We started off the day yesterday by practicing our Irish back at the hostel. It's coming to me easily, and for the most part, so far, it's been a refresher on what I learned last summer. Ethan's struggling through it, and I know it bothers him that he can't just pick it up and run with it. The country twang isn't exactly conducive to fluid pronunciation. He hasn't let it get him down, though, and I'm usually there to translate for him should things get too unintelligble.
Speaking of yesterday and Irish: bhí sé fuar, gaofar, agus fliuch.
It was cold, windy, and wet. After leaving the hostel, we spent the day more or less meandering from eatery to eatery trying to stay warm, dry, and connected to wifi. And when we weren’t in a warm, dry, wifi connected restaurant, we were out in the cold, windy, wet waiting on buses.
Our plan for yesterday was to start out the day at Starbucks for a meal, coffee, and wifi to post a blog and wish our moms a happy mother’s day while simultaneously asking them for money, and then, seeing as how most other places are closed on Sunday, spend the remainder of the day at the Culturlann interviewing some Irish speaking friends we’d made followed by the big monthly Ceili dancing event that night. As is custom, our plan fell through.
As it turns out, the Culturlann closes early on Sunday. We made the most of the time we had there, though. While Ethan researched and logged local Irish speaking schools, I approached our friend, the secretary. I thanked her for suggesting the walking tour and in Irish I asked her how she was. She was happy to converse with me until I had reached the extent of my linguistic knowledge… which was fairly quick in its forthcoming. Afterwards, she agreed to an interview, but because her shift was ending and she had to get home, she said that she’d be happy to answer some questions anytime during the week we stopped by.
Shortly after that the café in the Culturlann closed, so we had to venture back out into the cold, windy, wet interviewless and fairly hungry. After waiting on the bus back into town, we decided to try our luck at Burger King (stop number 3 on our tour de warm, dry, wifi connected eateries). Twelve chicken nuggets and two bags of waffle fries later, we decided it might be a good idea to get some shopping done prior to returning to the Culturlann for the Ceili dancing. It was Sunday, so, of course, nothing was open. We ended up wandering aimlessly through the nearly empty streets of Belfast in the cold, windy, wet until it was time to catch the next bus back to the Culturlann… which was still closed when we got there.
Rather than wait outside and freeze, Ethan marched across the street to a fish-n-chips place cleverly called The Codfather, proclaiming “I’ll buy something if I have to.” And so he did. We stood in the warm, dry, non-wifi connected Codfather with a couple of wrapped “pasties” for half an hour staring forlornly across the cold street toward the Culturlann waiting for someone to come and open the doors.
Eventually someone did. We met up with our foreign friends, the girl from Holland and the one from Germany, from our Ceili lessons Thursday night, outside the Culturlann and proceeded into what was more or less a good old fashioned hoedown Irish style. The four of us were the youngest people in the room by probably thirty years, but we were still put to shame by the energy and skill of the locals. Ethan looked right at home kicking up his boots and spinning around in circles clapping to the accordion and drum. I’m not usually the sort to dance at all, especially in front of people, but I admit I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
However, there was something that bothered me the entire time. We were surrounded by Irish speakers who were welcoming us with open arms… and instead we sat with the girls our own age. This brings up all kinds of questions that should be answered, and when we returned to the hostel, I submitted the problem to Ethan. In the end, we’re here for Irish speakers. It’s as simple as that. We missed an opportunity to get to genuinely know many fluent natural speakers by taking part with them in something they hold dear. And instead, we kept to our comfort zones regulated by age, interests, and status. That’s just not going to cut it. At the end of this trip it’s not going to matter how much fun we had, or how many foreign friends we made if we don’t do what we came here to do.
That being said, that doesn’t mean we won’t make friends or have fun. But Christ should always be the one deciding who we sit with and how we spend our time. When we rely on ourselves to make those kinds of decisions, we lose focus. And with a week and a half to go, we can’t afford to lose focus again.
-Sam R. Franklin
Day 9 in Belfast
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