Favorite Day of the Year

All of us at the Ha'penny Bridge! 

Gratton Bridge

After being at UCD for nearly a week, my friends and I were itching to go into Dublin and do something touristy; we had been so busy with orientation and getting settled in that we hadn't gotten the chance to explore the city much at all. On Saturday evening walked across the Ha'penny and Gratton Bridges, which both cross the River Liffey and are beautiful at night when they're all lit up. The Ha'penny Bridge is a cast-iron bridge that was built in 1816 and is solely for pedestrian use. The Grattan Bridge was originally built in the 1750s, but was reopened and given its current name in 1874. When we were walking around here I kept thinking about how California wasn't even discovered when  these bridges were built. I always used to think European history was boring, but now that I'm here I'm starting to change my mind.

Ha'penny Bridge

One of the arches on the Ha'penny Bridge - couples put locks here and throw the key into the River Liffey (cute, right?)

Saturday was also my 21st birthday, so after walking around the city for a while we went to the Brazen Head for dinner and cider. The Brazen Head is Ireland's oldest pub and was built in 1198.

I titled this post "Favorite Day of the Year" not because of my birthday, but because today is the day of the year that I look forward to more than my birthday, Christmas, or any other special occasion; today is The First Day of School! Aside from international students who were here for orientation, campus was pretty empty last week. Now, there are 25,000 students here (including my other roommate, an Irish girl in her first year). I'm taking  six classes this semester, four of which are lectures and two of which are seminars. Each lecture comes with a tutorial, which seems like the equivalent of a small group discussion. The classes I'm taking are: Psychology of Language, Perspectives in Film, Twentieth Century Drama, Brain and Behavior, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and the East, and a class on Irish culture that's only for BC students. Since most of the classes here are so big, there isn't really homework or quizzes or anything like we have at BC; most of my classes have one 1500 word essay and an exam at the end. We also have all of our textbooks online or on reserve at the library, so I don't have to deal with buying books or taking them around everywhere. So far I've only been to the Psychology of Language lecture, and it seems like an interesting but not too difficult course. It was kind of nice to just sit in a lecture hall and not have to worry about getting called on by the professor like I do in all of my classes at BC. As fun as it was not having to worry about school last week, I'm excited to get into the routine of classes, because, as most of you know, going to school is my idea of fun.