Arcadia Ireland

There are a lot of things that we pride ourselves on here at Arcadia and togetherness is certainly one of them. We promote this in many ways, but one of the main things we love are shared experiences. We are lucky in Ireland as we are a small island. This means that students studying in Cork can easily hop on a bus and come up to Dublin to meet friends they’ve made in UCD. It also means that when we have a trip to Belfast, it’s easily accessible to students regardless of where they spend most of the semester. On top of this, Arcadia ensures regional interaction and last month we saw students from England, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland mingling over the shared knowledge of a country that was torn in two.

Northern Ireland’s history is incredibly interesting but also one that is very sad. Social, political and religious beliefs tore families apart and saw many people lose their lives or loved ones. This past is one that is still prevalent in the North with the infamous ‘Troubles’ being an all too memorable recent part of history. However, this history is now used to unite people and two buses and sixty six American students made sure that it was a history that would not be forgotten.

If you managed to read my previous blog about what we were planning on getting up to, you would have known that the Titanic Exhibition, Giant’s Causeway, the Dark Hedges from Game of Thrones and two days full of tours and talks with history professors were what lay ahead of us. Hopefully you also followed @arcadiaabroad on Snapchat so that you got to see how jam packed the weekend was. Just in case you missed it though, we have included an album full of pictures for you to see. From The breath-taking Causeway to the signing of the Peace Wall, check out what our students from across the region got up to on our three day togetherness extravaganza!