Last class- meeting the UUP

So today we met a representetive from the Ulster Unionist Party. We were supposed to meet a Sinner (that's totally not how it's spelled, is it? I'm going to leave it that way anyway) too, but he chickened out or something and didn't show.

It was good to meet the UUP guy, though. The UUP foams at the mouth a lot less than the DUP does-- about several things, but mostly about Sinn Fein. Their approach to unionism, as today's speaker put it, is unionism with a small u-- they believe that remaining a part of the UK is the best thing for all of Northern Ireland, including its Catholic population. Unlike the DUP, they don't give the impression that they're still fighting for dominance. They know they've got a diverse population, and they want to represent the interests of all of it.

But today was our very last class-- my very last time seeing our programme director until next September. I'm leaving in less than two weeks. I wish I wasn't still up to my ears in paper rewriting (this is me on break right now) so that I could actually focus a bit on the time I have left.

Papers and placement

So I'm posting from the informal education centre*, and placement is still going well. I spend my mornings helping out in the foreign language wing, preparing students for their GCSEs-- a series of tests they take at sixteen to determine their levels in a veriety of subjects. For thos familiar with Harry Potter, GCSEs are the real-world version of OWLS. Students with good scores in enough subjects generally stay on and do A-levels, and then go to uni from there.

I come down here to the IEC* for lunch, and then generally spend the rest of my day down here, making worksheets, running errands, and sitting in with small group sessions. They're kind enough to let me at the computer during my lunch break, which has been very helpful this past week because I've been running about like mad trying to get my schoolwork finished.

My deadline is tomorrow, and I've got all but two things in-- a self-critique and a 2,000 word paper. I expect it's going to be a long night, but everything should get done (don't try this at home, kids! Annalee is a trained paper-writing ninja who can pull all-nighters on a single litre of coke).

So yes, that's life here. The programme ends next Wednesday, and I fly home the following Monday. I'm not sure how I'll be spending my between-time yet, but if I stay in Belfast, I might do a few extra days at my placement. No really, it's that awesome.

*In case anyone's wondering: not it's real name. I'm avoiding identifying details about the school.

Paper Writing and errata

I just finished up a paper on Johan Galtung's definitions of peace. I'd post it here for sharing purposes, but it's 2,300 words long and I think the eljay subscribers might kill me in my sleep. So, on the off chance than anyone actually wants to read 2,300 words of me babbling about peace research and peace as more than the absence of violence, email me and I'll send it to you.

In other news, the weather's taken a turn for the nice these past few days. This has raised my spirits considerably. I'm really going to miss L/Derry when we relocate, but I'm also really looking forward to Belfast, so life is good in general. And Thornton's (a chocolate shop) is going to be the death of me. The yummy, yummy death of me (they're selling ice cream now. How is that ok!?).

It turns out that Ireland Yearly Meeting is being held in a few weeks in Lisburne, so hopefully I'll be able to go and hang out with Irish Quakers. That would be really awesome, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

St Patrick's Day, Dublin

Happy St Patrick's Day, everyone.

I personally had a lovely one. I went out before the parade and grabbed breakfast at a little cafe, and then met up with a friend and kept him company while he ate. By the time the parade started I was back at the hostel. I watched from the second floor (first floor, for anyone on this side of the pond, as in 'the one above the ground floor') and managed to get some pretty decent pictures. I won't know if there are any real keepers until I upload them-- sometime in the next few days.

After the parade, I headed over to Trinity College to check out the Book of Kells; a full-color illuminated bible dating back to 800 AD. The exhibit also includes The Long Room; a 60-meter long library room with two floors of stacks and a barrel-vaulted ceiling (put it this way: the Jedi Archives in Star Wars episode II are a direct, futurized and digitized copy). It houses over 200,000 of the library's oldest books; some of which date back to the fifteenth century. There are also a series of fabulous busts, including classic thinkers like aristotle alongside more modern faces such as Shakespeare, Bacon, Locke, and Parnell. There's even one of Johnathan Swift.

I spent the entire afternoon there, and ended up going through the exhibit twice. The first time I got there just ahead of the post-parade swarm, but they ended up catching up to me. There was a big crowd around the book of Kells, and then a fairly loud crowd in the long room. The second time, the place was much emptier. I ended up just sitting in the long room for the better part of an hour, taking in the smell of the books and the beauty of the architecture. Photography wasn't allowed inside, but I suppose that's just as well, because I can't imagine pictures capturing it.

And speaking of things pictures can't capture, the Book of Kells itself was incredible. I've seen shots of it, of course, in textbooks and the like. But they simply can't convey the intricate detail, the vividness of the color, or the sheer weight of history behind the book itself. This book, and the smaller one being displayed with it, were created 1200 years ago. I wonder if the scribes who copied it out and the artisits who illuminated it ever imagined that their work would still be around--and on display, at that-- more than a millenium after their deaths.

I wonder what relics of our time, 12oo years from now, will be left over to speak for us?

This evening, I'll probably go out with friends and try to get some good shots of the Dublin St Patrick's Day nightlife. Tomorrow is the UK Mother's Day. I also got some really good news today about my workload that's going to make it a lot easier for me to finish all my papers.

So all in all, a very good day. Tomorrow, I'll be holding a friend back home in the light during Meeting for Worship. I hope everyone has a lovely St Patrick's Day.

It's starting to feel a bit like I live here.

Life is settling into a sort of normal here. Mervyn made us all jump into the deep end at the start by doing a week of placements without him, but it worked out. For me at least, it forced me to get used to L/Derry so that I know more of it than just how to get to school and back. It's an easy town to get to know.

Some of my groupmates have a particular interest in exploring the pub scene here, and I've been joining them most nights. I'm not really a drinker, but the company's good and the coke here tastes better than the stuff in the states. I think it's because they still serve it in glass bottles. This weekend, we're going out to a nightclub in celebration of my birthday. I'll try to get pictures.

The big news in the world of Northern Irish current events right now is a report from the police ombudsman (think Internal Affairs on crack) indicating that the police colluded with loyalist paramilitary organizations in the '90s to kill Catholics. Unfortunately, there's very little that can be done to prove that, because the police involved destroyed what evidence there was. From what I've seen, the general feeling here in L/Derry about it is a cynical lack of shock.

Sinn Fein has been holding policing meetings all around town this week, trying to gain support for their position as they gear up for the coming election. I haven't attended any (I live too far away for it to be practical, and there are safer places to be than Bogside (the neighborhood where Sinn Fein has the most support) at night), but some of my groupmates have. I'm sure I'll hear all about it in class on Monday.

The current challenge I've set in front of myself is to keep up with my writing while I'm over here. My first novel, a fantasy mystery, should be ready to go out to publishers very soon unless I neglect it, and my second, a Young Adult fantasy adventure story, is just starting to get up off the ground. I don't want to get so preoccupied with writing that I miss out on being here, but I've certainly got downtime that would be better spent writing than surfing the web or watching imported American movies on tv.

Speaking of which, I've got a couple minutes before my next class. Perhaps I ought to be productive with it.

Forgiveness

So today is the first day of class. We gathered at 10:15 for our first one, which comes in two parts: 1. Strategies of conflict intervention, community building, andreconciliation; and 2. current events in Northern Ireland. We take it with Mervyn, our program director.

He was talking about forgiveness as it relates to peace and reconciliation, and about how it's a necessary but difficult part of the peace process. He asked us to think about the people who've wronged us in our lives and whether or not we can forgive them.

That's an intersting question for me. On the one hand, I know that forgiving grievous hurts is possible. I think of Tom, and how I honestly harbor no ill will for the people who kidnapped and killed him. I spent more than a hundred days of my life with knots in my stomach, loading and reloading Al-Jazeera in search of news. I still want to cry when I think about the fact that I'll never see him again. But I'm not angry; I'm sad. At least, I'm not angry at the people who killed him. I'm angry at the circumstances that sent him there in the first place. Forgiveness has allowed me to make peace in my own mind with those who hurt me. On a pragmatic level, it takes away their power over me. On a peacebuilding level, it puts me in a position to let go of the past in the interest of building a better future.

But I know that it's not that simple. I think of other wrongs I haven't forgiven. Small things. Petty things. Toxic, selfish people who used me in the name of 'friendship.' Teachers and school administrators who abused their power in the name of 'dicipline.' Decade-old arguments that no one's said 'I'm sorry' for yet. If I can't forgive that, then what right do I have to suggest that people simply move on and get over more than thirty years of violence and nearly a milennium of conflict?

Mervyn made the point that while it's one thing to tell a classroom full of students, or a computer screen, that people need to forgive the past if they want peace, it's another thing entirely to face someone whose son was gunned down by paramilitaries because of his religion and say 'you need to forgive them, because peace is important.'

Even if I've been able to forgive a group of paramilitaries who kidnapped and murdered someone that I care about, I know that it's a hard thing. And I didn't do it for the Swords of Rightiousness. I didn't do it for peace. I did it for Tom. I did it because I know that if he were standing next to me when I got the news, he would have said 'I forgave them. Please don't hate them because of me.' I did it because I knew that I would never be able to honestly embrace the ideals that he died for if I was harboring hate in my heart.

I'm not here to solve the conflict in Northern Ireland. I'm here to study it, and to study the methods people are using to try to solve it. But it seems to me that part of the reconciliation process might be finding something that people will forgive for.