Irish Primary School: First Impressions

Dear Faithful Readers,

After a few weeks of various cultural activities and a lot of hanging out, the actual teaching portion of this program has begun. I am placed at Dundonald Primary in a Primary 3 (henceforth known as P3) class, which is equivalent to 1st grade in America. There are 28 students in my class, a large increase from the 19 I had at Agnor-Hurt in Charlottesville.

The children are very curious about me of course, and it is fun to talk about the different ways we say things in America. Here periods are full-stops, erasers are rubbers, and my accent is awesome.

The school is similar to school in America, but I am also drawing parallels to Japan in my mind as well. For example, the children all sing a good morning song when they come in. When they leave, they systemically say goodbye ("good afternoon") to my mentor teacher, the classroom assistant, and myself. In the Japan the morning greeting and proper goodbye was a huge deal as well. In America it was far less structured because the values that we hold about those kind of things are different.

I'm looking forward to working with my class more and I am sure I will have many stories to tell!

Love,

Mary

Mary in Wales/Laurie in Belfast

Dear Faithful Readers,

When I first began college at UVa in 2005, I met a lovely girl who shared many of the same interests as me. 8 years later, Laurie is still one of my best friends. She is studying at Cardiff University in Wales and I am studying at Belfast so when I found out we would have a few days off for half-term, I jumped at the chance to go see her. I hopped on a plane and landed in Bristol (England), then took a train to Salisbury where I met up with Laurie because we were headed to Stonehenge!

I've been dreaming of visiting Stonehenge since before I had ever traveled anywhere, and it was as awesome as I always imagined it would be.

Other highlights of the trip included a very fun Halloween party where we dressed as characters from Adventure Time

and a trip to Cardiff Castle.

I headed home on Sunday but didn't have much time to miss her, as she came to join me in Belfast on the following Wednesday. She accompanied me to fencing practice (the site of our first meeting ages ago at UVa, incidentally) and we had a great night after hanging out with the team.

We also went out to Dublin Castle, which was very nice.

It was a wonderful two weeks and I am so happy for the time I had to spend with her!

Love,

Mary

To Dublin and Back Again

Dear Faithful Readers,

A lot has happened since I blogged last but in the interest of keeping these entries semi-focused, I would like to focus on the weekend I just had.

After a long week of classes Friday evening finally arrived. I had my bag packed since the morning so after my last class ended I dropped back by my room to pick it up and then headed to the bus station.

The ride to Dublin was uneventful. After 2 and 1/2 hours I arrived to find Sinead waiting for me at the station. I met Sinead for the first time just over 3 years ago in Japan. I was already good friends with the guy who would become her husband, Abel, for about a year before she arrived. Anyways Abel and Sinead met in Nara, Japan, fell in love, got married, and moved back to Sinead's home city of Dublin. They are both lovely people and I am lucky to know them.

Sinead drove me back to their place and we just spent the rest of the night catching up and reminiscing about the good old days in Japan. Although this wasn't the first time I had seen someone from the Japan period of my life since leaving, it was the first time I had met up with someone who had also permanently left Japan to start another life somewhere else, and so it was nice to chat about my feelings with another person.

Abel was out late the night before so I didn't see him until Saturday morning. We all went out to breakfast at an adorable and tasty place called Queen of Tarts.

After walking around the city (I got the Sinead Tour of Dublin!) we went over to a little pub to meet up with some other ex-JETs (JET = Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, which is how we got our jobs in Japan) for a Japanese conversation class. It was good fun to chat with a group of people in Japanese, it has been months since I have hung out with any of my ex-Japanese professors at my University but it felt very familiar and comfortable all the same.

We concluded the day with an 80s-themed Halloween party. 

It was really nice just to go out with and talk to people who were my own age, although thinking back on it that is kind of a funny thing to say considering we were all dressed up in crazy costumes! Sinead's friends were all good fun and I went to sleep feeling very content with life.

Sunday started with Abel and Sinead making a great breakfast. Abel was off to a convention for the day so Sinead kindly offered to tackle some touristy sites we with. We went and saw Dublinia, the viking/medieval museum and also the Christ Church Cathedral. I felt like I learned a lot at both places. We walked over to Oscar Wilde's statue after that because he is my favorite.

We ended our day at a little pub where we enjoyed some traditional Irish music. I was surprised to learn that at establishments like that sometimes one or two people are paid to lead the music session (sometimes no one is and they just decide to lead themselves) but anyone else is free to come and join in as they like. They were all very talented and it was a good ending to Dublin.

I boarded the bus station in central Dublin and it was only about half full. The bus was picking up more passengers at the airport, however. Now, I really hate sitting next to strangers on the bus and I will avoid it at all costs. As more and more people boarded, however, it became clear that I was going to have to deal with it and move my bag if everyone was going to have a seat. Finally with one young guy left looking for a spot I begrudgingly moved it and he sat down and asked me for the time (the clocks had just changed last night and he had just gotten off a plane). And that is how I met Benedict from the Czech Republic and enjoyed 2 and 1/2 hours of conversation with him. His English was pretty perfect which I (silently) thought was impressive enough but he had actually spent a good portion of his youth in Germany and he even had studied enough Japanese to have a short conversation with me. Sugoi! He also is the one who broke the news to me about Lou Reed's passing and when I said that I love all the glam rockers, he started listing them off and said that David Bowie was the only one he hadn't seen. (What are the chances of anyone caring about this as much as I do?!) I saw Bowie play when I was in high school (his final tour) so we had a good chat about that as well. In the end, I couldn't have asked for a better seat partner!

It was a wonderful weekend, something I was very much in need of.

Well, there is always more to say but it will have to wait until next time!

Until then,

Love,

Mary

So it begins.

Dear Faithful Readers,

I am currently writing to you from Stranmillis University in Belfast, Ireland!

My journey began with a plane ride from Newark, New Jersey.

6.5 hours later we touched down in Northern Ireland.

After being bused to our dorm rooms on the Stranmillis campus, we were dropped off with no information and no plans so a friend and I took the opportunity to walk nearly 3 miles into the center of the city of Belfast.

We passed by the Queen's University main building (Stranmillis is the education school of Queen's University,  as Curry is the education school of the University of Virginia).

We then hunted down some essentials, like towels and a hairdryer.

Today was a long day of orientation. After that was over I finished some other shopping and later I went to a quiz night at the student union here in Stranmillis. I played on a team with two students from Drake University (which is located in Des Moines, Iowa in America) who traveled with our UVa group as well as two students from the Netherlands and one from Denmark. It was a lot of fun!

Stay tuned for more exciting overseas adventures...

Love,

Mary