Happy Mother's Day!
Viv got to play with kids from neighboring apartments, which she looooooooves so she bopped around while I cleaned and did laundry and I gave her the countdown warning we'd be leaving to do to the dreaded Tesco, though I told her we'd stop at a park before the store.
She played and played and played, the played some more. Then she dragged her feet and looked forlorn as we packed the bag with bags for the store. She cheered up as soon as we rounded the corner, though, so her short term memory worked in my favor.
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| These are photos from the internet. The place was PACKED today, which was awesome because Vivi had a lot of kids to play with while she was there. |
About Drumglass Park:
Drumglass Park is named after Henry Musgrave, a well-known landowner who was elected an Honorary Burgess of the City of Belfast in 1917. He lived in Drumglass House, one of the most prestigious houses in the Malone Road area.
Musgrave died on 2 January 1922, leaving six acres of his property to the city to be used as a public park or children's playground.
The park was initially named Drumglass Playcentre and it was opened to the public on 9 September 1924 by the Lady Mayoress of Belfast, Lady Turner. The house and site's remaining grounds now form part of Victoria College Girls' School.
Drumglass Park contains a private gate lodge, located near the Lisburn Road entrance to the park. It served as the original lodge for Musgrave's estate and was built in the Queen Anne revival style around 1882. You can still see the Musgrave family monogram above one of the doorways and on the sandstone tops of the gate pillars.
I sat on a bench in the sun next to a man who is from Lebanon, then Paris, then London, then Nottingham, now Belfast. His daughter is a year younger than Vivian and attends a different school in the area. He said he sees us every day on the walk to school and now will happily be able to call "good morning" to us. We had a lovely conversation about everything under the sun and I loved hearing him talk about the beauty of each place he lived. It's still funny when people comment on my accent. He said, "it's wonderful every time I hear an American accent! The sound is so smooth and flows." I'm not known for a nice speaking voice so I apologize to all of America for being your "voice" during today's conversation.
In Fulbright news , I'm taking a module with a woman I met a few weeks ago. She'd invited me to a reading group where I got to participate in a discussion with Professor Michael Freeman.
The module is Children's Rights - Research and Practice
I've been reading the following articles:
- Balancing a child's best interests and a child's views
- Minding the gap? Children with Disabilities and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- The future of children's rights
- Why it remains important to take children's rights seriously
- Incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in Law: A comparative review
- Children’s rights and research processes: Assisting children to (in)formed views
- Children’s rights and educational policy in Europe: the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
- 'Voice' is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
- The UNCRC and social workers' relationships with young children
And that's not the only exciting thing! Tomorrow educational stakeholders from Israel are coming to Queen's University Belfast to meet with members of the Centre for Shared Education. Each day is focused around different aspects of implementing Shared Education and I get to tag along for a great deal of it -- I'm tremendously eager!
Meanwhile, I have two websites done and with my administrators awaiting approval and I'm working on my third, which is for the Institute of International Education.
Huzzah!
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