The Luck o' the Irish!

Hey!

So, it's been a while since I've posted and I'm not even sure who all will read this that has read any of my other posts, but anyways, hello again!
If you haven't heard, I'm currently in the beautiful country of my ancestors (or at least some of them): Ireland!

I'm writing this post so as to keep you posted on what's happened over the last week, though this certainly is  not (and could not be) comprehensive. I'll try to give a daily recap here with a few stories if I can keep track of them and perhaps make a few more detailed blog posts, or simply talk to you when I get back to the States!

So we flew out of the Grand Rapids airport on Jan. 5th, and had a layover in Newark. Joyously however, our plane to NJ was delayed in Cleveland and so we had to wait about an additional hour and a half in the GR airport. Now thankfully we had a 6 hour layover in Newark so we were able to make it to NJ with about 4 hours to spare, despite the delay. One of the many joys of sitting and doing nothing for hours on end in a very busy place is that you get to people-watch, the wonderfulness of which is compounded when you're able to people watch with friends. As you would expect in "Joyzee," there were all sorts of characters including a woman wearing a rather large leopard face on a leopard print shirt, an girl in a leopard print footie pajama and endless other (nearly absurd) characters. Anyways, we finally boarded the flight to Dublin and took off. The plane was smaller than I was expecting (757 I believe) and actually had slightly more space than I anticipated. The flight was pretty uneventful overall and we landed in Dublin about 6 hours later, at what was roughly 7:30 local time (5 hours ahead of EST.) We then met up with Billy and Mindy Stevenson (our hosts/guides) who took us to a bus stop where we caught a bus to Belfast and then shuttled to the Manor where we have stayed ever since -- the picture above shows the back side. The rest of that day is a bit hazy due to the jetlag, though I know I took a walk for a bit in a nearby neighborhood, took a 3 hour nap. We had dinner which was (and has been,) amazing. After an early bed and a late wake up (10:15am) we got brunch and then headed downtown Belfast and got a walking tour led by Billy. We stopped initially at a local coffee shop called Clements and then walked through the campus of Queens University which was directly across the street. We were able to go to their library which has a C.S. Lewis reading room with several rather cool pieces of his furniture as well as the door to the Wardrobe in the recent movie.

I should pause here to explain that I'm taking a course in the writings of C.S. Lewis and so much of what we do in some way or other relates to him. He grew up in this area of Ireland and so we're seeing much of his homeland in addition to reading mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, the Screwtape letters, a Grief Observed and the Great Divorce, all written by Lewis.

Anyways we continued on to downtown Belfast and got a tour of the area. We walked by City Hall, the Europa Hotel (the most bombed hotel in Europe), Victoria Square (a very large shopping district) as well as other very interesting, though less important streets. We visited a cathedral where we spent a bit of time looking around and praying. Directly across from this Cathedral happened to be the occupy Belfast movement which I thought was rather funny since I'd been saying that I was going to "#occupyBelfast" for about a month before we came. Sadly, I was beaten to the punch. We then headed up to Belfast Castle, which was built in the 1900's, and is one of the newest castles in Europe. We then returned to the manor for another great meal, after which  our classes met for a short period of time.

Sunday then rolled around and we all, still fairly jetlagged, attended a local Anglican church which Lewis and his family attended for many years. The service was interesting and far more liturgical and ceremonial than I've experience before. After the service a gentleman from the church talked to us for about 25 minutes about the history of the church and the involvement of C.S. Lewis and his family, specifically his grandfather who was the minister at that particular church. Across the parking lot happened to be the red door with the lions head handle which was part of Lewis' idea of Aslan in the Narnia series.

To be continued...