Let it be said officially: I LOVE HALLOWEEN! For those of you whom I so regretfully forgot to share with, I posted some photos from the past month online so if you're sick of reading about my experience you can just look at some pretty pictures.
I've had a great week, off Tuesday through Thursday and in the kitchen over the weekend, followed by an awesome Halloween celebration on Sunday night. Andy and Mary Lynne had to go home to Texas for a few weeks and generously allowed us use of their sweet ride, the only automatic car I've seen so far here, which they bought from a friend for £10. Moby is a cute little Daihatsu with enough room for approximately 3.5 people plus a purse or two. Riding with Andrew to take them to the airport at 4AM, Mary Lynne's suitcase wouldn't fit in the trunk so I sat with my feet above my face after we squished it into the back seat. On the way back, Andrew and I stopped at the bakery in town, which thankfully opens at 7AM, to get some eclairs and enjoy them greedily back in Coventry. On Wednesday I bravely took to the wheel on the wrong side of the road and went on a mini road trip for the day with Valentin and Anthony. We had an amazing time and it was just so nice to have the freedom to do what we wanted, stop and go, and not have any agenda but our own. We stopped first at Murlough Bay, a gorgeous inlet just five minutes down the road from Corrymeela. We climbed on all the rocks, ran over the rolling hills into the wind, spent 15 minutes just lying on the grass on top of a hill jutting into the ocean. Very picturesque. It was a beautiful day, very sunny and also very windy but a lovely crisp autumn wind. We continued on, planning to stop at Torr Head, where my host-friend took me on the way up to Corrymeela my first day, a scenic view of the coast, cliffs and an abandoned coast guard station. As I slowly creeped down the very steep hill, we detected a funny smell coming from the car and figured it would be better not to test Moby's limits and turn around. Thinking that the smell came from overusing the brakes down the hill, we turned off the car to let it cool a bit. At that moment a boy came alongside us and started chatting before heading downhill and returning behind a flock of sheep! It was very stereotypical for Ireland and all I can say about it is that if you've never witnessed the way a flock of sheep looks from behind, do yourself a favor and get on it. Seeing their little puffball tails wagging as they walked was maybe the best part of the whole day.
After turning around following the sheep parade, we headed east towards Cushendall, where a combination of my excellent sense of direction and my ability to accurately read signs (which is more than I can say of the boys;) led us to Glenariff Forest. The woods were lovely, as the leaves had all turned bright yellow and orange, the most colorful leaf changes I've seen here so far. There is a wooden walkway along the river there, with several small and medium-sized waterfalls along the way. The park was practically empty, which was very nice, though the gorgeous weather we'd had earlier gave way to heavy rain about two thirds of the way through our 3km walk. Irish weather is a fickle being, and while we tried to wait out the rain under a little shelter, it became clear that it wasn't letting up soon, so we sacrificed ourselves and just got wet.
It was a great day and I was shocked at how easy it was to drive on the other side of the road! Thank goodness the car was automatic--no way could I have learned stick and driven on the left! Every few minutes I would panic and check if I was on the left, but I always was.
Another fun thing I did on my time off was help Rachel Craig, one of Corrymeela's awesome facilitators and the wife of a past center director, fix and create larger-than-life puppets to be carried in the annual Ballycastle Halloween parade. This mainly involved me and Roland working with a few teenagers from a local youth club painting cardboard with poster paint and figuring out how to attach parts like Frankenstein's ears to the giant figure. It was nice to be crafty again and be around other artistically-enthused people. Several weeks ago, a package arrived from my mother that contained a full Dorothy costume, complete with ruby slippers and Toto too. I somehow managed to convince several other LTVs to join me in my Wizard of Oz extravaganza, despite the fact that several of them had never seen the film! We had a movie watching party for those outside the loop and the rest was history. Andrew, with his beard, was the cowardly lion, lanky Sari was the scarecrow, and Valentin, with his...Germanity(?) was the tin man. Michaela was the Wicked Witch and Jeni, in Kat's absence, was Glinda, while Anthony was the wizard and Roland refused to be a flying monkey in favor of being a stupid mummy. (A mummy! when he could have been a flying monkey! puh-leeze!)
Valentin spent all afternoon in arts and crafts working on his costume which was absolutely hilarious not just in how much it made him look like the tin man, but also in the extent to which it constricted his movement, such that he could barely fit in the car and couldn't help but look like he was doing the robot all the time.
In any case, we arrived at the starting point of the parade, where Rachel was busy turning on the lights that illuminated the puppets, getting Andrew and Anthony strapped into the gigantic monster figures they carried and making sure everything was as it should be. There were little kids in costume everywhere, and because we arrived minutes before we started, it wasn't until we actually started walking that I realized we were the first in the parade behind the drummers! And I was at the front of the first puppet! The night was lovely, not too cold or windy and I carried this two-headed sea king thing with Michaela, Roland and Valentin. Every two minutes Val would turn his head to me so I could adjust the funnel wrapped in tinfoil and duct taped to his hood that composed his hat because he couldn't bend his arms to reach his face! So funny. It was such a lovely event, not too many spectators at the start but by the time we reached the main drag the streets were pretty full of people and everyone came out of the bars and restaurants to watch. Many kids and families just joined the parade as we walked by, so that by the end there were at least twice the number of marchers as when we started. In the middle of the town we were joined by stilt walkers and giant skeletons, and the three people holding the giant spider, including Jeni, would charge the crowd every once in a while, sending kids running! The street lights gave everything a yellow glow and even as the puppets became unwieldy and uncomfortable, we all couldn't stop smiling, especially when the occasional kid went, "Look! It's Dorothy and the Tin Man!" We also saw almost all of the staff from the center with their families, and they would wave and get almost as excited as we did when we saw each other. Walking behind the drum corps, we were all dancing and walking to the rhythm, especially Franc and Anthony, who is a talented drummer in his own right. As we reached the end of the parade at the sea front, we put down our creatures and danced in the middle of the large space that had been cleared for the parade participants. The MC of the evening began to announce prizes for various categories--paraders, kids costumes, etc., when we suddenly heard that the prize for best costume went to...Valentin the Tin Man! He was so thrilled but could hardly move so he just kept jumping up and down and flapping his straight arms. He won £25! Amazing. After putting the puppets away (and after Jeni picked up the spider only to realized her handle had been placed in dog shit on the ground), we got in the car and drove back to Coventry, but not before I accidentally propositioned Peter, a community member who lived on site for 20 years, by asking if he wanted a ride (word to the wise: it means something very different here). We sat around for a while, taking our faces off and laughing about the evening's events, and then settled into bed before the clock struck twelve.
This was the first Halloween celebrated by more than a few of the volunteers--in fact, only Andrew Jeni and I had really celebrated it before. It was great to share such a fun experience of a first Halloween with them. Definitely one of the most fun things we've done here so far.
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