Day 10- First Time Ever Being Discriminated Against for My Faith

Hey folks,

Well, today was an experience! It was a free day, meaning no classes or tours. Lots of students went down town and I staid home alone with the cook (who is normally a professor at my school) and worked on homework. Since we were the only two people here, we decided to go see "The Great Gatsby" at the cinema in the evening.

We took a bus downtown (seriously love this transportation system). We walked through the city center to the cinema in the mall. To my surprise, the monument at the center of the town was swarmed with dozen of rowdy teenagers. I haven't seen large groups of teenagers since I arrived.

The movie theater was different. For example, they do not put any butter on their popcorn. Instead you can choose to get sweet popcorn (kettle corn) or salted popcorn. GET THIS: They also had Ben & Jerry (FROM VERMONT) ice cream, and their special of the deal was the Vermontster. How cool is that!?!?

Another weird thing: the previews for the movie were 35 MINUTES LONG!!! That's insane! And very few of the ads were actually for movies. The vast majority were shoes, plays and mall sales. Weird, right?

So, since we didn't plan on the long delay we completely missed our bus. No biggie right? We made our way over to the place where taxis come and get people leaving the cinema. We had to pass through the city center again and it was revolting at the amount of trash and broken glass liquor bottles the teenagers had left. It completely reaked of alcohol.

Anyway, we get to the taxi station and this is really where my story begins. The only cab left was an old black cab. Beautiful, just like the ones that you see in old movies about London. The taxi driver was an old, plump man. He talked to us for LITERALLY 3 minute about us. Asked where we were from and what we were doing, ext.

We got in the car and he began to drive. Quickly the prof I was in began to shift uncomfortably. I've been down to Belfast city center several times and began to notice we were not going back our usual way. In fact, I had no idea where we were going. He took us down unfamiliar streets and on the highway. I began to feel uncomfortable. And, of course, being the dramatic person I am began to picture myself on some show about an innocent American girl who was abducted by a foreign cab river. Great, just great.

As I looked over at my prof, she didn't seem to be uncomfortable this way. Instead she was looking up at the cost monitor and quickly counting out more and more pounds and shaking her head. I looked up and I was shocked, 20 pounds and we weren't even there yet! This is just over $30!

When we pulled onto our street my prof asked us to be dropped over earlier than our drive. Again, this was strange. When we got out my prof explained that the black cabs were driven by Catholics. By asking questions and the part of town we were being dropped off in, the Catholic cab driver figured that we were Protestant. This means that he not only charged us more but took us the LONGEST possible route home. Yup, only because we were Protestant.

Surprisingly at first I wasn't that offended. I actually thought it was "cool". Weird, I know. Since Ireland has had SO MUCH struggle between Catholics and Protestants (gosh, one o the reasons the country split was because of it) it was neat for me to feel like I had been part of the struggle. Although really, I know I wasn't part of the struggle I saw a very slight part of it.

I can't claim to have been persecuted. There are believers around the world who loose family members, homes, receive lashes and also lose their life because of their faith. I only lost a small amount of money.

So, that's my story. GET THIS, the IRONY OF IT ALL: Tomorrow I'm going to a Catholic church, maybe I'll see the guy there ;-)