Trinity College, O'Connell Street, and Random Pics!

Me, having a chat with Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square. ;-)
Random swans swimming in the canal by our house!!!
My lovely housemates! :-)

Lovely view from the bridge.
Trinity College!
Trinity's Book of Kells (sp?) sign. We were too poor to go in, haha!
Me posing with the college sign!
Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square

Some of my classmates plus a cool street.
Another classmate and another cool street. :-)
Bridge with a very pretty view. O'Connell Bridge, I think?
Main entrance to Trinity College.

Me and my housemate Kasey posing by some random door at Trinity!

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Hello, all! I know you guys probably care more about the pictures than about what I say, so I thought I'd get that done first! :-)

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Today, I had my first day of class. And it's going to be great!! I'm taking Anglo-Irish Writers for the first session, and turns out the student director, a young guy named Collum, who we've been hanging out with all weekend, touring and visiting sites, is the teacher! And for several of our classes, we're going off to tour literary sites such as the Writer's Museum, or one day class is cancelled to go on a literary pub crawl, to go to the same pubs that Joyce and Beckett and Wilde would have frequented! Even for non-drinkers such as myself, this will be loads of fun!

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Class is supposed to last from 9 to 1-- we probably went from 9:20 to 11:30 today, lol. Class was so laid back, but we had a great, in depth discussion of Irish identity and colonialization. And tomorrow, we aren't having official class, but we're going to the Dublin Writer's Museum! Heck yes, I wanted to see that anyway!

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After class, we ate lunch with our lunch vouchers in the school cafe, Speranza, (named after Oscar Wilde's mother because the school owns Oscar Wilde's childhood home!) and the food wasn't that bad! I got a sandwich, drink, and chioce of a candy or granola bar for 5 euro.

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After lunch, eight of us set out together to get books for our literature class, which turned out to be some kind of hunt! We checked several bookstores in North Dublin, and finally found three of the four we were hunting. While we were out roaming, we went to Trinity College, both to do the tourist thing, and also to get our pictures taken for an international student discount card! Discounts on bus fare, train fare, and lots of restaurants, plus a bunch of other things! Granted we had to pay for the card, so who knows if it will even out. I figure the card is worth it just in case I come back to Europe or it would look great in the scrapbook I'm sure I will make. ;-)

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Man, with all the walking, I swear I must have walked at least 10 miles today. My housemates and I feel like crotchety old women, because our legs are so sore. And our hot water is acting up again. Sad times!

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But the school is going to get all the outlets, the water, and the internet fixed within the week, thank goodness! I don't mind the old house, but I do wish that they would reduce the housing costs for the 6 of us since every other place is significantly newer and better maintained.

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I like it though. My housemates are great. We like each other too much to move and split up.

After loads of drama, and what I am sure was divine intervention, my loan check finally arrived back home! Thank goodness! It got lost in the mail, but luckily, landed in the hands of a kind soul who immediately called the loan company (who stupidly told him to mail it back to them, which would have delayed my recieving the funds for the trip for another possible two weeks!) but he decided, thinking that the girl who the check was for needed the money for something important, to mail it to the address on the envelope, so my parents recieved it today! Thank God!

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:-)

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I love it here. I can tell I will be anxious to return once my short month here is over. :-)