9/11/08

I woke up knowing that Thursday would be my longest day of the week. I only have two classes, but they were for a total of five hours. Just like at home, professors cram a lot of information into 5 hours. My first class of the day was Writing on the Wall, the professor, Dr. Ashley Taggert, is also the director of the entire IES: Dublin program. The class is about the arts and literature that were created during the conflict in Northern Ireland. He actually lived in Belfast for about 16 years and experienced the things that these artists and writers went through. It seems like it is going to be an interesting class and the professor gives you a perspective that you can't find in textbooks.
After class I had a hour break before Irish Communal Identity. So I went to lunch with some of my flatmates and other people from the program. We went to a place called Rico's that looked really shady from the outside, but was actually clean on the inside. With a name like Rico's I assumed that it was owned by some Latino guy, but that was not the case, we walked in and it seemed like it was owned by these two Irish twins. After lunch we headed back to the IES center and started Irish Communal Identity, this class was my favorite class thus far in Dublin. My professor Darren Kelly is a very intelligent man who has lived in several different countries during his life. The class examines the culture class going on in Dublin between the traditional Irish and all the immigrants that the recent prosperity has drawn to the country. It is sort of a geographic psychology, examining how living in different locations can lead to you being a different person. It seems like a class that is really going to make me think, and I like to think!
After that class was over those of us who live in Dundrum headed back to the LUAS and took it back to Ballally, I stopped in Tesco to buy some school supplies (I was going to try and use only one notebook, but it quickly became evident that wasn't going to work). After getting back to the apartment I made an excellent dinner of potatoes, buttered bread and breaded chicken. Our entire apartment decided to nap before the night and low and behold we all woke up three hours later (we only wanted to nap for a hour). That pretty much harpooned any hope of going out since it was getting late fast. Some people came over our flat and we drank, Jake stopped by and we called people on Skype (some hung up on us, not knowing it was us). I also Skype chatted with my Egyptian Goddess...Maha. The people who were here went out and I decided to stay in and just hang out with Jake and Adam. It was a good choice because everyone was back in about a hour. We all hung out for another couple hours, Derrick and another girl in the program, Holly, were playing guitar and singing (it was really entertaining). People eventually filtered out and I ended up watching some TV and eventually went to bed.