Hurling, Chilling, & Trip to Hill of Tara & Knowth

Wednesday night our program went to a Hurling Match. It was the Under 21 Leinster Final, Dublin v. Offaly. It was pretty awesome. Really intense and both teams played spectacularly. The crowd was huge and really into it. Dublin won and apparently it was their first time winning the final in 35 years. Afterwards I grabbed a drink with Steven, Krishna, Kai, Denise, Paulo and Natasha at this pretty cool bar. The next two days I pretty much did nothing but my homework. Saturday I was supposed to go to Wales with Kai, Steven and Aimee however those plans fell through. Instead we went to the Irish Film Institute and saw the John Cassevedes film, "Love Streams". It was interesting to say the least. Then on Sunday we rented a car and drove up to the Hill of Tara and Newgrange. At Tara it started raining on us so we didn't stay long. Then when we got to Newgrange, all the tours were sold out. So instead we went to Knowth, which the last time I was here was closed because they were still excavating it. But now they are done and it is open. It was pretty cool. Knowth, like Newgrange, is an ancient burial mound dating back 5,000 years. It was built by the Neolithic peoples that lived on Ireland at that time. Knowth has two entrances, one which opens towards the sun during sunrise on the Equinoxes and the other towards sunset on the Equinoxes. In addition to the main huge burial mound, it had 17 satellite mounds surrounding it that were significantly smaller. The cool thing about Knowth was that later (like 3,000 years after it was built) the Vikings and then the Normans lived on top of it. The structural integrity of this mound is insane. It has stood for 5,000 years, and supported over 200,000 tons of dirt and rock. You know that they meant this to last forever because of how they built it, using layers of rock and dirt in order to allow water to drain through. Its absolutely amazing. Afterwards we drove back to Dublin along the coast, stopping at the Cock Tavern for dinner. The Cock Tavern purports to be the oldest (or one of the oldest) pubs in Ireland. Then we also stopped in Skerries to see the ocean. It was very pretty.