Well, I have to say that the past three days have been quite a blur for me. I was originally supposed to arrive in Dublin on July 7th around 8 a.m.. However, there was a slight bump in the road; my flight kept getting delayed later and later. I had arrived at Boston around 7 p.m., so I was in good shape, but I did not get to leave until around 3:35 a.m.. That is over 8 and ½ hours at the Boston airport. Needless to say, I was rather miffed. Nevertheless, I safely arrived into Dublin around 3 p.m. and made it back to the hotel. Upon reaching the Marino, my day greatly improved.
When everyone arrived at the Marino, we had our orientation in order to learn what was going on. For the literature group, we are expected to keep a blog discussing what we will see at the Big Houses across Ireland. Afterwards, we went to the Kavanagh Pub where I had my first real meal that entire day. Afterwards, we went home and I decided to rest up for the next day.
For day two, we did quite a lot! We took the Dublin bus to O’Henry street where we shopped around for awhile until the next bus arrived. We admired the statues throughout the city, including one of James Joyce.
After this, we headed out to Farmleigh house, which was owned by the Guinness family for a number of years. For this trip, we took a tour exploring the house and noted some major differences between different groups of people, both gender-wise and class-wise. For the women, their rooms were decorated with lighter colors and rounded edges. For the men, their rooms were decorated using darker colors such as gold, brown, and red. For the classes, the Guinness’ decorations were lavish and were meant to impress anyone who came by. The servants, on the other hand, had simple decorations and were expected to not really be seen by the visitors. After concluding this tour, I went out for dinner and shopping just like the day before.
For today, we also did quite a lot, including a lot of walking. First, the entire group went to Kilmainham Gaol, which is the setting for a major shift in Irish political history. The gaol had been built in the late 18th century and had housed a number of prisoners. However, this is also where those responsible for the 1916 Easter Uprising were sent to and executed. Originally, the Irish were against those who had started the rebellion. However, after seeing how brutal the British were to these men, they changed their minds and began pursuing a free Ireland. It was haunting to be here because this was a place where people had died, giving the gaol a sense of almost something sacred like.
Afterwords, I tagged along with the Business group to the Guinness storehouse, where I graduated from the Guinness Academy! This just means that I have a vague understanding of how to “properly” pour a pint of Guinness. The next distention was to the National Library, where there was a display on W.B. Yates and a genealogy service. Even though I am in the Literature group and I should have spent way more time there, I was far too engrossed in trying to find out some of my family history. Unfortunately, I could not remember who in my family was the one who immigrated to Ireland, so I hit a dead end. Next came dinner and a stroll on Grafton Street, which was full of buskers and street performers. A group of us purchased tickets to “Riverdance”, which I found to be kinda odd and not exactly my type of performance. Because we didn’t want to miss the bus, we left half-way through and made our way to the bus stop. I noticed that there was a line, but I thought we could sneak on board without anyone really noticing or really caring. However, this was not the case. One man started to yell at us that we had to go in the queue. Today, I had to learn the hard way that the queue is something to be feared and respected. Hopefully I remember this in the future.
