I have spent the last week and a half almost entirely in Dublin. I enjoy being in the city centre a lot more than being on campus, so I normally head there whenever I have a significant block of free time. I really enjoy just grabbing a coffee and walking around for a few hours or sitting in St. Stephen's Green.

Part of the reason I chose the Dublin program was because UCD plans a few trips around Ireland for the study abroad students. On Saturday I will be going to Kilkenny. Also, last Thursday they planned for us to go to an Irish House Party (which was actually at a hotel). Basically, there was a traditional Irish band who taught us a few Irish songs and dances. Apparently one of the band members used to be a dancer for Riverdance, so she was pretty fantastic to watch. It was good to meet some of the other students and afterwards we all ended up going to a pub together. When we got to the pub there were a bunch of people sitting around a huge table just playing music. People could join in as they pleased--it reminded me so much of the live music at Brocach's in Madison. (Which you should all go to if you ever get the opportunity because it's amazing)

On Sunday then, I went to Dun Laoghaire with my friends Ann, Lyndsie and Kim. It was only about a 20 minute bus ride from campus. I heard there was an international market and I really wanted to check it out. It was possibly the cutest little town I've ever been to. The town is right on the coast but if you look away from the coast you can see mountains. I had pretty high expectations for the market and was not let down in the slightest. They had food from more places than I could imagine and it was hard not to buy something at each stand. I only ended up buying a few pastries, pesto, and sausage. Almost every stand had samples though, so naturally I tasted something from just about every stand. After the market we grabbed lunch at a burger restaraunt someone recommended. It was fantastic, but I think my burger was about 6 inches tall. Despite being signifcantly underdressed and freezing we then we spent some time on the pier and walking around town.

The next morning I woke up to a sadly familiar sight-snow. The girl I sat by on the plane had told me it hadn't snowed in Dublin in about 3 years, and apparently snow hasn't actually stuck to the ground in even more. Of course though, I arrive and it snows--blizzards even. I was expecting lots of rain, but I didn't bring appropriate clothing for snow so I have been freezing most of the week. It doesn't help that the heat in our kitchen/living area doesn't work. It snowed monday, tuesday and yesterday. The Irish people aren't used to snow so they don't really have any organized way of dealing with it. A normal 30 minute ride home from the city centre took me about an hour and everything was super slippery because I'm pretty sure they don't use salt. I guess taxis were canceled too which made getting to and from the airport insanely challenging. One nice thing though, was that my night class on Wednesday was canceled. It actually didn't snow at all on Wednesday so it was an odd experience for me to have a class canceled on the pretense of snow when I remember getting almost 15 inches of snow last year and still having class. Yesterday the snow caused COMPLETE CHAOS around campus--seriously. I remember learning about mob mentality, and I have finally witnessed it. I was trying to get into Quinn yesterday around 3 but the doors were all locked, I found this odd on a Thursday. A lady quickly cme opened the door for me and I learned they had to lock the doors because a bunch of students came into the building with snowballs and started pelting the professors and students in class. I also saw about 20 people standing on both sides of the road and when someone would walk by everyone would just start pelting snowballs at them. There were gangs of people throwing snowballs everywhere around campus, I heard they would force cars to stop then surround them and open the doors and throw snowballs at the passengers. I also saw people build snowmen on cars and build walls of snow around parked cars so they wouldn't be able to back out. I was walking to Merville (another residence) with a few friends last night and there was a group of about 10 people who would follow us and throw snowballs because they found it funny. I found it entertaining early in the day, but these antics were taken to such an extreme that it became violent. I saw one defenseless girl get surrounded and absolutely demolished by probably over 50 snowballs at once. I've seen my fair share of snowball fights, but I don't think I've ever seen them used as weapons to this extent. It was probably even worse that the snow was half ice chunks too.

Anyways, this week Antonella (my roommate) took Elena and I to the most fantastic cafe I have been to, ever. It doubles as a bar and restaraunt so it is very large. There are several different rooms and each has a little different character, I believe I could spend every waking moment there. It's not starbucks in the sense that there is no Wisconsin mural and Sarah/Lauren aren't sitting across from me, but it will more than suffice. Plus there is a starbucks 3 stores down :).

This week was Irish week on campus so there were a lot of events promoting the Irish language and Irish culture in general. They had a band playing at our student bar almost every night and on Tuesday I went to see a band called the Kilas. I guess they are pretty well known in Ireland; they sang all songs in Irish so I didnt actually understand anything, but it was still great craic.

Other than that, next weekend I will be going to Croke Park which is the National Irish Stadium. Apprarently it holds more people than anywhere the Super Bowl has been held. We will also be going to Malahide Castle. The weekend after that I will be going to either London or Barcelona and the following weekend I will be going to Madrid/Valencia. I can't believe how fast the semester is going--I have been here for nearly a month and looking forward I have something plannned for almost every weekend. It's crazy!


Well, I think that's it for now but I'll try and write again soon.

Cheers, Lisa