Second Week

More Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002536&l=a383a&id=1480470118

Video of My House:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPbrGJbLoRo

So I've been a little quiet over the past week but that is mostly because of how busy I have been. It has been jam packed as it was the first week of classes and I was still settling in a little to my housing situation. It's been tough with my leg problems dealing with the amount of walking I have to do, but it is great exercise. I would estimate I've walked around 100 miles already.

So this week, first off Go Eagles! I'm lucky enough to have got to watch the game in a pub called Portobellos and will see the NFC Championship game tomorrow also. It was a lot of fun watching it with some giants fans as well... haha.

On Monday I had my first two classes, the first is called Northern Irish Perspectives. It is a lecture course which brings in noted speakers from all different sides of the conflict including former politicians, writers, IRA members, secret service, collumnists, ect. Everyone listed appears highly qualified and probably were only brought in because of the teacher (who has written books on the conflict that we are reading for the class). The one thing we all noticed is that the teachers they bring into IES really seem to have the chops and are very qualified. The second class I had was Irish Language and Culture. This one is going to be fun because half of the class I actually learn Irish and the second half is focused on culture through the years like music, art, theater. I can already have a very basic conversation!

Tuesday I had a class entitled Northern Irish Troubles. It is more of a history course of the northern conflict then the first and again has a great teacher. The man was a collumnist throughout the entirety of the conflict over the past 40 years and has access to footage and information that is not public.

On Wednesday I had my final two courses, the first was Conflict Resolution in which the teacher helped write part of the legislation for the peace process over the past 8 years and the course focuses on conflicts all around the world, their similarities to Northern Ireland's, and how they could be worked towards peace. The course at night is Celtic Myth and Legend. It is not really down my alley and is definitely different than anything else I am taking, but it could be fun and also sheds light onto the early days of Ireland.

The weekend has been fun so far. On Friday we did a scavenger hunt around the city (to which my team placed 2nd and won cd's). Mostly it has been a Pub crawl though. There are so many interesting old pubs around the city that we wanted to see. Tonight me and my roommates went to Devitts which has a family that does Traditional Irish music. It was a much better ending to a day that included walking 50 minutes round trip to do laundry (no washer here) in the pouring rain and wind, just to come home to a power outage. It's because of that where a good sense of humor has really come in handy, you just have to roll with it!

I'm pumped for the Eagles game tomorrow, but I have a lot of reading I have to get done first for my classes, which you read correctly are only Monday-Wednesday (long classes though). Go Birds!