Oh Goodness! Northern Ireland!

Thursday, March 6th at 9am a coach bus set off with all 37 of us American students, along with Don & Brian, our program directors and Robby our amazing bus driver! We had a crazy time!

First we made our way to Belfast, where murals are all over the place. Both Catholics and Protestants have murals on sides of buildings and walls. The odd thing was that most of the Catholic murals were very peaceful, whereas the Protestant murals were scarier and much more threatening. On the side of the Sinn Fein building there is a mural of Bobby Sands, the first Hunger Striker in the H blocks. He died after 66 days at the age of 27. After he died 9 others followed him in striking and dying.The building next to the Sinn Fein office had a mural commemorating all of the hunger strikers who died in the H-blocks. They were on the hunger strike because they wanted to be treated like the political prisoners that they were, rather than common criminals. This mural, like the other catholic ones are very peaceful, whereas in a Protestant area of Belfast, I found this mural portraying a man in a mask holding a machine gun... not exactly peaceful or welcoming if you ask me! There were many murals just like this one all over the protestant side of Belfast! After seeing the scary murals, I was sort of looking forward to moving on up north to Derry.

We stayed in Derry for 3 nights in the Tower Hotel. Our hotel was just next to the peace wall, which we were warned not to cross. The religious fighting is still fierce in Derry and it is not a secret. Our first night in Derry I found myself in a small, crowded Nationalist pub that had a great live band and a strong spirit of desire for a united Ireland. I saw many signs that said "26 + 6 = 1" indicating that they felt the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the 6 counties of Northern Ireland should come together as one nation.
The next day we learned about the heartbreaking Bloody Sunday, which took place literally less than 5 minutes walking distance from our hotel. We walked down the same street that the peaceful protesters walked, and found ourselves at the Museum of Free Derry. The museum is in a building that stood on Bloody Sunday and still has huge bullet holes in the side of the building from when the British soldiers attacked this peaceful march. Inside the museum I saw horrific images and artifacts. They had a gun on display that the soldiers used to shoot rubber and plastic bullets that were not supposed to "kill" anyone, just injure them badly. These bullets ended up being deadly.
One of the museum directors was very closely linked to the museum, as he participated in the march and his brother, Michael Kelly, was shot and killed at the young age of 17 on Bloody Sunday. On display they had many articles of clothing that people were wearing when they were killed on Bloody Sunday. There was also a baby jumper on display that was used to try to stop Michael Kelly's bleeding.
This museum could easily bring a tear to any persons eye. When asked how he feels, Michael Kelly's brother stated "I just want this to be over. I just want peace."
I will never be able to explain this museum, or the events of Bloody Sunday with any justice, so if you care to learn more, please visit the museums website: http://www.museumoffreederry.org/.

After the Museum of Free Derry, our group did many other things including visiting the Giants Causeway and crossing a rope bridge to get to a small island! I promise to write more about them in my next post, but its getting late here, and my sister and Rob are coming to visit tomorrow, so I should get some sleep!

Before I go though, I have come to the conclusion that I take way too many pictures and I cannot fit them all on here, so if you would like to see all of my pictures from Northern Ireland, please check them out at http://stephanieindublin.shutterfly.com/

I hope you like them & I hope everyone is well!

Goodnight!