7 days

Jumping the gun a little bit (only by a couple hours), but in 7 days, I'm grabbing a plane from Cleveland to Chicago to London to Dublin, then a bus ride to arrive at my final destination: (London)Derry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

Holy Shit.

Now that that's out of the way, I guess I should give ya'll a hello and some background. I'm a current Junior at Baldwin Wallace University (about 15 mins outside of Cleveland) going on the Study Abroad trip of a lifetime: Peace, Reconciliation, and the Arts in Northern Ireland and South Africa.  Lots of fanciness for a way of saying that I'll be spending 3 and a half weeks in Northern Ireland [(London)Derry to be precise] and then 3 and a half weeks in Cape Town, South Africa. Talk about awesomeness.

For the past couple weeks (7 to be exact) my follow trip mates and I have been taking classes on the history, music, and literature of the two countries so that we can hit the ground running when we arrive. Not to mention the class bonding that we've done over the time spent in class.

The most interesting part about this program is an aspect they keep calling "service learning", and what I keep calling "short-term internship". What does that mean? Exactly what you think: hands-on learning in the community with actual people. For example, in Northern Ireland I am working with the Pat Finucane Center. It's a Center that has criminal justice/political science interests as a main focus, so I was all about having a service placement there. In South Africa, I'm not sure what I'm doing yet, only that our trip is working with a group called SHAWCO that is setting it all up. I guess it's not that big of a hurry since we'll be in Ireland for a couple weeks first, but it would still be nice to know what I'm going to be working with.

There has been a lot of talk in class of things that we have to do, certain sights to see, blah blah blah. But I think one of the experiences that I am really looking to is the chance to do a home stay in one of the townships on South Africa. We would be spending the weekend with an actual South African family (I write that as if it's all fake or something), living and sleeping and eating and absorbing life as if I lived with them all the time.  As scary as that sounds to some, it sounds fantastic to me! To have the opportunity to immerse myself like that in the culture is something I can't wait to experience.

Well, I'll leave it at that for the first post.  I don't want to give to much away for what the experience is going to be, er, whats been planned on the itinerary at least.

The only thing I actually know is that it's going to be nothing like I'm expecting, but everything I have been waiting for.