My First Former War Zone, Halloween, and the Giant´s Causeway

This is the first picture I took in Belfast--its one of the famous murals that are everywhere (and illegal) in Belfast that are left over from "The Troubles" that officially ended in 1998. This is pretty close to Petes house in the Protestant area known as the village.
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So I got to Belfast late Saturday night with instructions of how to get to Pete´s house by either bus or taxi.  At the center of town I asked a bus driver if I could get to Pete´s place by walking or bus and the first thing he said is "oh you don´t want to walk there this time of night."  The Village, near the end of Donnegall road was one of the fiercely Protestant and Loyalist neighborhoods during the Troubles, and still carries with it a bad reputation.  There are murals up all over the place, and the curbs are painted red white and blue--you can see Union Jack flags flying in front of some of the houses.  I found Pete´s house just fine, and he was nice enough to take me out for a pint.

Breakfast in a Belfast Cafe.
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Pete is an interesting guy.  He´s a professor of Modern Theology, and he´s the leader of a project called IKON which is a fascinating project in...well something.  I will in no way do it proper justice because I´m still not quite sure what the purpose of IKON is, but it´s an experiment in something called Theo-Drama.  It taps into the heritage of the mystics of early Christianity (especially around Alexandria in Egypt) which Pete says is the antidote to modernism.  IKON meets about once a month (I think), and focusses on giving people a mystical/divine experience through drama, music, art, and ritual.  I was lucky enough to be there on the Sunday night when a service was happening.  The one that I went to was all titled "Second Coming," and was a service where the people running it kept apologizing that IKON was running late, faking improvised content, and ended with a really short comment by Pete that in the Judeo-Christian Heritage there´s a great theme of waiting expectantly for God to come.  It was, in effect, and entire service of waiting.  I´m still not sure what to think of it, but I like some of the ideas it´s running with.  It´s very creative and intersting.  IKON normally meets in a pub or a bar on a Sunday night (though the one that I went to was in a church) and is made up of a lot of people that don´t really fit into a standard church environment well.  Pete´s really into post modernism, and I´m not, but it was still really good to hear what he´s thinking about cus he´s a really smart guy.  Pete let me crash at his house for what turned out to be a much longer stay in Belfast than I was planning.  Do to some hiccups, I was in Belfast from the 29th till the afternoon of the 1st of November, which turned out to be too much time.  Part of the problem is that Belfast doesn´t really have a lot to do inside of Belfast.  Another part is that there were hardly any tourists of my age that time of year.  But I feel like I learned a lot in Belfast, and had a lot of time to think.  Belfast is a city that´s really up and coming.  The´ve been doing a ton of work on the downtown sector, housing prices are skyrocketing, and buisness is booming.  It´s coming up nicely, and starting to become a tourist hot spot.  But it´s still in its early stages.  Belfast got delayed by a huge, 30 year long fight over whether or not it would join Ireland or stay with the UK, the result being an apparent win for the loyalists.  It´s still got the scars of that fight all over the place, but they´re fading quickly.  The fences are still up, and so are gates that seperated Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, and the murals are still all over the place, but as a whole it seems like something the people are putting behind them.  I also got to see halloween.  Belfast goes absolutely nuts for Halloween.  There´s parties everywhere, EVERYBODY dresses up and goes out to wander around on the streets, and there´s a huge party in the city center with fireworks and music.  Totally should be done by a large group of young people....instead of alone like I was.  But it was still fun to watch everything.  I couldn´t believe about half of the girls´costumes.  It´s a wonder that they didn´t die from pnemonia.  I was wearing a sweatshirt, a jacket, and jeans, and I still was cold.  That´s it for Belfast.  I went back to Dublin for 1 more night, had a great time with people from the hostel, and then jetted out on the 2nd to Madrid.  I´m here till tomorrow when I go up to Ponferada to work with my parents on a project in a church.  And then....well, there´s something extra special coming up in a few days.  I´ll let you know about it when I get there.  Miss and love you all, -Justin

I´m tired of pull quotes!