Returning students to Northern Ireland

          I’m glad we love love, because Valentine’s Day lasted forty hours for us, and the kiss at the end was arriving at St. Columbe’s Park House and meeting with twenty nervous and patient Oakgrove students who’d preceded us this Saturday night by half an hours under John Harkin’s orders to arrive at five thirty and await instructions.

        Mr. Magidman called down the house rules from the second floor, where our bunks are, as all the students huddled together down the stairs in the lobby — Doors locked at midnight! No smoking or drinking of any kind! — and then Oakgrove students waited some more while the two kitchen staff fed us lasagna, potatoes, slaw, salad, and curry. 

        Finally we gathered in the back room and separated to Roosevelt and Oakgrove corners, like middle schoolers at their first dance.

        Good evening, Oakgrove! Good morning, Roosevelt! Ms. Plesha stirred and spun them together like happy tops, and by the end, students were engaging loudly and animatedly, sharing slang, describing what they

feared their new friends might think or believe they knew about their country, and asking each other political but mostly cultural questions.

        Mr. Harkin, Oakgrove College’s principal and our very dear friend, drew the final circle and described his history with the program, putting off and agreeing to phone calls for months before realizing he had agreed to host 16 American kids in student homes and bring them to school for two weeks. Then we gave our numbers and a chance to explain them, Mr. Harkin himself a ten and full of joy for the occasion. Our students were delirious sixes and sevens, so excited, so exhausted.

        But somehow, the excitement seemed to prevail until lights out at eleven, filling these old high ceilings with tremendous clamor, when they finally left the mezzanine chairs and went to their bunks and finally went, hopefully and fully, to sleep.