SURPRISE

So I am back in Northern Ireland. After 2 flight cancellations, a 12 hour lay over, a 7 hour flight and a two hour drive I walked into to my house telling my Father to put the heating on (it was FREEZING) to which he stood shocked and then replied "you sneaky little..."...it was WONDERFUL. One thing you may not know about me is I love surprises and I love being the person people cannot guess. People rarely can pull one on me, but I have become quite the master. The entire day consisted of driving round to all my family and surprising them which was so cool. I had the tickets from October and thankfully no one here had ANY idea. Being home has been interesting, especially in the current social situation of Northern Ireland. If you are up to date with the BBC news then you will know that some members of the community are in uproar about a flag situation in Belfast, but this situation has opened an entire can of worms which Northern Ireland has buried instead of facing front on. Conflict is at a height and it has many of us praying that the troubles will not return to our small province. Frankly, the entire situation is, well, ridiculous.

The time has come that Northern Ireland needs to draw a line, and move on. This is so much easier said than done, and I understand that it will not just happen over night. So many people have lost people who they loved dearly in this fighting and I understand they will not want them to die for a lost cause, but we cannot let this behavior multiply again. Northern Ireland is suppose to be the place that will take the longest to recover from recession. Our tourism is going to plummet because the media are all over this and why would people see this as a nice place to go for a holiday? My generation is already becoming known as the generation to leave, with myself, I have friends who have left to America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, among any others. This cannot go on any longer, in a conversation with my Dad he said its been the same ever since he was born...in 1970...that's 42 years of this. So many of us are just down right tired of this. There's no time for it anymore, there is no place for this bigotry in society any more. More people will leave, and if jobs even do come, there will be nobody to take them, recession will remain and Northern Ireland will be sorry for the day they took it too far yet again. Protestant and Catholic mean something totally different now and in a conversation with two of my closest friends we have decided to reply to the question "Are you Catholic or Protestant?" with "I'm neither...I'm a Christian" just because of the way in which our society has turned.

This trip will be filled with conversation about the current state of Northern Ireland and different views people hold, which are huge and there is such variety. But there comes a time and place when a line needs drawn and people need to work together and in this time and place this seems like a romantic fantasy.