Good thing we didn't go to Dublin this weekend! There were over 100,000 protestors in Dublin's city-centre protesting the way the Irish government is handeling the recession. Needless to say, this could have put a damper on our trip! We didn't end up going anywhere this weekend, which is kind of a good thing because I have a lot of reading and researching to catch up on...the bad news is that I haven't been motivated to do anything all day!!! Hopefully after I'm done writing this I'll have some motivation. My roommate's scheduled to be back soon (she had a field trip for her castles class - how awesome is that!) so maybe I'll be motivated with someone else home...
I have a random funny story to share. The other day, I was sitting in my Irish Language class and Daithi (pronounced Da-he) was teaching us how to say Irish-American. Then, he was going to tell us how to say, "My people are from Ireland," so he asked us how many of our ancestors left during the Great Hunger. As we were raising our hands, a German girl said, "Is that even relevant anymore. Americans are American - what does it matter that their people passed through another country a long time ago?" Pretty much every American in there went on the defensive. She then had about 6 of us explaining why it is relevant and why we feel a connection with whatever countries our families are from. Daithi handled it really well by telling stories of him growing up in England and his identity as an Irish-English. It was kind of funny to see everyone's reactions when she said that, though....