Day FOUR: Getting to Work

Hello! This is my day four blog about Northern Ireland. Today, all the ambassadors started our individual work assignments with our respective interests. Two of the girls are working with local politicians, one is working at the local museum, one is working with the church, and myself and another girl are spending the day learning about the Down News. As a Communications major and writer for the school paper, it was great! Jim, the Editor-in-Chief, happily explained the lengthy process of his job and what he does to run the online paper. He explained the amount of politics and deals that go on behind the scenes which can make it difficult for small papers like the Down News.

I will be working with Jim throughout the week, and working on writing my own article for the online paper. My article will be about my experience traveling here, about the Saint Patrick Center, and my thoughts on Northern Ireland. Callan (the other ambassador working here) and I might even get the chance to go on a local radio station to talk about our experience as Young Ambassadors. Today we worked with Jim all day and started working on our articles for the week. He was nice enough to take us to get fish and chips and to get some much-needed coffee at Casta Coffee, which is like the European Starbucks. After that, we took a little detour to see the grave of Saint Patrick at Saint Patrick's Cathedral which was an amazing sight. We then headed back to the Down News office to work some more.

After our workday was done,  Jim took Callan and me back to the house where we met up with the others and Dr. Tim. We made dinner and all watch the new season of the British reality show "Love Island", which was a big hit. It was a long but great first day working with the newspaper and I'm excited to go back!