Today began like every other day with class in the morning followed by lunch. Today’s class focused on the communication side of the course. The class I’m taking here is both a political science class and a communications class. The political science part of the class helps fill us in on the history of the conflict and also the politics surrounding the reconciliation process, where as the communications side of the class aims to teach us about the elements of dialogue and how symbols and language play into the reconciliation process. I enjoyed the class today because I don’t have any background in communications so it was interesting to learn about the conflict from a different academic perspective.
After lunch (meat and potatoes again haha) Catherine, Anna, Rachel and I decided to do the mural walk in the Bog Side, which is a Catholic/Nationalist neighborhood. Murals have played a large part in the public portrayal of a group’s suffering. Both the protestant/loyalist side and the catholic/nationalist side use murals to depict their beliefs, seminal events in their history and prominent figures in their community. I enjoyed looking at all the murals and learning about their significance. It was so interesting for me to see how prominent a role art has played in this conflict.
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| people fighting in the street. |
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| Participants in a hunger strike |
Tonight is another low key night for me. I’m going to be working on the journals we have to write for class and studying for our test on Wednesday. Please feel free to message me on facebook, comment here, or email me if you have any questions about the conflict in general or about anything I’ve written about so far.
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| A depiction of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland |
Sounds like you are having a really fun time! Cold and windy...I can sympathize with the cold being in Finland, but windy makes it even worse. Have fune!
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