From Dublin to Belfast

Sadly, my time in Ireland is already halfway over. We just left Dublin this morning and arrived in Belfast, and our hotel has free wireless internet! Yay! Alright, let me try to unload everything I've done in the past few days without rambling...

Fun things first: We visited the Guinness factory, which was really interesting. Because I'm allergic to beer I didn't get to have a free pint of "the freshest Guinness you can get" but I still enjoyed the tour. We also had a full-on Irish dinner at The Merry Ploughboy Pub, complete with entertainment in the form of a four-man band and some Irish dancers. Last night we went to the national theatre of Ireland, the Abbey Theatre, and saw a play called The Plough & The Stars. It was a really emotionally-charged play about the Easter Rising by the Irish Republicans in 1916, which was really cool because we've been learning about it in some of our lectures. The play was so controversial when it came out in the 1920's that it caused riots in the streets, and I can see why! And finally, tonight we went to a rugby game at Ravenhill Stadium in Belfast - it was a BLAST, and the hometeam won! We've also had plenty of time to explore on our own, so I've enjoyed seeing things of my own choosing, and just getting purposely lost in the city and then finding my way back.

As for the academic side, we've been working HARD! They weren't kidding when they told us to prepare for a lot of work. It is a 3-credit course in 10 days after all. We generally have about three or four academic events in a day, usually lectures or tours. We've visited a jail, toured both Dublin and Belfast, toured the Belfast City Hall, and had lectures on all sorts of interesting topics ranging from the well-known Irish travellers to religion and political conflict in Ireland. It's really cool because there is still a decent amount of tension between many groups here in Ireland, so we learn about it in the classroom and then can see the effects in the city today.

Needless to say, I am very tired. We have a pretty full day tomorrow, so I better go get some sleep. I'll be going strong for the next four days in Ireland, and soon enough I will be starting up my semester in London! Hopefully I'll get in one more post before London starts up so that I can wrap up my time in Ireland.

Until next time :)