True Divided Government: Btw, I'm still alive

Wow. My bad. It's been way too long since I posted. If you add up the days you may notice that I should be in Ireland at this point. I am happy to inform that I am happy and safe at Dublin City University, just north of Dublin proper.

I got in Friday morning at about 9:30 Dublin time, got a taxi to the University, got to my room, dumped my stuff, changed into climate appropriate clothes and ran back to meet the group for our first tour. We took a bus down to O'Connell Street where we got a walking tour of the City Center. There we saw the historic landmarks associted with the 1916 Easter Rising like the General Post Office and the Customs House.

We also checked out the statues of the great Irish Leaders of the past like Pharnell, Larkin, and O'Connell himself.

The rest of the day was walking around the downtown areas. We had lunch in the Temple Bar area (awsome chowder). We did what shopping we needed to do and headed back to DCU. That night was Crotia v Turkey at the pub. It was a sad game.

The next day was a trip to the Government Buildings and Trinity College. This is the where the Taoiseach (the Prime Minister, pronounced te-suck) has his office and it is directly attatched to the Dail Eireann (the Parliament, pronounced doll erin). The Taoiseach's office was interesting because it was very modest. As the Head of the Goverment, one would expect the office to be some grand affair, but it really wasn't. It had a feel of a real person working there, not some demi-god on high placed by divine right. *cough* GW *cough*

Trinity College is where the Book of Kells is housed. Its a transcription of the Four Gospels in latin along with some other texts but the text itself was the beautiful part. It has survived since about 800 a.c.e. and is decorated extensivly. I saddly could not take pictures.

Due to a late wake up, Sunday changed from a trip to Sligo with one group (which actually was changed to Wicklow) to a trip to Howth. Howth is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Its tied with Manuel Antonio right now. After looking out over the port, we walked along the beach and climbed on the rocks with our dog guides. It was quite windy and there were a few falls, but we all survived and enjoyed every minute of it. The fish and chips were great too.