Irish Beauty

Dia dhuit, is ainm dom Lucy, which in Gaelic (or Irish, as all real Irish folk would call it), means 'Hello, I am Lucy.' It's also pretty much the only thing I know how to say in Irish so far, although hopefully I'll pick up more throughout the rest of my semester here at Trinity College Dublin. Thank goodness everyone here speaks English (and in such cute accents!).

While those of you at Penn are now entering the mad season that is midterms, I'm only in the middle of my second week of classes, and am still not officially registered for any of them yet. In fact, I've now just finally had time to introduce myself to the WWAW blog because I finalized my course decisions today! While you might be completely stressed out about midterms, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you know what your classes are; I've now been stressing about that for the past 6 weeks that I've been here. Since I chose not to go to a Wharton-approved program, I can't get credit for any Wharton classes here, so gen ed requirements, here I come! However, in the UK and Ireland (which is not part of the UK, something many people don't realize--Northern Ireland is, but the Republic of Ireland is not), students only study one subject, so as a visiting student from America trying to fulfill general distribution requirements, it can be difficult to find classes that don't conflict with each other. Plus no class registration is online here, so for every class you take you have to go directly to the department and have someone sign a piece of paper saying you're registered. Needless to say, I'm missing PennInTouch just a little right now.

However, aside from all that, my past 6 weeks here have been amazing. Trinity offers a program for abroad students called the Semester Start-Up Program (SSP) in order to introduce us to Irish history, literature, and art & architecture before the semester starts, so my first 3 weeks here were spent learning about Ireland and taking field trips to places like Trim Castle (c. 1000 AD), the Hill of Tara (where the high kings of Ireland used to reside), Croke Park (Ireland's national sports stadium), Kilmainham Gaol (jail), the Abbey Theater, and the Guinness Storehouse. An interesting fact about the Guinness Storehouse: in 1759 Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease to the storehouse land for £45 per year. While it probably seemed pretty ridiculous at the time, he's looking like a genius now...only £45 per year!

What's struck me the most in touring around Ireland is how historic it is--it never really hit me until I got here just how old everything is compared to in America. In Philly we revel over the 18th century buildings of our revolutionary leaders; here they have castles that were built in the 11th and 12th centuries that were used to protect against Viking invasions. But at the same time I'm amazed that a place with such a unique, historic culture has only been independent for less than 100 years (Ireland gained independence from Britain in 1922).

Aside from the SSP trips, I've also been travelling around Ireland as much as I can. I've taken day trips around Dublin, to county Wicklow (where parts of the movie P.S. I Love You were filmed), the city of Howth, and the town of Dun Laoghaire (Dunleary), all of which have been beautiful. So far I've seen a lot of the exact things you'd expect from Ireland: rolling green hills, heather, ocean, crumbling rock, and old castles. Quite majestic. This weekend I'm heading to Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, to visit the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands, so more majestic scenery is ahead!

I could go on and on about the beauty of Ireland, but I don't want to spoil the fun if anyone plans on coming here. If you have any questions about Ireland or Trinity or if you're thinking of coming to study abroad here, feel free to email me at lhesby@wharton.upenn.edu. I couldn't recommend it enough!
Sláinte (cheers)!