs room. Martin showed a series of slides about the area, about Yeats' family, told us some local mythology, sang songs, and read Yeats' poetry. We had a soup-and-sandwich lunch at the hotel, then got back onto the bus to see the countryside. Martin gave us a very brief Irish language lesson and played tapes of local musicians. At Knocknarea we spent about two hours climbing up and down a large hill (about a mile each way) and enjoying the view from the summit. Many of the local hills, including this one, have man-made rock mounds on top, built thousands of years ago. Some may have internal chambers for use as burial sites. From the top of the mound we could see for many miles: five counties, and out to the Atlantic Ocean. It was a breathtaking sight, and so clear up there. Next we visited Yeats' grave at Drumcliffe, saw another high cross, heard more poetry, and sang a few songs together in the chapel. On the way home we stopped in the town of Knock, where there is an extensive shrine for an apparition of Mary, Joseph, and John the Evangelist in 1879. Once again our weather held out beautifully today, not raining at all until a few sprinkles at sunset.
Sunday 20 - We left the city at about 11:00. Our driver today (and yesterday) was Paddy, whom we've now had several times. At his recommendation, not far to the east we stopped at a local fair to see horses, donkeys, sheep, poultry, and two ostriches. It was not yet late enough in the day for the crowd to have arrived yet at this fair that is only one day a year. This is very much a sheep and cattle farming area, with relatively large pastures by Irish standards. The government subsidises some of the sheep production. Early in the afternoon we entered County Roscommon. Our destination was Strokestown, and an 18th-century manor that has been restored to its late 19th century condition. The sky was completely clear (a rarity), and the air was unseasonably warm: very much like the Virginia we left a few weeks ago. After lunch there we had a tour of the house, seeing how a very wealthy family typically lived. There is a large enclosed garden with hundreds of varieties of flowers, a pond, a gazebo, walking paths, and well-manicured grass courts for tennis, croquet, and lawn bowling. Juxtaposed to all this wealth, the riding stable between the house and garden has been converted into a museum about the 1840's potato famine, and the ensuing extreme poverty. Before the famine, the regular diet of the average hard-working adult was based on a bit of buttermilk and fourteen pounds of potatoes per day. The failure and blight of potato crops made these people suddenly desperate, and many rapidly died or emigrated. The museum's exhibits filled in many details from the lectures we had earlier. On our way back to Galway we stopped in Ballygar for ice cream. Today was the hottest day that Ireland has had this year so far. In the evening, most of the group attended a concert at Town Hall by "Ragus," a lively troupe of young musicians and dancers who have been performing on Inishmore this season. It was similar in style to "Riverdance" with folksongs, dance, and instrumental solos, but more authentic and less overproduced: a straightforward evening of traditional entertainment.
Monday 21 - Free day, and again gorgeous weather. At least one group of students went back to Knocknacarra for some horseback riding, and we saw others jogging or shopping in town. One went to get a pierced eyebrow. As every weekday, the main shopping streets of Galway city are blocked off from traffic, and pedestrians are everywhere. Students have been remarking about something we've seen several times already and again today in the city: when the armoured car comes to the banks, it is accompanied by at least five or six men in uniform standing guard with machine guns. It's not a sight we're accustomed to seeing. Others have commented that they're glad we're breaking into the Irish culture gradually, starting with a modern city and a gentle start to the academic work, but will also be glad to get to less-developed areas to see more of "the real Ireland." All of us met in the evening for worship and group processing. The worship time included singing, prayer, reading, and everyone sharing a prominent personal memory of the Galway time. Many said that the home stays and the natural sites have been the highlights of the trip so far. We also simply chatted for a while as a group, with people saying whatever they wanted to. The students expressed surprise and dismay at the international press' frenzy today about President Clinton's testimony. It seems to be the only world "news" and speculation that matters at the moment. We're wondering how much crazier and disproportionate this all must be back home. The evening concluded with recreation: popcorn, soda, music, soccer, and a gigantic game of Spoons.
Tuesday 22 - Today was mostly free, except for a late afternoon class meeting. The guest lecturer didn't show up, so instead Gloria did a presentation on the play "Riders to the Sea" which was one of the earlier reading assignments about life on the Aran Islands. The students turned in excerpts from their personal journals. The broadcast and print news today is still deluged with Clinton, Clinton, Clinton. The Irish Times gave the issue four full pages. The Irish Independent gave more than six pages, and tabloid-esque headlines including "Teletubbies axed for mass smut premiere." Again we're surprised at how disproportionately American culture is given importance over here. But some of the Irish people we've met so far have suggested to us that Clinton is especially noteworthy here because of his large role in the Northern Ireland peace process; his popularity in Ireland is climbing toward that of John F. Kennedy.
Wednesday 23 - It was a class day. The group met in the morning with Margaret O'Riada, coordinator of the Galway Traveller Support Group. This is an agency to help The Travellers, a nomadic subculture of the population. They have a distinct ethnic identity, history, and language. There is extreme racial discrimination against them by the mainstream society, especially in educational systems, employment opportunities, provision of sites for their accommodation, and media coverage. The GTSG exists to work for social justice and human rights. Ms O'Riada offered the opportunity for a smaller group of students to go tomorrow morning to the agency headquarters downtown. In the afternoon we had a lecture on Celtic folklore, myth, and art by Paul Gosling of the university. This class was rescheduled from last week, the 17th. The restaurant we met in proved to be unusable for the slide presentation, so all of us crossed over to the leaders' dorm suite and crammed into it to watch the slides; we didn't know for sure that 31 people would fit into the room, but with overflow into the kitchen and hallway we got by. The second part of this lecture was back in the restaurant, with readings from folk tales. In the evening, most of the students pooled some money together and made themselves a potato buffet at the hostel; a few ate early and went out to play soccer with local students they had met. Gloria spent much of the evening reading the selected entries which the students have turned in from their personal journals, and writing comments for each student. I took the evening as a cross-cultural experience on my own: I'm an enthusiast of the game of bridge, and play regularly back home in clubs and tournaments, so I went out to see what the Galway club was like. I'd read a book about the English and Irish bidding system to prepare for this; it's significantly different from the American styles. The club turned out to be much more for social play than for serious competition, and it was fun to hear their chit-chat especially...almost everyone there was over 70, and this was the first night back after the club was off for the summer, so they were all catching up with one another's lives. (This socialising of course happens at the Harrisonburg club too, along with a generally better standard of play and more aggressive bidding style than I found here tonight.) They all seemed quite surprised to see a newcomer wander in knowing no one, but everyone was very accommodating, and they even gave me a lift home after the game. Very nice folks, as I've found with bridge players wherever I've gone; I hope to play again in Dublin and the north. When I got back I caught up on reading the journals also, and Gloria and I stayed up late chatting with our suite-mates: some first-year university students who moved in this week, and who were eager to tell us their own opinions on every aspect of Irish culture that we could think to ask them about. They were very interested in this Cross-Cultural program, too.
Thursday 24 - The morning was free. Some of the students took this opportunity to meet the Travellers at GTSG; they reported a very positive experience, and hope to do something similar in Dublin. In late afternoon the group met for a lecture about the political history of this century in Northern Ireland, presented by a specialist named Niall O'Dochartaich. This will be good preparation for our further study later this term. Again, the conflict is so involved that it is hard to get through an adequate introductory description in 90 minutes, but this lecture was packed with information. This was the last night in Galway, so time to pack. Some of the students went back to visit or have dinner with their host families, a nice way to say goodbye to this part of our journey.

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Cross-Cultural Program: Ireland and Northern Ireland - Journal

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Cross-Cultural Program: Ireland and Northern Ireland -
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