Ireland Update 7

This was all nearly a month ago now….but I’m finally sitting down to write about our last week in N. Ireland. I had written about the first two days in the plane coming back, but I lost my tablet that had that on it. So that’s part of what’s been holding me back – I hate writing things a second time. :P

If you want to see pictures from our time in Ireland, almost 500 of my 1,300 pictures are posted on Facebook! Mostly with detailed captions J

Day 21 - Tuesday, June 18

Tuesday was our big sightseeing day. We started off by visiting Carrick-a-Rede, a rope bridge that used to be used by fishermen to get from the mainland to an island. The bridge has planking that is less than two feet wide, with a rope mesh extending maybe another foot or so to either side. The sides of the bridge are intersecting ropes that come up about four feet to the rope handrails. The bridge is over a chasm which is almost 100 feet deep and 65 feet wide. So crossing it was a bit of a stretch for height-sensitive me. But it was totally worth it!

We hung out for quite a while on the island reached by crossing the bridge. Tons of gulls and guillemots were flying around the cliffs of the island, probably trying to get situated for nesting season. Their calls were so loud that I was looking around for a big group of seals! I actually lay down on the grassy top of the island and just watched the birds for a while, so that was fun. Most of us ate our sack lunches as a picnic on the island as well.

Next, we stopped at a coastal town (don’t remember which one…) to do some shopping. Several of us went to a used book store and found some neat old hymnals. I also got an old copy of C.S.Lewis’ book “That Hideous Strength” and a devotional on 1 Corinthians 13 that looked interesting. Just started reading the latter this morning and am SO glad I got it! I also liked walking around looking at the architecture of the town. At a bakery, I tried a “fifteen tray bake” and liked it! They’re evidently a traditional Irish treat, kind of similar to what many people call magic cookie bars in the States, but with marshmallows and cherries instead of chocolate and nuts.

Later in the afternoon we went to Giant’s Causeway. It’s this amazing geographical formation on the coast, probably formed by volcanic activity as Ireland separated from Scotland. Basically, it is a VAST structure of thousands of usually hexagonal columns of varying height that fit together like a giant puzzle. You’ll have to look at my pictures or Google it to see what I mean because it’s hard to explain. Anyway, the structure runs from the base of a mountain out into the ocean as a peninsula – and it’s great fun to scramble around on and explore!

After we looked around there for a while, we hiked up the shepherd’s trail to the top of the mountain overlooking the causeway. Part of the trail used switchbacks, but the last part was a steep 162 stairs! We were glad to reach the top. Once we had enjoyed the view, we followed the trail along the ridge back to the visitor center. Everything was so green and pretty, and out on the Giant’s Causeway I loved watching the waves crash onto the pillars of stone J

That evening we were on our own for dinner in one of the coastal towns, so a couple of the other girls and I ended up at a hamburger place actually. The inside was decorated in a ‘50s American style, with a poster cut out of Elvis and such. We were fairly amused J We had the best sweet potato fries I had ever tasted though!

After dinner, we reunited with a couple of the other team members and waited at the meeting place for the rest of the team, including the drivers. They were late and it was chilly…so we ended up crowding seven of us onto one park bench. Folks driving by us were staring and waving…and we ended up watching and laughing at some pigeons that looked like they were wrestling up on a balcony ledge. Once we got back to our youth hostel, one of the gals and I took a walk on the beach watching the sunset. It was a good chance to talk J

Day 22 - Wednesday, June 19

That morning I hustled down the beach for about 30 minutes so I could get back to the place where we had been Monday evening. I climbed up onto one of the island-ish rocks and just enjoyed sitting there with the wind blowing around me and the birds circling and calling. And the sound of the waves crashing. It was wonderful – good time for reflection too.

After breakfast, we got all of our stuff packed and loaded up. We still did some sightseeing around the area before heading out though. First stop was Dunluce Castle, now an old ruins that may date back to the 1300s and was occupied until one day in 1639 the kitchen fell into the sea! According to Ireland’s National Trust website, these ruins may have served as C.S. Lewis’ inspiration for Cair Paravel!  We had fun going a little ways into a cave/tunnel right under the cliffs the castle ruins are on. We didn’t go into the castle itself, because we would have had to pay. But we had fun climbing on the rocks around it!

Our next stop was at the small town of Ballintoy. Looked into a pretty church there, then went down, down the hillside to the coast where we scrambled around on more rocky outcroppings. Then back to the van for sack lunches and time to bid farewell to the beautiful Irish North Coast. After driving a couple hours, we stopped at Glenariff Forest Park to go hiking, but sadly the main attraction—a hike to a beautiful waterfall—was closed because of winter storm damage. We still hiked around though.

We had planned to go to a lighthouse near Belfast, but traffic delayed us too much. So we ended up eating at a tiny restaurant in Belfast that had an interesting mixed menu of pizza/Italian and Chinese/Asian food. It was delicious though! And then it was back to the home sweet home of our cottages…at least for a couple more days.

Day 23 - Thursday, June 20

The next day we literally had nothing planned. I’m pretty sure that’s the only day that happened on the whole trip! It was wonderful. We just hung out, played games, relaxed, etc.

That evening after dinner I went out to the observation deck on my own. I had a lot to think about. The trip was fast coming to an end, and with it my time at JBU was truly concluding. I’d known for a long time that I would cry about graduating and having to say goodbye to that place and everything it had meant to me for four years at some point. I expected it to happen in May, but it didn’t. It happened that night in Ireland instead. God was really gracious through that, reminding me of some important things. Later, one of the gals and I took a walk up Joe’s mountain and just talked about stuff – so that was good and helped me process things some more.

Day 24 - Friday, June 21

Spent a good part of the day in Belfast. A couple of us went to the Titanic museum together. The ship was built in Belfast, and the museum is located near the area where the gigantic ship was created and first put off into the ocean. It has an interestingly broad range of topics, clear from the early industrial history of Belfast all the way through the science of deep sea exploration. So it has relatively little on the crash of the Titanic, and more on the ship’s complete story from beginning to end. Quite interesting!

Once we got back into the Belfast city center, we grabbed some lunch and ate on the lawn of the city hall. Then we went together to go shopping at Primark, Ireland’s version of a department store similar to Macy’s. I wasn’t in a shopping mood though, and felt very out of place in the crowded store. So I meandered my way back to a coffee shop. Watched some street performers on the way, and just spent some time writing the previous Ireland Update and a few post cards.

When it came time to meet up with the rest of the team to ride the city bus back to Lakeside Manor, where we had parked our van, I was in full-fledged shut down mode. I’m still not sure completely why. In a way I guess it was culture shock. I just felt very very out of my element. After being in small towns for three weeks and almost exclusively with our small team, to suddenly be in the big city surrounded by hundreds of people really put me on edge for some reason. It’s not like I don’t know how to function in cities….spent my whole life until college in Dallas, and lived in D.C. for two months last summer without ever having that feeling. But that’s what happened. I just had to crawl in my shell for a while. Once we had ridden the bus out of the city center into the more residential area, I started doing fine again. It was pretty odd.

Day 25 - Saturday, June 22

Another very chill day – lots of playing table games and such. That evening, the owners of the cottages where we stayed hosted a BBQ for a ton of their friends. They invited our team too, so we went over for a while. Got to talk to an Irish gal and hear about what God is doing in her life – it was really good! It rained some during the evening, and we saw a *gorgeous* double rainbow that went all the way across. It was so very pretty!

Later, all of the main people we had worked with in Killyleagh – Wally, Heather, Samantha, Sam and Craig – came over for one last time. We just had a great time hanging out, including a dance party for most people. But then we had to say goodbye to our Killyleagh teammates L

Day 26 - Sunday, June 23

Went back into Belfast for a day of seeing C.S. Lewis related sites. We started by attending a service at St. Mark’s Church, which has a number of Lewis connections:

• ·         Jack’s grandfather was the pastor of the church during Jack’s childhood
• ·         Jack’s parents were married in the church
• ·         The baptismal font where Warren and Jack were both baptized as babies is in the back
• ·         The pulpit is the same one which Jack would have watched his grandfather preach in
• ·         On the door of the parsonage is a doorknob with a lion’s head
• ·         One of the stained glass windows was given to the church by Warren and Jack later in life in memory of their parents

It was SUCH a beautiful church – just loved it! After the service, a guy who goes there gave us the C.S. Lewis tour of the church, during which he explained all of the above. He also pointed out various things about the symbolism of the church. I enjoyed it all J

We also stopped by the house where Jack and Warren lived as children – Little Lea. We couldn’t go in, because it is now privately owned…but it was still neat to see. Our last Lewis stop was at the statue of The Searcher, commissioned in honor of the 100^th anniversary of Lewis’ birth. It shows a man looking into a wardrobe, and on the back of the wardrobe there is a copy of a letter Lewis wrote to a young lady asking about the Christian symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia.

After that, we went to St. George’s Market in Belfast, which is basically a large building with a whole collection of vendor booths – everything from food to vintage stuff to handmade items. It was fun wandering around it J

That evening was our last one together as a whole team. So the leaders took the time to get each of us a coke bottle with a Gaelic name on it and make up a definition for the names that had something to do with what each one of us had contributed to the team. It was a time of lots of laughter, but also of encouragement. Sam came back for one last time, and a few of us ended up staying up until 4 a.m. because going to bed meant saying goodbye to Sam. We watched the sky turn light, since the sun comes up super early there.

Day 27 - Monday, June 24

The next day we spent the morning cleaning the cottages and packing up all of the JBU equipment that gets stored at Lakeside Manor during the year. It went by super fast, so that was nice. I also got my own stuff packed up. Before lunch we took one last hike up Joe’s Mountain to bid it farewell.

After lunch we went to Castleward, the former manor home of a rich family. They turned it over to the National Trust fund when they were too in debt to pay their taxes, or something like that. Now it’s basically a museum. It has lots of interesting architecture and artifacts. After getting a really great tour of the house, we walked around on the property for a while, and found some really fat pigs in the farm near the lough.

That evening we went back to Strangford for a final team dinner at a nice restaurant, the Cuan. After we finished, we went to Asda to buy any foodstuff we wanted to take home. Then it was time for our team to say goodbye to three of our members, who had to go to Belfast because they were on different flights out of Ireland.

Day 28 - Tuesday, June 25

We got up early that morning to finish up last minute things at the cottages and depart for Belfast. It was a long day of traveling. We flew from Belfast to Newark to Houston to XNA, the regional airport in northwest Arkansas. In Newark things got really stressful and crazy. Long story short, our layover was too short for everything we had to do, and half of our team didn’t make it onto the flight to Houston. I did, but in the process I accidentally left my backpack behind, and it’s still lost. We were worried that the other half of the team wasn’t going to make it to Houston in time to catch the flight to XNA – but amazingly they made it just in time. We were all so relieved when we saw them get on our little three-seat-across plane to go up to XNA. Then once we landed in XNA it was really time to say goodbye.

The End.

My parents had come up to Siloam Springs to pick me up. We stayed in our tent that night at the Arkansas welcome center, though I didn’t sleep very well. Lots on my mind, plus jetlag. The next day the three of us spent the day at Natural Falls State Park. That was fun. I got to show them a few of the places where I enjoyed spending time during my day-long excursions out there on my own. Then we drove back down to Dallas, back home. But as much as that will always be home, I have a lot of places now that feel like home. And I miss the places and the people that make each so special. But that’s what life is….moving on, saying goodbye, but holding tight to the memories and the lessons.

Speaking of lessons….if you want to read about what I learned over in Ireland, in a spiritual/reflective sense, check it out here. Thank you to each and every person who partnered with me in this trip through prayer and through financial giving! I couldn’t have done it without you.