26 June 2007

Today we get a lecture from Dr. Sarah Keating on modern Irish drama. Before our lecture, a group of us go to the tourist office to get information about a trip to Galway. We book a hostel. Our plan is to meet Dan and Stephanie in Derry, but we haven't worked everything out yet. Suzie and I go to the Queen of Tarts which is excellent, and by far one of my favorite places in Dublin. We walk back to campus and Sarah Keating's lecture is interesting, but I feel like most of the class isn't really interested in the lecture. Most of the class hasn't been exposed to Irish Drama, and doesn't really seem to grasp a lot of the things she is talking to us about. She then shoes the class a clip of a Chinese version of "Playboy of the Western World" which, though potentially interesting, doesn't make sense to a bunch of people who haven't read the play in the first place. She talks about how she thinks Yeats is a terrible dramatist, and has some really interesting things to say about modern Irish drama and why there are so few modern Irish women playwrights.
We go to Collins Barracks which has an interesting exhibit on the Easter Rising. At this point, I feel like I know more about Irish history than I do about American history. It's getting close to the end of the trip though, and I feel like I can't fit any more information about the Easter Rising into my head. There is a high cross exhibit which consists of plaster casts of some of the important high crosses of Ireland, some of which we have seen in person.
We go to a coffee shop and I think about how metropolitan Dublin is, and how no one really realizes what they city is like until they actually see it. There are portraits of Joyce and Leopold Bloom that are being sold for three hundred Euro. We take the Luas back to Trinity and I realize that there are a huge amount of young homeless in Dublin.