Weekend Update

Friday:

Friday was pretty much blah. I was still not feeling well, really exhausted as well. But I walked around Dublin wandering the streets trying to get an idea of where things were. Stuff I noticed: lots of older ladies with babies begging on the streets... I think they are immigrants from eastern Europe. Dublin is much bigger and faster and more crowded then I expected or remember. I have seen very few if any Irish people at all. Everyone jaywalks.

So after walking around forever, I decided to go catch a movie to pass the time. I went and saw Shred the Third, which was cute. Not as good as the first, but not really that bad either. I really liked the Arthur Pendragon tie in. After the movie, I got back to the hostel and took a nap. Forced myself to get up at 8pm to get some dinner. But then I just went back and did some HW and chatted online til I was tired enough to fall asleep. Didn't really fall asleep though. My roommates were quite noisy and the sun comes up at freaking 3am here. That's gonna take some getting used too.

Saturday:

Woke up too late for breakfast... yeah after not sleeping all night I fell into a sketchy sort of half sleep at like 7am. I didn't really have any plans for Saturday and had planned on being bummed again. So when I was getting ready, there were two other ladies in the room with me and I struck up a conversation with the one, asking her where they were from and so forth. Turns out they are teachers at South Gate High School, which is in LA and one lives in Bellflower and the other in San Pedro. They invited me out with them for the day and were super nice and friendly. We got some breakfast (lunch, hehe) and then walked all the way over to the Guinness Storehouse to do the Brewery tour. On the way I told them fascinating facts about Ireland and stuff, they find it amusing, I was like their own little tour guide, hehe. The Brewery tour was pretty cool. I love beer and always love to learn new facts about it. Guinness is such a wonderful, well made beer! Then after you walk through everything you get to go to the top, the seventh floor, to the Gravity Bar for a free Guinness. The view from up there is amazing. After that we were gonna do a Literary Pub Crawl, however after realizing it was 2 1/2 hours we decided against it since we had been walking so much. Got some dinner and beers instead. It was really funny listening to them talk and bitch about their school issues. LA Unified is so different then Fairfax County, its not even funny. For all Fairfax County School's problems, if they ran LA Unified, maybe LA would be a better place. Their school is 99% latino, which is all fine and cool, but the kids are soooo insulated. Trista the one teacher once asked her students what they thought the percentage of Hispanics were in the whole US and they were convinced it was over 50% (its actually around 17%). As someone who grew up near DC, this is baffling to me. Personally I think integrating schools, and really trying to have a good mix of ethnicities would do students a whole lot of good. I think it would help to break down cultural barriers and help people to confront Stereotypes (not saying it would fix everything but I think its a good idea). But unfortunately due to a recent Supreme Court decision, there's no way that that is even an option. (ugh! don't even get me started on the current court!) But I digress, this blog is supposed to be about Dublin. So, after that we came back to the hostel and I passed out.

Sunday:

Everyone from the program was starting to get in and people started emailing to try and get together on sunday to meet and hang out. A few of us made plans to go to the Gaelic Football and Hurling matches. I met up with RJ and Ted at Trinity at 1pm and we walked over to Croke Park. The Football match was at 2:10 and the Hurling Match was at 4. Football was Laois (pronounced Leach) v. Wexford. Wexford was up the whole match, however Laois pulled out the win in the end. Then after a 30 min break the Hurling match started and was between the #1 team and last year's champions, Kilkenny and Wexford. Kilkenny dominated the entire game and crushed Wexford, who could never really get their game off the ground. It was really fun and there was even a marching band during the half times and in between games. The band was made up of very young kids, traditional and not very good. But it was really cute to see them try. Perhaps in 10 years they will have something more like ours in the States. The cymbal player was this girl who was struggling so hard to hold up the cymbals. I felt so bad for her and could empathize with her pain. Another interesting thing is that you can buy beer in the stadium, but not bring it down into the seats. You have to stand outside to drink it. Also Croke Park was a really cool stadium. RJ said it seated 85,000 and had been newly renovated. The cool thing about these sports is that they are amateur sports and all these men beating each up (without pads or cups) all have normal jobs as well during the week. But it is such a popular sport. Every you looked people were wearing their team's jerseys. And it seemed like every Irish person in the city came to the game. And everyone walks to the stadium too. Also something we all noticed was the police in Ireland. They are so not like American police. First off they carry no gun or weapon at all. But that doesn't seem to be a problem when they are trying to arrest someone. They don't seem to need a weapon in order to assert their authority. Also their is a distinct lack of a chip on their shoulders and are extremely nice and helpful.

After the game we walked back to Trinity to meet up with other students from the program and go out for drinks and dinner. Everyone so far seems super cool and friendly. Although you can tell that we are all in law school, hehe. Most of them are all from Indiana University, mainly cause their Dean is in charge of the program and one of the Professors (International Negotiations which I am taking and apparently he is really good and his class at Indiana is always booked and hard to get into). The other school mostly represented is USD. And then there are random people like me. We even have a few international students, Italy, Hungary and Mexico.

Monday (today): I'm just chilling at my hostel until I can go check-in to Trinity at 2pm. Then at 4 we have orientation. That's it for now.