Tuesday July 12 - Day One
I really need to work on writing these on time!
Tuesday was great because we were originally supposed to be awake and ready to go at 9am for a tour of University College Dublin, and a small orientation followed by a tour of Dublin. Thank the lord they switched it to 11am, because I so intelligently went to bed at midnight. I slept super great, however. The bed was totally comfortable, but there's NO AIR CONDITIONING. I left a window open (all their windows are made for the lack of A/C) and climbed under my comfy yet thin comforter. Waking up was tough, and immediately my eyes showed major signs of stress. Not only did I wake up with the 'sleep' yucky globby stuff in my eyes, but they were so red I looked majorly high. The kind of high like comatose - not the great first impression I wanted to give. I have a sneaking suspicion it's also allergy related (I'm allergic to most of nature).
We met behind Merville Hall dormitory to see two gentlemen about our age in a full suit and tie get-up. They definitely put all of us to shame (#Murica). We walked around the campus, gorgeous as ever, but still a bit groggy from the day before. The guys were super kind and pointed out where the food, gym and our classes would be. We only had one classroom and both classes Texas Tech offered would be in that room at different times. I wish I had paid more attention to where it was, but we got maps of the campus, so I wasn't too worried about it. After it was all over they let us ask questions and told us to follow them on twitter and instagram for information regarding current events. They also told us about a hurling lesson (it's a sport, I think?) every Tues/Thurs at 7:30 and asked us to friend them on Facebook, which I did once I got wifi again.
We went to an orientation by our professors and event coordinator with CEPA to tell us to basically not do anything stupid like miss all the classes, get too drunk, arrested - the usual stuff. They also went over what emergency numbers and stuff to use even though many of us don't have access to calling, just in case magic happens, I don't know. I don't expect anything to happen, so I guess we'll see.
We had a small break for lunch and then headed off to ride the bus into City Centre to get a walking tour of the city. As if my legs weren't tired enough.. But nonetheless I was crazy excited. I'll take a moment here to make a small point: a few people in our group were 'sick' (you know what I mean) from activities of the night before and missed out on this.. Never do that. Sure, it was a tiresome three hour walk around a strange yet beautiful city, and sure we have weeks to see the city - but we don't. We have classes most of the day, and the coursework isn't a piece of cake. It's also a great opportunity to make note of places you'd like to revisit.
For the tour we started with the Dublin Castle and the gardens - beautiful. I'll note I didn't take a ton of pictures. I prefer memories, and if I want to take photos, I'd rather come back to a site when I have time to really capture it's essence and get a photo I can frame and be immensely proud of. That's a small flaw of being a photographer - I want higher quality photos than my iPhone can give. Anyway, the castle burnt down, but one pillar was left. The age it showed and the history I saw in each of it's bricks was incredible. It's 15m (it may be feet..) thick, too!
We walked around and into St. Audoen's Church Vistor Center where we saw the progression of how the church was built, and some relics from other churches in the area that are not around anymore. I believe this was the oldest church in Dublin. I may be wrong. We got loads of information, it's hard to remember.
I believe it was after this that we saw the area formerly a port where the Vikings used to be and where they would make their homes. We were told by our tour guide that any time you dig in Ireland, you're bound to find a dead Viking. Pretty cool if you don't think about the dead part too much. The river had been diverted when the English were taking over and such, so the area where we were - formerly a river, silted up and became solid land with a river running under. I may have slightly butchered the explanation, but you get the idea. It was ironic that this area was so important to their history yet he pointed out a tad bitterly that later offices were built on this land. It's got a beautiful park area around it, so it almost makes up for it.
We also walked around Temple Bar - not a bar, but a town or neighborhood. We were told it's basically a tourist trap, with expensive bars and semi-reasonable restaurants. By no means is this representative of what Dublin really has to offer. We even saw a photography gallery and a courtyard of a sorts and some street performers! We then walked to a gorgeous bridge to which the trend Paris set (a couple putting a lock with their initials on it and throwing the key in the river) has started to take shape on. There weren't many locks, but we still stopped to take some selfies as any good tourist/traveller does.
We ended up back at Trinity College where we first met in the city and went inside the gates. It had an elite feel - like walking into an overpowering and prestigious Harvard or Yale (although I have no idea what they look like except for Gilmore Girls). Trinity is Ireland's leading college, ranked 25 in Europe and 71 in the World (2014). As if that wasn't enough, it has two gorgeous Oregon Maples in the library square that are older than the state of Oregon. They're absolutely beautiful. And to top ALL of that off.. Trinity College houses the Long Room and the Book of Kells.
The Book of Kells is one of the oldest Bibles around, written on calf skin. It's over 1000 years old and written in Latin are the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I was told about the four gospels but it seems they have different names or maybe Trinity has other books on display, because I got a little confused when I didn't see the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's possible they were renamed, I'm not sure - I'm not too into history, but I may look it up later. If you're into history or religion - or even books, I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful book of which we were not allowed to take photos of, but we saw other relics and items from the time period and dealing with the religion.
The Long Room was more my speed in terms of how amazing and gorgeous it is. It's basically a huge room although not terribly wide, it's a wopping 65m long, and houses over 200,000 of the oldest books. Additionally it has somewhat creepy busts of famous writers and philosophers and possibly other 'knowledgables' like Shakespeare, Boyle (Father of Modern Chemistry), Socrates and Plato. I'm not sure what it takes to be a bust in the library, but it'd be cool to see if when I die I'm qualified (I highly doubt that, but hey maybe pigs can fly by then!!).
Fun fact about the Long Room, the Jedi Archives Clone room in Episode II: Attack of the Clones shows a room very much like that of the Long Room at Trinity. There was a major lawsuit and speculation, but it seems they worked things out due to the Star Wars toys being sold in the gift shop of the Long Room. I'm also told the Long Room appears in Star Wars when Anakin kills all the younglings, but as I've only seen episodes six and seven, I can't say for sure.
After that it was a pretty relaxed day. We ate left overs and went to bed.
