First of all, I left off telling you we were going to Dublin. Well, in all actuality, we went to a museum, and then turned right around to go back the almost 3 hours to Dundrum. So the only park of Dublin we saw this time around was from the 'car park' to the building and back again. We went to the Nation Gallery. It had tons and tons of paintings. beautiful paintings. Some by Yeats, and O'Connor, and more people that you may know but that I cannot remember of the top of my head this late at night. Memorable, but a long day.
The next day, again long. Instead of headed south, we headed west, and went to a western county in Northern Ireland, called Omagh. We stopped at a place that was called 'Island Turf.' Turf comes from the ground here and is often used for fire. However as Ireland gets more peaceful, and more of a tourist attraction, turf has become more valuable as well. This place had turf everything! Turf crosses, ornaments, harps, shamrocks, angels, claddaghs, and pretty much any other sign or symbol that can be equated with Ireland. So that was a fun little detour. The purpose of the trip was to go to the Ulster American Folk Park. Though there weren't many 'folk' there, it was a blast! I felt like a little kid again.
So heres how it started out...it was a long museum trail. You start in the old world of Ireland and get to see some old colonies here, then you walk through town and visit a few of the old shops. We stopped at a printing press where they made us a ticket for the boat. After walking through the 'wee' town, we got on this huge ship, and got off on the other side...the new world. We had immigrated to America! So, we walked through the streets of America and sang American songs, since we were the only group there we were allowed to be slightly more obnoxious and patriotic than we would usually be. This whole museum centered around Thomas Mellon and his immigration to America. He founded the Mellon banks, and is the Mellon half of Carnegie-Mellon, the institution in Pennsylvania. It was another long, memorable day.
At the last house in America, we decided to take team pictures, so I propped my camera on a post, put it on self timer, and spent the next 20 minutes taking family pictures with the people that have played the role of my family for the last several weeks.
This leads me to Saturday...story time.
I had an interview project for an independent study that I'm taking while here in Ireland. There are two other girls who are taking the same study as I am, and so we decided to go out and find a nice old Irish man to interview. As we were walking to the local gas station, there was a man on the sidewalk that looked like a friendly, harmless old man. So I walked over to him and asked him if we could interview him...
a few weeks before....
my roommate went for a walk up to the castle in town and ended up making friends with an old man named wilber she came back and told us all about. We had thought about asking her to look him back up to interview him, but we didn't want to drag her into our project, or this poor old man. But a few of the girls had tried to return with Lydia to visit Wilber, but with how busy we've been there never was time.
back to the gas station...
After we asked him the question, he said oh your americans i'd recognize that accent anywhere. I know one of your kind, she and I had a nice chat a while ago. Immediately we were all like LYDIA! so one of the girls ran back to get her. He invited us over for a cup of tea so there ended up being five of us that went up there with this dear old man. We sat and talked to him, his son, Nigel, and Nigel's girlfriend ALL afternoon. Almost 3 hours! We compared cultures, talked, laughed, and crossed paths with people that I won't forget for a long long time, if ever.
Although I wasted one of my only free days, I got so much more information by spending the afternoon with them that it only took me two 1-hour settings to get my paper finished. I was just able to write about in detail everything that went on during my visit to Wilbers.
That's my story, and my update. We meet the president of Ireland tomorrow, and I'll write to you soon after to tell you how it went. Blessings. - Andra Beth p.s.-more pictures have been posted!
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