Here are some things I've done recently:

-Climbed a waterfal
-Biked through a national park
-Climbed part of a mountain
- Swam in a frigid but beautiful lake
-Gotten a free kayak ride from a friendly Irishman named Don
- Explored beautiful Belfast
- Met and enjoyed the company of the members of "Tricky Britches" a bluegrass busking band from Main
- Hung out a a pub where the live music included covers of "Hit me Baby One More Time" and "The Bear Necessities" with a guy from Belfast, one from Kentucky, and four girls from Georgia (state), France (x2), and Japan respectively. Following that ate fish and chips at a terrible chinese take-out place
- Saw my second rainbow and was put through and emotional rollercoaster of a day due to sporatic rain, bright sun, and hail. I have no idea what the weather is about here.
- Attended a Socialist Party meeting

After our day and a half in Kilarney Jasmine and I headed to Belfast where we stayed with a couch surfer buddy and his lovely mother. I have thoroughly been enjoying the sheer beauty of the countryside, the joy of live music and novelty of new places, however it was also really fascinating to be brought back to my interest in peacebuilding and politics while in Belfast. Be seeing the exhibit on The Troubles at the museum, as well as some of the murals in the Falls area and mostly through talking to our hosts Jasmine and I gained a much better understanding of what the conflict in Ireland was and to a degree is about. The family we were with was Catholic and the mother lived through all of the Troubles in the heart of Belfast. She works for Oxfam and has moved a lot. The first thing I noticed about her son, our host, was that he was wearing a "Palestine" bracelet. It's amazing the parallels and also the differences between the situations here. The international section of the murals I talked about earlier had two full murals dedicated to Palestine: one seemed more about the right to return and justice in general whereast the other was of Guernica and had a missile labeled "Gaza 2009" next to it.

I'm still very much mulling over all that I saw-- the hunger stikers, the role of the IRA, the deeper historical reasons for the conflict, etc. So I'm really not drawing in conclusions yet, but it's still fascinating and perhaps has some lessons that could be used.

For now I'm going to do laundry for the first time in a long time and then enjoy the comforts of being at a seaside home 10 minutes out of Dublin!