Playing Catch-up (Part XIII)

Today after class I printed out my final paper, and now I'm a presentation away from being free! I also have to finish editing the ridiculous movie I'm making for my presentation, but that's just plain fun. This morning five students gave their presentations, and then three of them left. Two have to return to Carleton because they're athletes and have preseason training now, and one is spending a few days in London with her parents before going to Sri Lanka for the fall. But the rest of us have to wait until Friday (or in Bonnie's and my case, next Monday) to go home. Ian left for college yesterday (!) and needless to say, I feel very bad that I couldn't be there to see him off. Oh well - c'est la vie, I guess.

I forgot to relate a rather amusing anecdote about dear Elms Village. After Peter Collins briefed us about our stay in Belfast, we all kind of congregated in the kitchen and began wondering what on earth we were going to do for the remainder of the day. Then a loud alarm suddenly went off, and we realized it was the fire alarm. Being the dutiful and well-trained students we are, we all filed outside and wondered what was up. One guy said he'd opened a door and that the alarm had immediately started, so we all decided to place the blame on him. The alarm kept ringing until a security man ambled his way over to us and entered the building. A few moments later he came out and asked who was staying in room 103. There was a moment of confusion before I remember that I, in fact, am staying in room 103. I cautiously raised my hand, and he asked if I'd sprayed anything in the room because the smoke detector had gone off in my room. I explained that, no, I hadn't had TIME to spray anything even if I'd wanted to because I'd been in my room for all of five minutes, and anyway it smelled horribly like smoke when I entered but I personally do NOT smoke so that smell certainly did not emanate from anything that *I* did; I'd only opened a window to help clear it out. He nodded and ambled off again. Of course, jokes about me smoking various substances were made and we all had a good laugh. The end.

Back to where I last ended... umm. I think that class just sort of continued as usual. We also spent lots of time in the Queens library doing research, oh, and we had two authors visit and speak to our class, which was awesome. Both Ciaran Carson and Glenn Patterson spent time reading their works, talking to us, and answering questions, and it was really neat to hear from them. We also spent our time complaining about Elms Village problems, like the two or three days in which we had absolutely no hot water. Some people braved the cold while others opted out of showering at all. That made for a very smelly day trip last Tuesday, let me tell you.

On Tuesday we visited the city of, depending on who's talking about it, either Derry or Londonderry. Republicans will vandalize signs labeled "Londonderry" by crossing out "London" and leaving simply "Derry," and some Loyalists have taken to responding by crossing out the "Derry," which is very silly. Anyway, Derry (you can see where my sympathies lie) played host to a great deal of sectarian violence during the Troubles, and the murals there reflect that. Bloody Sunday took place in Derry, so lots of the murals depict those killed on that day. Peter Collins gave us all a walking tour of the city, which still contains portions of the old wall that used to surround it. We visited the city hall and then spontaneously entered this free museum run by the Apprentice Boys. It was, in a word, strange. Basically, the Apprentice Boys of Derry are a "Protestant fraternal society" named after a group of - yes, you guessed it - apprentices to various trades who barricaded Derry and refused to let King James' invading army in; they shut the gate and shouted "No surrender!" The group nowadays has many parades and celebrations; the burn an effigy of Lundy (the governor who'd wanted to negotiate) every December because they view him as a traitor. Anyway, this hall also had a room where the Orange Order meets, even though the middle-aged man who was showing us around was careful to continually point out that the Apprentice Boys are in no way affiliated with the Orange Order. There was also another room with a very strange collection of artifacts from around the world; some other group meets there, apparently. It was very strange!

Afterwards, we visited the Grianan, a very old ring fort that's been reconstructed. Grianan features prominently in "Shamrock Tea," the book by Ciaran Carson that we'd recently read, but unfortunately it was sort of being fixed up and it was raining and we didn't stay for too long. Then we met up with one of Connie's friends who lives in a nearby town; she has a son in our year at Carleton and one who graduated in 2006. Her archaeologist friend took us to a very old sort of stone circle and gave us her take on it, showed us an old cathedral, and then we all headed to Connie's friend's house (which was, by the way, really lovely) to get out of the rain and have tea! The local church ladies had made roughly 15 dozen small sandwiches, so we all stuffed ourselves with those, and then there were dozens and dozens of cakes and cookies and tarts and treats, so by the time we left to return home, we were all completely sated. It was one of my classmates' birthdays, so there was also a cake for her, which was quite kind.

Sooo the next evening we all went to see a one-man play called "A Night in November." The actor who was performing is actually a stand-up comedian, and apparently there've been rumors about some problems with cocaine, and Peter Collins remarked that perhaps "his career is taking a NOSEdive." Har har har. Anyway, the play was verrry provocative in that it attempted to capture what it's like to be a Protestant male in Belfast who suddenly becomes completely disgusted with the prejudice against Catholics and tries to come to terms with who he is and where he comes from. The idea is intriguing, but the play relied on a completely oversimplified stereotypes of Catholics and Protestants and didn't really go beyond those stereotypes to say anything truly significant. The female characters were completely one-dimensional (even more so than the males, who admittedly weren't very well developed) and all seemed to be paper-thin stereotypes of one sort or another. Even the actor, when playing those female parts, fell back on the same exact body language for every single woman. It was definitely a play worth seeing, and it was very funny at some points, but I'm not sure how successful it was. It was also alarming when the audience laughed at some jokes that were overtly racist - we Carleton kids are always so concerned with being "politically correct" that stuff like this just jumps right out at us when we see it.