It’s been so long since I’ve updated that my Firefox history didn’t remember this website.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

UCD Quinn School Study Lounge

4:30 p.m.

WOW so it’s been a busy few weeks since I was at the Cliffs of Moher with the guys. Halloween came and went (I was K-Fed, yeah…). Strangely, Halloween happens to be the big fireworks holiday in Ireland, and while there are a few big displays, most people stick to walking out their front door and setting off a couple store-bought or home-made fireworks and hoping they don’t blow their heads off. We did not take part in this tradition.

Lyd came to visit me from Nov. 2 through the 5^th. We went to a rugby game with a few of the other kids in the program; it was really cool. Leinster (the part of Ireland that Dublin is in) played against Cannucht in a match that featured about half the Irish World Cup team on one side or the other, so that was great to see that high level of play (although it was probably wasted on us, since the best of us only knew about 80% of the rules.

Lyd flew back home on Monday afternoon, and then on Thursday I flew off to London to visit Kevin. Kevin is in London for the year studying at the London School of Economics, and his dorm is about a 10 minute walk away from campus, which is right by Trafalgar Square. I got to his place at about 6, where we had dinner and then met up with his friends to go on a pub crawl. Later that night we went to some club that Kevin’s friends were going to, and in the roughly ten minutes that we stayed I ran into Gautier, the French kid from my Globalization class at UCD. Crazy stuff.

The next night we hung around with Kevin’s friends in the big lounge in his dorm, and then, after a failed attempt to meet up with BC/UCDers Dave and Chris, we walked over to Picadilly Circus and met up with Nicole (Belmont) and some of her friends from BU who were studying in London. Since I was flying out the next evening, we decided to call it an early night on Friday so that we could get sight-seeing first thing in the morning.

So one of the great things about studying abroad is that often times your friends, like Kevin, are studying in other cities, like Kevin was, and you can stay at their dorms or houses, like I was doing, and they can give you the personalized tour of whatever city they’ve been studying in for the last few months. Unfortunately, my two previous short trips to London put me in a much more expert position on London tourist attractions, as Kevin revealed that he was really yet to explore the city at all. Great. If anything, I guess, it made the two of us setting off into the city with virtually no money and a desire to “Do London in 3 hours for free” more of an adventure. We first walked down to the Mall, checked out Green park, and went and took picture in front of Buckingham Palace, which was buzzing with people even though there was no changing of the guard that day. We then walked back through the park and over to Big Ben and the Parliament building, where we ran into a huge group of livid Somalian protestors upset over Ethiopia’s “genocide” in Somalia. I think Kevin, who is as globally minded as they come (he’s the president of the Boston College Model United Nations) was more upset that they were standing in front of the statue of Winston Churchill, which means he couldn’t get a picture with it. (I guess he’ll have to walk down there again sometime before next July…) From there we wandered down to Trafalgar Square where we looked around a little and expressed mutual sadness over having just missed the 28 foot tall blow up statue of Jason Taylor, the best player on the worst team in football. (Miami played a game in London a couple weeks ago, that was part of the promotional stuff.)

After realizing that the National Gallery was free, the two of us became instant art fans and spent a couple hours looking at van Gogh and being surprised at how recently Picasso had died. We both though he was a lot older…apparently we weren’t the biggest art aficionados strolling the halls of the National Gallery that day.

After we had had out art fill we went outside and, getting a prime spot on the balcony outside the museum, took some pictures overlooking the Square. It was getting dark, and fortunately for me they were observing the November 5^th holiday that had just passed with a grand fireworks display over the Thames.

Tired from a long day of walking we went back to his building. I grabbed my bag and headed off for Gatwick, where I got in a fight with the security people who said my backpack was too big (psh, it was fine in Dublin), finally boarded the plane, and headed back to the Dublin airport, where Stephen Mullen, Mom, and Dad were waiting for me. It was great to see them, and we all went back to the hotel and met up with Kathryn and Brian.

So yes, it’s been an exciting few weeks, and I wish I had more space to tell more exciting stories about each of my stops, but I guess I’ll leave the adventurous tales for when you see me in person so that I’m not all out of good fresh Ireland info. I’m sure the Fam’s visit will also be worthy of a couple posts.

Okay, I have to head off to office hours before my next class. Busy time coming up academically, but hopefully I’ll have time to write.

Later.

Go Sox! (Sign Lowell!)

5:05 p.m.

(p.s. a special Hello to Mr. Twiraga, who sent me a Facebook message requesting an update! Hi!)