Well, thanks for taking the time to come read our blog! We really appreciate it!
Anyway, this morning, on our wonderful day 4 (we are having so much fun), we had two fantastic lectures! One was about the Medieval connections to Joyce literature, and the other was about Joyce's literary irony. In between the lectures, we had a little 30-minute tea break, which was lovely as it is everyday!
Next, we immediately picked up some boxed lunches, and made our way to the National Botanical Gardens, located in Dublin! We ate lunch in the park, but some of us ate on the bus we were so hungry! We also did a mini photo-shoot in the gardens, and it was very nice to sit in the shade and just relax. With the rest of the James Joyce summer school, we took a great tour of the gardens. They're working on a new exhibit in which they will display the 850 native species of flora in Ireland! They had really beautiful plants, including some exotic plants as well!
Then, we took a tour of the Glasnevin Cemetery, one of the most famous cemeteries in all of Ireland. Graves date from the year 1832, and the cemetery continues to bury people on its grounds even today. In fact, there are more people buried in the cemetery than there are walking around Dublin today! Weird, right? We saw many, many graves. James Joyce himself is buried near Zurich, Switzerland (which was a tad of a disappointment), but we did see all of those in the cemetery relating to James Joyce, some of whom were either friends or featured in his novels. We saw one of the old viceroys of Ireland, who was murdered in Phoenix Park in Dublin. It was interesting to see that in their culture, it was more important to state how the person died, rather than recount their life story and successes. We learned about other practices from the past, one of which was grave-robbing, where medical students illegally stole corpses out of the graveyard. Autopsies were illegal, there was even a large watchtower, to prevent such crimes.
After the graveyard, we drove back downtown where we branched off in small groups to explore and have dinner. One went shopping then headed to a traditional Irish restaurant for dinner. The others also browsed the stores (their finds included irish flag boxer shorts), relaxed in St. Steven's Green, and then headed back to the dorms. Luckily for us, Ireland is so far north that it stays bright until almost 10:00 at night!
No comments:
Post a Comment