Salaam Ireland!

Now that I've finished my awful policy "motivation statement," I decided to actually write about my trip. I hope I always consider this a trip and that when I go back to the states I don't say, "I used to live in Ireland," because I'm not "living" here. I think if you call a place your home, you probably have to have more than one set of utensils and not use an old water bottle as your only cup. Speaking of kitchenware, two Japanese women borrowed plates of mine the other night. I walked in on them in my kitchen as they perused other people's plates. I thought they shared the kitchen with me, so I asked them where they lived. Apparently they didn't live in my area and they needed plates for unexpected guests. Instead of abetting their theft of other people's plates, I stupidly gave them 2 of mine. Well, one of them returned the plate later in the kitchen (still dirty I might add!), but I never got the other one back. The easy solution would be to ask for the plate back, except for one problem: there are about four Asian women living in the building, and I can't remember which one took my plate. It kind of reminds me of that Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry suspects all the men in blue shirts stole his plane ticket: I can only imagine going up to a complete stranger and saying, "I know what you did. Just give me back the plate and I'll be happy." It is just a plate that I didn't pay for, nor do I use that often, but I'm sure this was all some elaborate plot to screw me.

Ok, I promise I will now talk of things besides oddball occurances. Well, one more. I was walking downtown the other day, and to get to the other side of the street, I decided to walk through the alley instead of going all the way around. Unfortunately my attempt at a shortcut was ill advised. A car came zooming towards me and in order to get out of the way I walked into what looked like a parking lot right behind the building I was trying to go reach. How fortuitous, I thought. Soon I realized that I was not behind the house I wanted and when I turned around I saw that I wasn't even in a public parking lot, but rather a private car park and the remote controlled gate had closed behind me. My attempts to push open the steel bars proved unsuccessful and I quickly worried if I had been tricked into an evil scientist's lair. I was waiting for Bela Lugosi to appear and break into a nonsensical monologue on my impending doom. Thankfully a woman stepped out of nowhere to have a cigarette and after I convinced her that I was not there to rob her, she let me out of my makeshift prison. Apparently I haven't learned my lesson from watching snippets of The Empire Strikes Back on HBO Family every sixth day of the summer: No matter how inocuous any enclave looks, it could be the stomach of a giant space slug!!!!(or whatever its urban alternative is)

With that out of the way, I'll save the one last interesting anecdote of getting stranded in the sea and I'll talk about my trip to the west of Ireland last weekend. We (the group of 40 or so Notre Dame students and faculty) left early Saturday morning from Dublin to the Burren. It's a great John Houseman name. Thank you Mr. Burrrrreennnn. Rather than bore you with the unique fascinating geological and ecological history of the area, I'll just show you some pictures:


We also went to the Cliffs of Moher. This was probably my favorite place; mostly because there were few safety regulations. Life is always more exciting on the wrong side of the fence.




The next day we went to an ancient Celtic burial ground. Fred Flinstone, eat your heart out.


Before heading back to Dublin, the group made a stop in Coole park, the inspiration for many a Yeats' poem and subsequently a Clint Eastwood movie.


The bus ride was by far the most, shall we say, colorful?, part of the trip. Forced into a three hour detour by a cross country race, someone got the bright idea of doing Disney sing a longs. I'm pretty sure if prisoners at Guantonomo had to sit through these renditions, even Scalia would find it to be cruel and unusual. Added to this, people started dancing through the aisle of the bus. Sad to say, no one knew the words to "Three Coins in a Fountain." Neil Page and Del Griffith would not be proud.