Heading to IRELAND !!

How fortunate I am to travel abroad again. This time I will be going to Ireland with eighteen Liberal Studies majors (future elementary education teachers) for a three-week interim class, December 31, 2009-January 22, 2010. We'll be using Mary Immaculate College, part of the University of Limerick system, as our main base. We'll travel and stay in Galway and Dublin as well. The girls are excited--buying warm boots, sweaters, and rain gear--this will be a climate change from Southern California! Here, if it rains, students call in "sick." Can't happen in Ireland, or we'd probably never meet!

I'll keep this blog daily (or so), posting photos and collected memories. This is certain to be a memorable trip. Several girls asked if the Guinness Factory was on the itinerary. And, when I asked in class what they thought would be the most interesting part of the study tour. . .several nodded enthusiastically when one girl said, "Meeting cute guys in the pubs." Ah, life. Ah, Ireland. Erin Go Braugh!

Obama January 20, 2009

I was in Cyprus, watching the Inaugural events on television with Greek Cypriot and American friends. The images were clear: millions of people in Washington, D.C. and beyond, watching, moved by the moment; the emotional responses, even in our group, to the visual "change" in American politics; the hope that united us all, that our world will be a different place because of our choices. Of course, the Greek voiced-over descriptions of the ceremony, speeches, and swearing made the particulars of language unintelligible. But, it didn't matter. It was a patriotic moment, shared across the continents.

On the evening of July 16, 1969, I was in Zurich, Switzerland, standing in front of an electronics shop, watching Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon. I didn't understand the comments from the television screen then, either, but I was aware that I had become part of a bigger, world community. And, I was so very proud to be an American.

There is something wonderfully poetic about sharing these events away from my home, my home town, home state, home country. I realize that we are not where we live, but how we feel.

Right now, Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American" is reverberating through my being, and for the moment, I'm a member of the Stars and Stripes brigade, waving my flag, standing tall, hopeful for the future--for us all.