This blog documents journals of one of the participants in Public Achievement's International Youth Camp in Northern Ireland.
9:00 AM
Seems like everyone is catching a cold here! It started with Lenita, right on the first day I think, and then it was Karmel, and then I don’t know who… but today it got to my dear roommate! She woke up feeling very ill and couldn’t go for the run!
I had gone to bed at 4:00 AM, after the most wonderful night spent singing
it started with Ellen singing some old Irish songs in her beautiful voice, with Paul and the rest joining in… then Ciaran and Colleen got those great song books for everyone there in the foyer, and we just went on and on singing all the favourites and the classics. Even yours truly who always considered her voice to be a public hazard, hopped in enthusiastically and went as far as giving a short solo performance of an Arabic song!!! Could it be the effect of the two Bailey’s?
Today during breakfast we sang Happy Birthday to Ana from Croatia! She’s the only person who’s celebrating her birthday during the camp. We were planning to bake a cake for her and have a nice little celebration, but she mentioned earlier that they’re baking cake for their Croatian/Serbian cultural night, which is this evening!
I have to get ready for the Belfast trip… more to come later!
23:00
I think it’s really fascinating how food is an integral part of any cultural presentation. The psychology and culture of food is really worth observing and studying, and I find it particularly nice when a group goes through the trouble of cooking the food themselves instead of bringing it ready-made! You know that stupid saying that goes something like “you eat to live you don’t live to eat”! I don’t like it (obviously!!) I think there’s more to food than just supplying our basic nutritious needs… a lot of soul, creativity, culture, and even history goes into it! That’s another reason why I hate fast food… because I don’t think food is just meant to be devoured quickly, but rather appreciated and enjoyed… and it’s more delightful when it’s prepared with deliberation! It’s interesting when you listen to each group’s introduction of the authentic food they’ve got; there’s always some sort of a story behind. I loved the herbal tea that the South African group had as part of their evening on Monday, and I really enjoyed the Croat/Serbian Cultural evening tonight. I found it interesting when Diana was explaining how people there ALWAYS greet each other with hugging and kissing, and that it is NOT sexual harassment
just the way people are! It reminded me of the game we played the first day; Cultural Confusion… now that was a very very interesting exercise. We were divided into 9 tables, and each table had a set of rules for a card game. While playing no one was allowed to communicate verbally, then at the end of each round, the winner moves to a higher table (smaller number), and the loser goes to the next table. The trick that we weren’t all aware of at first, was that each table had rules with slight differences… so newcomers got very confused! Some would just play along like everyone else, but some others, like me, would assume that everyone on the new table had actually misunderstood the rules and would start using every possible method to explain to them that THEY GOT IT WRONG
only to find out in the end that they were playing by a different set of rules which I wasn’t aware of!