2007!

New Year's Eve--Belfast style! I rang in the new year at the home of one of the programme staff members with whom I work. Four of my fellow long-term volunteers were there, too, along with one of the short-term volunteers. In the first photo are Jason, Daniel, Alan, and Niki. The next photo is Daniel, with the odd expression on his face. I wanted to catch a candid photo of him, but my camera took so long to focus, that he ended up posing in a very silly way! Hehe... I would add other pictures from the evening, but not everyone knows/has given permission for me to post their photos on an open website.

The night was lots of fun! Our hostess supplied wine and yummy food (which was good, cause I didn't really eat dinner that night!) and a place to sleep, even if it was the floor of the attic. The six of us volunteers had a slumber party up there, and in the morning we tried to get an Ulster fry delivered up to us for breakfast! No such luck. Couldn't even get a hot cup of coffee. So we stumbled down the fold-out stairs, made ourselves look as human as possible, and made our own coffee or tea. Some headed home, some to Ballycastle, and I remained in Belfast for one more night.

When my holiday break was over, I returned to Ballycastle, and all of the volunteers went for a retreat up on the mountain, Knocklayd. Don't worry, we weren't camping or anything silly and outdoors like that! We stayed in a house and had beautiful food. As a group, we were all supposed to climb the mountain one afternoon, but as I was sick with a horrible cold, I stayed back and played a board game with the other lazy people.

After our retreat, I was off for the weekend, then I worked the next 12 days straight, basically. I might have had an afternoon off somewhere in there, but I always had another group to prepare for, so I never really got to turn myself off and stop working. I worked with two American groups, and decided that I don't like Americans! Just kidding! I like Americans; I just didn't come to Northern Ireland to work with them all the time. Oh well. Daniel and I worked with the second group of Americans, and we were in control! We planned an delivered the program for them. It was definitely a learning experience! We didn't fail, but we didn't pass with flying colors, either, I don't think. But I'd love to try again sometime.

After the Americans, I worked with two primary schools groups. The first was at their school; the second was on-site here. In both cases, classes from both Catholic and Protestant schools were meeting together to get to know each other and learn about things like friendship and their own identity. Both groups were exhausting and fun! So full of energy they were, so empty of energy was I, especially after the long week I'd had! So today (my first full day off in two weeks) I slept until 12:30pm and didn't get up until 1:30pm. I feel so much better.

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On a totally unrelated note, I finally got some pictures of our Thankgsiving dinner! I meant to write about it a long time ago, but I never had the photos to go with it, so I didn't! So imagine it is 2 months ago....

Crystal, Justin, Emma, (mid-term volunteers) and I cooked a Thanksgiving feast for 40+ people! We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, fresh rolls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie,and a cranberry parfait. And we pretty much made it all ourselves. We had help with the turkey and the gravy, but that's it. And nothing flopped! Nothing was burnt! Everyone loved the food, decorations, and the event as a whole.
In the first photo is Justin pretending to take a huge spoonful of whipped cream while Crystal is meticulously working on her cranberry parfait.
The second photo is of me brushing my fresh bread rolls with butter as they come out of the oven. Yum! The third photo is of Emma showcasing the beautiful decorations that

she worked so hard on, after helping with the food as well! The huge U-shaped tables should give you some idea of the number of people that we fed. Yet we still had to pull up additional chairs to the table, as people just kept coming! The last picture is of the desserts table. There you can see what remained of the three desserts at the end of the meal. Not much!