Back in Ballycastle

Blogging is challenging at this point. We left Corrymeela last Friday and headed off for Belfast. Lovely time at the cleanest hostel I have ever stayed in. Unfortunately, it had a bit too much taste of the culture. Our room overlooked the Royal Pub (an infamous Loyalist bar) the night before a big parade. The people spread out into the street most of the night, then the street cleaners started sucking up the bottles at 5:00 AM. Rough night.

Marian (from OWU) stayed in the hostel with us, so we went exploring in the rain on Saturday, our first real taste of Irish weather. We visited the Botanical gardens and the Ulster museum. Great time actually. The parades started in the afternoon (parade season runs all summer here, the ones on Saturday were just a smaller version of the ones we saw on July 12th). While walking around we ran into Eileen and her boyfriend Mike (Eileen was a volunteer at Corrymeela with us, from Boston). She finished the week before us and was staying in Belfast for the week. We literally just ran into them on the street. Thus supporting my Brake genes- I can run into someone I know in any city in the world! (two hours earlier we ran into a woman we met at the cafe the night before!- crazy. Anyway, we spent Saturday evening with Marian, Eileen, Mike, Katie, Pauline (two more volunteers from Belfast who we phoned to meet up with us). It was quite a good time.

Speaking of running into folks, the gentleman who sat down next to me at the library computer bank, is a fellow named Ken who I meet earlier in the month just walking around Ballycastle. So we're back in Ballycastle. Staying with our friends the Stockmans. Steve stayed with us when he spoke at OWU the last two years. We are so glad to be staying with him and to finally meet his family! Yesterday we went to the Bushmills distillery, where Luong sampled everything they put in front of him :-). I enjoyed a Diet Coke ;-).

Tomorrow we head down to Dublin for a couple days. I'll try and update there and add some pictures if I can!

Take care,
The hos