27 June 2005----First day of classes
Mood:  lucky
We had our first day of classes today. All four of the classes I'm taking were today: Irish Literature, Irish Drama, Irish History, and Gaelic Culture. All were pretty interesting and I think that I'll be liking the courses very much.

I had forgotten that I was going to be buying books while I'm over here, but fortunately it looks like I won't have to buy too many. I'm a little bummed that I forgot to bring my book of W.B. Yeats's poetry, would have save me a couple of Euros. Darn.

The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl was tonight, and although I didn't drink as much as some of my companions did, I still had a lot of fun. We started at The Duke and from there we went to three more pubs I think, with some 'cultural' stops in between. One of the pubs we went to is called The Old Stand, but back in the 1920s it was called The Monico and was a favorite hangout for Micheal Collins and the other founding members of the IRA. It was slightly humbling and amazing to think that we were standing in the place where the plans for Irish freedom from British rule were born.

The last pub we went to is called Davy Byrnes and is associated with James Joyce and his epic Ulysses. It is so amazing to be in a place (Dublin) where so many of the 19th and 20th writers were. To see where they lived, ate, learned, fought. One can almost feel their presence, watching over us. I wonder what they would have to say....