This is about to cover the last two days. We went on a pub crawl last night (read below) and I was in no condition to write a post when I got home.

Yesterday morning was the beginning of the Spring Semester Start-Up Programme. We all went into the Jonathan Swift Theater in the Arts building and were reintroduced to the coordinators. We then registered--I now have my Trinity I.D. card!--and went out to lunch on Grafton. I had lunch with three other people on the program. We went to a place called Bewley's, and I had a marvelous goat-cheese and roasted pepper sandwich on brown bread. The restaurant itself is on three floors and looks like an old-fashioned hotel. The meal was cheap and I highly recommend this place (many vegetarian options as well).

After lunch we got a tour of the libraries at Trinity where we'll be spending much of our campus-time. These libraries are relatively new and were built based on the plans of one of the Trinity architecture students. We had an hour-long break after that and used that time to hang out with newly made friends.

Later that day we took a tour of campus and learned about all the buildings. There is an incredible amount of history in this place. For example, the first King James Bibles in Ireland were printed in one of the buildings on campus which is still there today. I thought that was amazing, especially after just reading Robert Alter's Pen of Iron. There are also graves around campus where some of the former professors are buried. More to come on history.

Later that night we went on a "literary pub crawl" with the Programme. Basically we stopped at five different pubs where these two actors leading the crawl performed different pieces of Irish literature. They were great, and hilarious too. Each pub was significant because it was a site where a certain famous author was a regular. The last pub was called Davy Bryne's and is cool because James Joyce was a regular there and writes the pub into his Ulysses. We bought pints of Guinness and Bulmer's at each pub to commemorate the locations, and everyone was having a great time. So many great abroad students here! After that we went home and made ourselves midnight dinner.

Today we listened to three lectures in the morning: the first was centered on Robert Emmett's story, an Irish patriot who died in 1803 via hanging. After his conviction, Emmett gave one of the most famous orations in Irish history, and in the lecturer's opinion, one of the greatest speeches in all of history. It is called Speech from the Dock. To hear a great, cut down version of the speech, watch this. The next two lectures were on the architecture of Trinity and then one on Irish literature.

After this we took a field trip to Croke Stadium. This is where amateur teams from every county of Ireland come to play Gaelic Football and Hurling. The stadium is really awesome. The field is twice the size of an American football field. The guide gave a great tour, and we got to step up to the field, sit in the VIP seats, see the team locker rooms and lounges, and then see the museum. These games contribute to the reasons why Ireland is such a great country. These athletes by law of the games are not professional. They are all bankers, farmers, school teachers, carpenters, you name it. Yet they volunteer to represent their counties in a stadium that seats 82,000 people with millions more watching at home. These people are national heroes, and yet after the games they return to their regular occupations. Besides American college football, I'm not quite sure if there are arenas or a large stage somewhere in the U.S. where an ordinary person can become a national hero. It was quite a moving place to be, and I hope to go see a game sometime during the semester.

I got five hours of sleep last night so I'm staying in tonight. It has now officially been a week since I got to Dublin, and I must say it's been quite fantastic, as wonderful as anything I could have asked for. While school hasn't even started yet, I have already developed a passionate love for this city, its people and its culture. I'm so glad I'm here for a full semester and anticipate with much excitement all of the experiences and high jinks to come.