The Holy Trinity: College, Fish and Chips, and Gaelic Football

Something happened overnight, after everyone got to bed.  The girls were admittedly only out til 12:30, which is not that bad.  But that might have been self-limiting, because most of the pubs close pretty early relative to most parts of the world.  Anyway, right about 3, we all woke up.  I Facebook messaged with Chris for a while, because I was completely awake, and I watched as every single girl got up to go to the bathroom, between 2:30 and 3:30.  It got suddenly really hot.

Anyway, at 8 we all got up and started dressing.  I was convinced we were supposed to meet Leta at her hotel before 9, so I grabbed some coffee, forced down a little cereal, and headed out.  I sat with the boys for breakfast, and when I came back from busing my own table, they were all gone, so I thought they had left.  I went out to try to catch up, and found my own way to Leta's hotel.  I figured, who gets raped at 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning?

I made it to Leta's, the Hardinge hotel, without incident.  Marnie and Leta were having breakfast, so I sat down.  She did listen to the really awkward phone message I left her (to RSVP to that fated barbecue), and Marnie gets to be an assistant because she is a UW student employee.  So if I want to go next year, I need to be a student or an employee.  Ideas are already in mind.

We met with the rest of the group at ten, and headed off for Trinity College.  It's the oldest university in Ireland, founded in 1592, and before that, a monastery, it's a great place to be.  Our tour guide was Mumford from Mumford and Sons, and he was so adorable and Dublin Irish, that I think every one of us girls fell in love.  He said that you can get married at the chapel on campus up to five years after you graduate.  There is a lot of symbolism in their traditions: They give final exams in this one corner of the big building, and the bell in the belfry only get rung when they do final exams or funerals in the chapel: when you are being judged by man, and by God.

They allowed women into the college in 1904, and while they allowed Catholics in, the Catholics weren't allowed to attend Trinity (by the Vatican) until 1970.  The Provost (Dean) who finally allowed women in was called something Salmon, and he denied women entry for 15 years, and finally relented in his sixteenth year.  He said that he was signing with his hand but not his heart, and 2 months later he died of a heart attack.

The oldest student society was the debate society (although it was called a historical society), and Oscar Wilde was once a member.  Also, in the 1700's, the professor in charge of discipline was extremely hated, and students would stop at his residence room to tell him so.  Well, a triad of drunk students decided at 2 am to tell him all the ways in which he was ruining their lives, and began throwing rocks at his window.  He came out, and they threw rocks and also insults, and he went to get his gun.  He fired on the students, and so they ran to their dorms to get their own guns.  They returned, and in the volley, the professor was shot and died within two hours.  At the trial, the judge ruled not guilty, and said it was likely just a prank that got out of hand.  He once was in the same fraternity as those students, so we are suspicious about that ruling.

Up until the 70's, enrollment was small, around 3000 total students, but after that, they expanded rapidly, and tons of horrible ugly blockly buildings were built around the pretty Georgian ones to house the other students and classes.  The last stop was the Book of Kells in the library.  There were only two pages open, and the remarkable thing was really that, after walking through the blown up images of details, you see the pages and realize that those details are shockingly, incredibly tiny.  The much more impressive thing was the fabulous library.  The guide, Ross, described it as being marvelous.  It was.  The books are arranged, completely arbitrarily, by size.  He said that the catalog lists books by size, and that it still takes up to 2 days to find your requested book, and when you want to read it, they lay it out for you in an isolated room upstairs, and you can't take notes or touch it, and a guard watches you while you read it.

But OH MY GOD, IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL.  I have pictures.  I loved it.  I want one too.

After that, we hopped on the Hop On, Hop Off bus tour of Dublin, which drives around and stops at points of interest, and you can get on and off as you go around.  They narrate the whole thing, either on audio or vocally.  We first got on one that as recorded, and took pictures and whatnot, then bailed off to get fish and chips for lunch.

I ate the fish and chips, and it was delicious!  It wasn't too fishy, and it was flaky and hot.  Very good.  We sat at Christchurch Cathedral to eat.  There were tons of pigeons, and down the sidewalk, we see this cat starting to stalk the birds.  This was video taped from at least two places, and if I try to explain it, it will be lame, so you can imagine what happened, and later I'll forward the video.  It was adorable.

We piled back on the bus, and this driver was a live narrator.  He told us a few good stories, including one about the origin of "cap in hand", the Irish WWI soldiers who would wear their military fatigues to panhandle because the veteran's office didn't provide enough.  Also, Arthur Guinness, who created Guinness, lived with his wife and 21 kids in the apartment near the brewery.  Allegedly, Mrs. Guinness was a little deaf, and every night Arthur would ask, "so are you going to sleep or what?" And every night Mrs. Guinness would say "what?" and 21 kids later, the rest, they say is history.

Some girls got off the bus at the jail where the 1916 rebels were executed, and the rest of us rode the bus back to our hostel.  We split up, and some people napped or whatever, and Tanner, Dale, Lauren (my three best friends, so far, because they are funny and cool and don't want to get drunk all the time), Toto (we'll see his status, he only arrived this morning), and Evalina and Marnie and I went to Dublin Castle.  We totally slipped in on a tour to listen without paying...  It was gorgeous.

The throne room was most interesting, the throne was built for one of the four English Georges, who was 6' 4", and weighed at least 380 pounds (by our shitty math) or 188 kilos.  They added a step stool for the short queens who came after him.  The chandelier was adorned with roses (England), the thistle (Scotland) and the shamrock (Ireland).  Wales was too small to be on it, because it was more like an English principality.  Also, their contribution would have been the daffodil.  In a related story, the national symbol of Ireland is the harp, of England is the lion, of Scotland is the unicorn, and of Wales is the leek.

As Tanner pointed out, America's symbol is the eagle, and Wales' is the leek, and guess who is the superpower nation.

After the Dublin Castle tour, we ran over to a pub to catch the County Kerry v County Mayo Gaelic football game.  When we arrived, the game was ten minutes in, and the pub was mostly empty, so we took a seat.  The rest of the group met us there, but they thought it was too lame, so they left.  Their mistake was our opportunity though!  Dale chatted up this older guy, who explained this whole thing.

The game is kind of like every sport.  The players are all volunteer, and all the revenue from the game goes to the stadium costs, and then back to the counties for the kid's programs in each county.  They have a bunch of crazy rules, but being nice is not one of them.  They can run with the ball, and kick it, and throw it, and pass it, and dribble it, and it's like a little of every sport ever.  The uprights are extensions of the front, vertical posts of a normal soccer goal.  One point for going between the uprights, 3 for going into the soccer goal.  Scoring looks like 0-00, the points for the smaller goal being counted by ones on the left (but being worth three points each) and the goals for the uprights counted on the right, one for one.  Kerry was the winner of the all-Ireland finals last year, and the favorite to win, and Mayo got a player red carded (kicked out) so they were down a player.  The game is 70 minutes long, and they have half time at 35 minutes. We were rooting for Kerry because our driver for the rest of the trip is from Kerry.

So it was back and forth, a few points either way, and the pub stayed mostly empty, except for the three Mayo fans, so we felt awkward cheering for Kerry.  After half time, however, the pub filled up, and Mayo started to catch up the lead that Kerry had built before halftime.  Soon, it was neck and neck, and there were Kerry and Mayo fans cheering either way.  0-12, 0-12, 0-13, 0-13.  Then Mayo scored in the soccer net.  1-13, 0-13.  A three point lead is hard to overcome, and Mayo quickly followed with three more goals.  1-16, 0-13.

Kerry finally got the ball, and in a magically long kick, caught and tossed and Beckham kicked into the soccer net, and the game was not over!  1-16, 1-13.  They scored once more, and then Mayo did, and there were minutes left in the game, and Kerry scored again!  It was 1-16, 1-15, and the officiators added three minutes to the game (because they do that?), and Kerry scored once more, and it ended as a tie.

They will play again in a few days.

Because that's what you do in Ireland, you just play it over if no one wins.

Lastly, we went to dinner at a really cute Italian place that was inside these brickwork tunnels.  I forgot to get pictures, but it was pretty neat.  The food was really good, but the service was terribly slow, and while we had a great conversation around the table, three hours of shouting at each other inside a tunnel made me very hoarse.  All of us were exhausted, so no one went out tonight.  It's probably for the best...

I am completely exhausted, and I can't believe I was able to document everything.  It's not the fullest detail, but thank the Lord I remembered everything that happened today.  Oh, also, it drizzled today, which was wonderful.  I seriously enjoyed grabbing an umbrella.

Totally wiped, heading to bed, see y'all in the morning!  Your middle of the night!