Classes, Hoop, Temple Bar, Rugby @ the RDS

Day 3

We began our morning reflecting on what we had seen during the walking tour the previous day, reading a passage from the ancient Irish epic, the Táin, and connecting it to some of the images of the story and its hero, Cuchulain, that we had seen yesterday around the city. We followed with the poem “Dublin,” written by the northern Irish poet, Louis MacNeice. We then scattered to classes on Religion, History, Geography, French and Greek. We came back together to hear a
lecture on famous Irish scientists (Boyle, Kelvin, Beaufort, Parsons, Tyndall, Hamilton, and Lonsdale among others). We performed several experiments, one on identifying chemicals using bunsen burners, the others using a van der graaf generator. At one point we managed to pass a static charge through every student just by touching a single finger.

We followed classes with the long-awaited basketball game. Belvedere showed better than expected, and after a while playing Boston against Dublin, we swapped up and mixed the teams. Everyone played well and had a good time.

Following basketball, we walked O'Connell Street across the Liffey River to the Temple Bar area, and Gallagher’s Boxty House, where we had a choice of several traditional Irish dishes courtesy of Belvedere, and a talk by the proprietor, Pádraic Óg Gallagher, about the role of some traditional foods, especially the potato, in Irish history (www.boxtyhouse.ie). The Temple Bar is a lively area, once derelict, just south of the Liffey River full of shops, restaurants, museums and clubs. After lunch and our talk, we met up with our host brothers and eventually off to the Leinster – Ospreys rugby match at the RDS (Royal Dublin Society). For a lot of the students this was their first rugby experience, and I'm sure everyone had a great time.