Belfast @ MindSay 
Hilo, I haven't blogged for un petit peu de temps. Last weekend I, being such a Holy Joe and everything, went on my school's Scripture Union weekend in Castlewellan. Woo! Such fun. Actually, it was. On the friday we got there, and we did a quiz thing. I was about as useless as a sofa made of barbed wire. Hehe I didn't get a single question that no-one else got. Anyway, after that we stayed up late, so it didn't help on Saturday morning that throughout the whole week I hadn't gone to bed once before one o'clock. So until about 2 that day I was a zombie. 
Each year the committee organises activities to do on the saturday. This year, there was a game of charades, a game of pictionary, a list of things to take photos of (funny things) and also a drama game, which I will now explain. Mr Morrisson told a story about the Beckhams having a party, with the guests including Jim Carry, Churchill the dog, Nikki from Big Brother, that crazy boxer guy, Mr Blobby, Mr. T, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bunch of other people that I can't remember. Anyway, Mr. T and Arny started arguing and then the lights went out. There was a scream and by the time the lights came back on... dun da dun... Churchill was dead! So, each team was told to finish off the drama, saying who killed him. Each team was given out a card, with a genre of their drama, a weapon to kill Churchill and a line to say in it.
Our genre was a Western, weapon a wheely bin and lines were "I see dead people" and "That dog's got a fluffy tail". Our team couldn't be bothered to make the drama, so we decided not to do it. But by the time we got there, we were told we had to, so the whole thing was improv, while the other teams had theirs prepared. Anyway, I was Mr. T and it started off with Eve (nikki), Victoria (posh spice) and Tanya (david beckham) saying the lines in a funny fashion, then noone else really said anytihng, so I pointed at 'Churchill' and shouted "I PITY THE FOOL THAT HAS A FLUFFY TAIL! I PITY THE FOOL THAT CAN'T GET ME NO CHEAPER QUOTE ON MY CAR INSURANCE" Apparently it was funny, so people laughed. Anyway, I went on to say how I killed him with a wheely bin, but Aaron (arny) decided that he did it, and challenged me to a duel. So, we spent a little too long shooting and then both died. My last words: "Don't gimme no backtalk... sucka..." Evne thouh another group with Rachel McNair and Eleanor Kyle were amazing, we somehow won. Woo! So anyway we got like sweet things which I lost like immediately. There was a barndance on the saturday night, but I'm too tired to explain the rest of the weekend. It wa really good, and I made some new friends. 
Anyway, today we got a school photo taken, the only one since 1955. (Mentioned in the part of the wikipedia article that I edited. Woo!) It took ages and we had to stand for a very long while which smelt. Tomorrow I got on a biology field trip to Portaferry, so I should probably go get ready then sleep. Adios!
Labdoor (nah, too retro)
Well, I'm in Lower Sixth in a school called Belfast Royal Academy (posh, eh?) also wittily referred to as bra. Em, I would describe myself as a (sometimes scarily) happy person, with quirks abound. I'm trying to be honest and modest at the same time here, so positive attributes will be hard. I'm smart, somewhat impatient and laid back. I live in "Norn Iron" which most people won't have heard of, but I have so that doesn't really matter.
My favourite colour is green, because it's very calm and it's like, everywhere. My favourite food would probably be roast chicken or margherita pizza. Unlike the majority of 16 year olds, I don't drink
, which is a personal choice (although I wonder what I'd be like when plastered) and my birthday is the 16th of May. This year I'm studying Biology, Chemistry, French and Double Maths. I like all of these subjets, except for maths which I pretty much hate. Don't ask me why I'm doing it, because I won't be able to tell you. I want to go on to university and study something medical, but I have no idea what specific path I would like to saunter down.
I've had a blog before, and it was somewhat successful, but it sort of lived in my friends' blogs' shadow (hmm.. I wonder if I used apostrophes right there...Well, I don't have to care, because I dropped english!
) as his was more popular. Towards the end, people lost interest and so did I. So, this is like another one, that I'm taking up solo. I bet you no-one reads it until like next year. I won't say where my last blog was, I'll just keep you in suspense... oOoOo *cough* I'm trying really hard to type everything correctly, with spelling, punctuation, grammar and all that jazz. This is very hard for me; I'm correcting like every word. And I'm going to try really hard not to swear, as I am in real life currently (replacing each swearword with, well, "swearword") but bear with me until I find my feet.
Thanks very much for reading my blog, even though I may not be speaking to anyone. Adios!
Em Mitchell (Hmm... I need a better nickname...)
I just returned, exhausted, from Northern Ireland a few hours ago. The weekend was such a blend of beauty and despair that I am still trying to sort things out.
It was my last school field trip, and in some ways I am happy. It was nice to travel and not have to plan anything, but to travel with 30 other American students is overwhelming. I agree with writer David Sedaris that groups of Americans sound like trumpeting elephants. We don't do a good job of being low-profile.
Crossing the border into Northern Ireland was very uneventful. It is an open border, so it was similar to going into a new state, just with a different currency. First we went into Hillsborough, which is a historical town in Northern Ireland. I wasn’t too interested in it, but we did see a nice church and a very old fort. We spent the first night in Derry or Londonderry, depending on one’s political/religious persuasion. Catholics/Nationalists call it Derry, while Protestants/Loyalists call it Londonderry. The city is famous for its walls, which were basically a fortress to protect the Protestants. The city has a very violent past, and is adorned by wall murals on the sides of Catholic homes, depicting historical events. The murals themselves are very eerie. They have images from rioting, Nationalist leaders, and of home raids by Protestants. I took lots of pictures of wall murals this weekend. Most notably, Derry is the site of Bloody Sunday (hence the U2 song), which occurred just down the road from our hotel. The memorial for the day that a group of young Catholics were killed was very simple but heartbreaking. Most of the victims (I believe there were 14) were my age or younger. It is also amazing to think that the event happened in the last thirty years. It seems like it should have happened centuries ago.
After Derry, we took a pleasant break and went to the Giant’s Causeway. This site is definitely a wonder of the world. It is rock formations on the coast that look like stair steps. One would have to look at pictures to do it justice. We went on a beautiful, clear day, so we were lucky. After we went to the causeway, we traveled to Carrick-a-Rede, which is a rope bridge connecting two different cliffs. I was very proud of myself for crossing, because it was high up, and I don’t like the heights thing, especially crossing over an ocean. The views around the bridge were worth it though. We could even see Scotland from where we were.
The beauty of the Causeway was short lived, because our next stop was Belfast. The sections we were in of Belfast can only be described as uneasy. On Saturday, we went on a 7-hour walking tour of the city (hence, my exhaustion). While I knew the Belfast was a divided city, I had no idea how divided it really was. We went through both Catholic and Protestant areas numerous times, and walked alongside the “peace walls” which separate the neighborhoods. These walls are huge, so no one can throw anything over the walls and are covered by barbed wire. All the neighborhoods have murals everywhere. The murals are extremely beautiful, but their messages are so ugly. There were murals stating that the only way to peace is to rid the world of Catholics and vice versa. I cannot fathom how much hatred would brew inside of you to see read these messages daily. Other murals were of activists, the IRA, or of flags, etc. The neighborhoods were so run down, that the contrast between the vibrant, untouched murals was astounding. Apparently, the murals are sacred ground, so they are never touched by graffiti.
To give an example of how divided the city is, we caught taxis from a Catholic area of town into a Protestant area of town. It was only a five minute taxi ride, but two of the taxi drivers got lost, because they never venture into the Protestant section of town.
I felt very uncomfortable walking through the areas, even though my professors are from Belfast. It was clear that we weren’t welcome. Cars would cut as close to the curb as possible just to scare our group, and a group of boys even started throwing firecrackers at us. My friend Felix, who is Korean, would get yelled at because people thought he was Chinese, and they are very racist towards the Chinese there. After all the walking, I was so thankful to come back to the hotel. The thought that kept running through my head the entire day, as cliché as it was, was from the U2 song “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” that no one’s right and everybody’s wrong. It is just beyond my comprehension the amount of hatred that has transpired in the name of religion throughout the ages. It makes me never want to identify with a religious sect, except for Unitarians, maybe.
I learned so much from the experience, and I’m glad that we went when we did because riots had occurred in Belfast a few weeks ago, so we couldn’t have walked around.
Email me if you want to see my pictures of the murals.