Sunday/Monday- Cari

Wow!!!!!! This has been the most amazing time of my life. So starting on Sunday which if you have read the other posts will already know it's a free day with the family! We had a wee bit of a sleep in and then headed of to St George's Market. If you have read Rique's post it's a place with food and and little shops. We walked around for about an hour and had lunch in the market. It was a good deal of craic (fun) We then went to the Irish Folk Museum! By far the most fun i've had. It's a little old time town with people working in the houses and telling you about things. Its pretty big and all outside and an amazing experience. Kathy and I went through the houses making up stories about people who could have lived their. That night we had a bbq at Paul's, everyone brought some food and we had so much to eat! (Tori made fantastic potatoes and didn't let anyone get away with out taking a plateful)

So Monday!!!!!!!!!!! Today was another fantastic day, we started with the reception at the Lord Mayor's Office in city hall. It was such an honor to meet him and he was such an interesting man to talk to. He was wearing this 14 pound solid 18 karat gold necklace, absolutely breathtaking. About halfway through the meeting Rachel and I suddenly felt faint, we think it was from being in the corner, everyone was so nice and got us water. Before you know it we were back on our feet! After the meeting we had a tour of city hall. My favorite part was in the center of the 2nd floor was a giant hole that showed you the first floor, another beautiful piece of architecture.

After the tour we spoke with a Jewish member of the Rotary Club, it was interesting, but a bit sad for me because of how little the Jewish population is in NI, only about 50 people. We then had lunch with the wonderful Rotary Club! The food and company were exceptional. We also each had to give a small speech, I was so nervous and soo lucky that I got to go first! (sarcasm on the last part) The speech ended up being fine, I talked about the SOS bus and why I had applied for TABU, each person talked about a different part of the trip.

Then we headed to hear a talk from Sean O'Baoill. He talked about mediating the problems. We had a very interesting start to the talk where he tried to guess if we were Protestant or Catholic, he then guessed. His point was you can't always know, but his problem was most of us were Jewish =)! His speech continued to talk about his work in the conflict

Tonight we went bowling with the Roteracts (I hope I spelled that right), they are Rotary University students, also along came the host teens. It was a night full of fun, similar to every night. I obviously beat everyone in bowling... yah right. Jacob Humerick won my lane, he is kind of an amazing bowler. Then we had some pizza and played arcade games! It was another great day in Ireland =)

-Cari Kraus