On Friday morning our whole class piled onto a coach bus and headed to Northern Ireland for a fantastic overnight trip! It was really eventful, so this will be a pretty long post—feel free to skip ahead!
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| Political murals in Belfast. Photo by Jordan Hamilton |
In case you didn’t know, Northern Ireland is a different country from the Republic of Ireland and is part of the United Kingdom. Its history has been plagued with violent religious and political conflict, called the Troubles, that occurs between Nationalists (mostly Catholics) and Unionists (mostly Protestants). However, after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, most of the armed civilian groups have stopped their campaigns, but the memories of what happened there still scar the people today.
In order to better understand the country’s turbulent past, our first activity was a taxi tour of Belfast, the capital city where much of the violence took place. Our taxi drivers were also tour guides who had lived through the Troubles, and they brought us around to some of the city’s many memorials and murals and explained some of their history. We also got to write a message on the Peace Wall that divides Belfast in half, separating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. After the tour we all got the chance to explore Belfast on our own. Once people had used the ATM to get pounds, we went into a semi-outdoor mall that had a tall glass dome and looked out over the whole city. Hannah, Ian, and I also visited City Hall and saw the staircase that the builder of the Titanic based his ship’s grand staircase on.
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| Looking at some murals in Shankill Road. Photo by Jordan Hamilton |
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| Group shot in front of the Peace Wall. Photo by Jordan Hamilton |
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| Belfast City Hall. Photo by Hannah Long |
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| The Grand Staircase on the Titanic was based on these steps. Photo by Hannah Long |
We weren’t spending the night in Belfast, so everyone piled back into the bus and we headed for Ballintoy, a village consisting of ten houses, two pubs, 243546578 sheep, and the hostel we were staying in. As we walked around the town, we kept seeing signs advertising the “Scorpion ABC Fight Night” at one of the pubs. Perfect after-dinner entertainment! At 7:30 we rushed over, excitedly anticipating the brawls we were about to see.
“I can’t wait to see some tough Irish guys beating the crap out of each other!”
“I want to sit in the splash zone where I can get hit by the blood!”
“If a tooth lands in your glass you have to down it!”
As we sat down and time continued to tick on, we realized that we had not, apparently, had to get there so early. The fight didn’t look anywhere near to starting and we hadn’t even seen any of the boxers arrive yet. We were noticing, however, how many kids seemed to be there. Even as people crowded the bar and ordered drinks, more kids seemed to be piling in. They all looked the same too—gelled and spiked hair, athletic pants, sweatshirts that said Scorpion ABC…
Oh, God.
This was not a tough-guy Irish boxing brawl.
This was a kids’ sports match.
We were about to watch little kids beat each other up.
Suddenly I felt kind of creepy.
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| Photo by Jordan Hamilton |
The matches began with the smallest kids. They entered the ring with their protective headgear and gloves that looked too big for their skinny little arms to hold up. They barely swung at each other as they circled and bobbed up and down, and in the end the referee held each of their hands up, but it was still kind of frightening to watch. But it was only about to get worse.
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| Photo by Jordan Hamilton |
The next weight class up was a real match. Within minutes there was blood splattered over one kid’s face and he began to well up as he realized he was going to lose. Actually, someone got a bloody nose in every single subsequent match; the ref had to keep stopping the fights so that the coaches could wipe the blood away from their athletes’ faces. There was blood everywhere—the faces, gloves, uniforms, floor, ref…oh, the horror! If I was a parent I would never let my child participate in a sport like that, let alone cheer them on—“Go Ryan! Double up on him! That’s it, get him in the head!” The small town youth boxing match was surprisingly violent—we still got the carnage we had been hoping for, we were just slightly more horrified by it.
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| Photo by Jordan Hamilton |
The next morning we made our way down to the beautiful Ballintoy Harbor to soak up some sea air and take in the scenery.
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| Photo by Hannah Long |
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| That's me up there! Photo by Hannah Long |
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| Photo by Hannah Long |
Then we headed to our next activity for the day, the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. This was a small bridge between two cliffs that led to an island where you could walk around. It wasn’t quite as thrilling as it had been billed to be, but we still had fun crossing it.
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| Hannah crossing the bridge! |
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| Me crossing the bridge! Photo by Hannah Long |
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| The Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge from afar. Photo by Hannah Long |
After the rope bridge we stopped at the Giant’s Causeway, a breathtaking geological phenomenon where lava cooled in hexagonal patterns and created natural step-like structures.
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| Photo by Hannah Long |
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| Photo by Hannah Long |
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| Ian and me at Giant's Causeway. Photo by Allyson Locke |
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| Stephen, our Earth Science teacher, explaining the rock formations. Photo by Hannah Long |
Finally, our last stop before heading home was Dunluce Castle, but by then we were all so tired that after walking around for about 20 minutes we were ready to head back home to Dublin, even if it meant piling back into the coach bus that was starting to smell. It was a packed but exciting weekend!
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| Ian goofing around in Dunluce Castle. Photo by Hannah Long |
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| Photo by Hannah Long |
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| Photo by Sam Maslak |
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