Home Sweet Home

Hello all, I apologize for the lack of posting over the weekend. After leaving Corrymeela on Saturday we headed to Derry to meet our host family. My family is very pleasant and we are finally all settled in. Unfortunately they do not have Internet at our house so my blog posting is going to be slightly limited to when I am at campus but I still will find as much time as possible to do it. 

Megan, my roommate, and I are very fortunate with our host family choice. In fact, our first night home she took us to a party, granted it was a 50th birthday party...that started at 10 pm-past 2 am but it was a blast! I could not believe how they all know how to party over here, regardless of the lateness of the hour. We were told later it lasted through the morning till like 4 am, and I'm talking like 50-80 year olds out partying! ha  Anyway we got to meet a lot of her family and "extended family" so it was a very interesting night. After Sleeping in a bit on Sunday the group met at campus and walked around the town a bit to help us all get our feet grounded and a better feel for the city. It is the 2nd largest city in NI but it doesn't feel like a big US city by any means. Just an extended Bluffton really. We are living on the Bogside which is predominately catholic, as is our host family so Megan and I hope to experience mass this Sunday with them. It is quite an interesting experience living here and very difficult to put into words. This week I will try to take some pictures of my neighborhood to give you a glimpse. The emotions are still tender in this area from the past events during the Troubles. They are a very proud people as well.

Well we began our classes yesterday. Starting off with an Introduction to Northern Ireland History....surprisingly I did not fall asleep in a history class but instead it was very interesting.  We have a class each day of the week so shortly we will be heading to our Practical Mediation Skills class. 

I forgot to tell about our sad farewell to Corrymeela. We got to experience a great week with a truly devoted staff. We were very lucky to have a guide that was willing to put up with Americans and hopefully we were able to bust a few stereotypes, like being really talkative ha! We are a much quieter group currently... Anyway we all experienced our first pub together and then on Saturday had a sad goodbye. So after loading the luggage and giving hugs we boarded the bus and our 2 friends jumped on for a farewell singing of the Moose Song.   Oh it is a very funny song (with actions) that we all came to love and hate. I will share it sometime I think someone got it on video...ok well I'm off to class now hope all is well in the States!