This is my second time staying in Armagh. If you are a diehard Armagh Project blog veteran, you may remember me from my bombastic blog run from Armagh Project 2013. And now I’m here again, as promised at the close of my last post in that glorious canon, though not in quite the way I expected. I come to you now as a teacher assistant, assisting the program in whatever ways I am needed.

After arriving in Armagh, jet lagged and struggling to cover up my travel funk, I took our new members on a tour to that down-the-hill produce bastion, Sainsbury’s. Something struck me about Armagh from that walk: things were not the same.

Since returning from my 2013 trip abroad, I have held an image of Armagh in my mind as an unchanging model of a town with all the dolls set in their places and the props arranged just so. But in the 23 months since my departure, Armagh had the audacity to change some things. A new phone store had opened. The Australian restaurant by the AMmA Centre had relocated to a much more prominent location on the street at the bottom of the hill. The Youth Hostel has a refrigerator that works and lights up. There’s a garden and posters lining the massive fences around the Armagh Police Station. There seem to be more people everywhere; livelier.

I did not like this, which is funny coming from somebody who bemoaned the lack of action of Northern Ireland and, in general, the UK over several of my previous blog posts. I begged for redress of the walls between neighborhoods and to wind back the militarization of the state. I joked with my peers about how everything closes in Armagh at 7pm, then privately nauseated myself considering that it was likely a side effect from decades of curfews and paramilitary violence. And yet, I’m here wringing my hat over a few stores moving and new household appliances.

Maybe I’m just afraid for how drastically Europe seems to be changing. David Cameron has been increasingly posturing toward nationalist and fascist policies since the Tory landslide in the UK parliamentary elections. Xenophobic populist parties have risen on the backs of white supremacy and nazism in France, Sweden, and Greece, among others. The Greek people are contemplating an exit from the European Union in response to draconian austerity policies that disproportionately disadvantage poorer nations to the benefit of booming economies. Can’t Armagh stay in its bubble, just stay Armagh?

I’m likely also afraid for more selfish reasons. Throughout the application process, I kept thinking, “This is going to ruin what you have.” My friends, my accomplishments, my memories, they’re all under assault from the label of a new baggage check room by the hostel front desk. Even the air, being its normal temperature instead of the balmy 80 degrees of the 2013 heat wave, is challenging the permanency that I hoped for in my treasured recollections of that life-altering month. What else isn’t permanent? What else will change?

I don’t really think coming back to Armagh will ruin those memories. I’m being hyperbolic for the sake of blog post intrigue. But not really. I miss my friends, even after seeing one of them pretty regularly since the trip and half of them in Chicago just a few weeks ago. I miss my picture of what Armagh was to me. But I also liked the real Irish wind on my face when I stepped off the plane onto the runway. The new Armagh crew is solid, surely full of future friends. As bitter as it can be, it is good to be back in this magical place. Now, stay tuned for the magic.