Our first few days flew by in a whirlwind of excitement and new experiences. We made new friends and tried new things and settled in quite well to a life here together. Unfortunately towards the end of our journey peoples' nerves began to fray a bit as the close proximity brought out some stress on our tender relationships. I was worried for a time that this whole trip, as amazing as it was, might not end well.
Then today happened. We had a wonderful experience of joy and healing in an unlikely place that I think brought us all closer back together. We went to a pub. No worries, it was a very sophisticated pub, in fact it was reservation only, and the food there was amazing. But that wasn't what was so great about it. It was the music there that did it. It also wasn't just the music itself, it was how the music was preformed. We didn't just sit there and placidly listen. The band had us interact with them, and more importantly with each other. They had us singing along, clapping, holding hands and swaying together. As I looked around our table everyone was smiling and laughing and once again really enjoying time with each other. No harsh words were said, no hard glances thrown and no thorns were spoken. It was just good old fashioned fun and it gave of a us all back our positive frame of mind and cemented out relationships.
Throughout this whole trip I noticed that everyone changed a bit, we all found a piece of ourselves here and found a bit of each other too. I'm proud to be a fellow pilgrim on this trip and I'm glad to say that we left as children but we're coming back as adults, so watch out America, j2a 2014 is coming back!.. We'll.. Right after some well deserved sleep. It is 12:43 here after all and yes I mean at night.
Good night from Dublin,
Summer Browning