October 3 , 2004

Since I've settled in, I've had a lot of fun getting to know some of the other international students. Because Queens is one of the more prestigious schools in Europe, there’s a very large proportion of international students.

My roommate, Marion, is from France. Communication hasn’t been easy, but we have survived so far with a lot of body language and a really thick English-French dictionary. My next door neighbors are from Finland. We all joke that we could solve the world’s problems by holding UN summits in our house common room.

There are plenty of Americans around also, but we are all, of course, overwhelmed by the thousands of Irish students who joined us this past Monday for the first day of classes.

I was particularly intrigued by a conversation I had with Adele, a local Irish girl who is in my politics class. Adele is a first-year student from Bangor, a small village only about 25 minutes from Belfast. To her, though, Belfast is farther than she has ever travelled and she admitted to me that she is always homesick and feels so far away from her roots.
 

I learned that this is not uncommon for a lot of the students from more rural areas. For many, a half-hour trip is a huge emotional and cultural journey, perhaps even more so than the thousands of miles I travelled from the States.

Yesterday, a large group of us took a bus up to the northern coast for some sightseeing. We had lunch on a beautiful cliff that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and then went to the famous Dunluce Castle, which has been inhabited by several famous historical figures, including Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, and Oliver Cromwell.