Dublin, Friday June 15^th 2007. 9:15

Rain again today. Like yesterday and the day before. When you come to Ireland, bring a raincoat! Yesterday we went to Howth and then decided that we didn’t want to hike to 1.5 k to the lighthouse in the rain. However, being from a landlocked state in the U.S., I wanted to see the ocean, so we saw it and then got on a bus to Malahide Castle. We met several young ladies who attended a local parochial school and talked to them – it shows that teenagers are teenagers everywhere. The girls were very friendly and shared their opinions on education, politics, American movies, music, and being Irish today. It was a good time. We will post the uneditided video in googlevideo and edit clips for this site later.

When we arrived on the estate of Malahide Castle (about 250 acres of public park around the castle) we walked through the park and all of us were struck by the lush greenery of, well, everything! We passed the pitches for Gaa, an Irish game that is a cross between Rugby and Lacrosse. We walked through a wood and when we arrived at the castle, we were amazed by it’s history.

The History here is amazing. At home, we think of something being old if it’s 50 years old. Or in the case of our school, 70 years old. But here it’s not really old unless it dates back to Georgian times (that’s the time of King George of the American Revolution) and much is older than that! Malahide castle is 800 years old. Trinity College is about 400 years old. Now, not everything here is old. Much was destroyed when the British shelled Dublin after the 1916 uprising. What has been a result of this is newer buildings on the north side of the Liffey River and older ones on the south side.

That also creates an interesting social division in the city. More on that later though. Now it is time to walk more, in the rain to see the offerings of this grand old city.

Today we plan on going to Trinity University and seeing the Book of Kells and also going to a debate on Ireland of the Welcomes--the issues of immigration in the 21st century and how the influx of many nationalities are impacting Ireland on social, political, cultural, and of course literary fronts. After that we are going to see Claire Kilroy and Xialou Gou discuss outside perspectives of Ireland.