Sav: This morning Meaghan woke up early to go for a run. I did not. I instead slept in, showered and blearily researched some things about Germany we needed to know with a strong cup of instant hostel coffee and the 7th toast and butter breakfast I’ve had this week.

Meaghan: I think it’s way too early in this trip for me to feel like this, but f*** toast. Seriously. When we ate breakfast Savanna looked at me and asked “are you okay?” And I said “yes. It’s just the toast.”

Anyways I’m done complaining for now…I went for a run around Ormeau park. I didn’t feel great, which doesn’t bode well for the Mooathon on Saturday. I guess that’s what a diet of beer and toast will do! But the run will be great anyways! (S: she definitely gritted her teeth there.)

After my run we went to the Ulster Museum (as suggested by Gordy, thank you again Gordy!). We went through the exhibit on Northern Irish history which I really enjoyed. In my early modern England class we spoke a bit about Ireland, but it was not super in depth and it had a lot to do with Cromwell. The exhibit filled in a lot of the gaps in the history we’ve been picking up here in Belfast and around Ireland over the past week or so.

S: I really enjoyed the natural history area of the museum (surprise surprise). There was a lot of hilarious taxidermy including one over-stuffed arctic fox with crossed-eyes, but also a lot of really well done taxidermy. I freaked out seeing the Thylacine and the Dodo bird, as they are kind of legends in the extinct species world. ALSO THERE WAS A MUMMY. That doesn’t seem like the craziest thing, everyone’s seen a mummy right? Right? WRONG. Takabuti was unwrapped and…. mostly preserved. It was unlike any mummy I had ever seen before. They had even 3-D reconstructed a model of her head so we could see what she looked like in life. Meaghan was speechless.

M: IT WAS JUST SO OLD. I couldn’t stop staring at it. There was even hair. I liked the natural history part too, but mostly because of the excited hand-flapping Savanna would do when we walked into a new room. She was very excited and told me all about ceolocanths (they are weird, go look them up) and also about bird songs vs bird calls…I did not know those were different things.

We were starving and went to Boojum for a giant, face-sized burrito. I couldn’t quite eat the whole thing, but I gave it a good go! (S: she was literally one bite away.) We were so full we could barely move…until we got off our butts and went to get dessert and a coffee. By this point we were suffering from a serious case of post-pranial somnolence so went back to the hostel and passed out for a little bit.

S: Actually for like 3 hours. Then we got up and got a little dressed up to go to a live Theater show at The Lyric called St. Joan. It was supposed to be a modern adaptation of Joan-of-Arc’s story… But it wasn’t? It’s so hard to explain because it was old language and the old story with kings and witchery and Knights… But they were all wearing suits and were in an office. The entire time. They just moved desks around to denote different places. Also the intensity was almost uncomfortable because they were screaming and crying… But in an office. I don’t know I understood the story and got the point but it was so odd!

M: I liked the intensity, the main actress was so good! The thing I didn’t get was how the only part that was adapted was the clothing and the office. They didn’t do anything else with it so it just felt out of place. Maybe there’s some artsy message that went right over my head here…it was fun to go to a show though! We walked around afterwards looking for food and settled on some pizza, which we brought back to Global Village hostel and then went to bed.

Xoxo

S&M