Saint Patrick's Day 2011

So, last week was Saint Patrick's Day.  I have always celebrated the holiday (I remember making Leprechaun traps when I was little), but I was excited for Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland.  My friend Pam, from NJ and Lyco, came to visit for the week.  She actually booked her ticket to visit me in Dublin before I had my plane ticket and before I had even paid my deposit for TCD.

First off, a bit of a history lesson.  Saint Patrick is one of three patron saints of Ireland (the others being Saint Bridgid and Saint Columba).  He was a 5th century missionary who came to Ireland from Great Britain.  He is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland, and is said to have banished all the snakes form the Emerald Isle.  He used the shamrock to teach the Gospel, and used the three leaves to represent the Holy Trinity, with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit being one.  Now, we celebrate the day of his death to commemorate his life.  In Ireland, it is actually a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics.

No more history.  Saint Patrick's day now is a week long festival, with events and attractions all over Ireland.  On Wednesday, there was a céilí, or Irish Dance, in Saint Stepehn's Green.  I tried my hand at some Irish dancing as well.

On the 17th, we headed on up Dame Street to stake out a good spot to watch the parade.  I was expecting a lot of bagpipers and Irish dancing.  There was some of the former, but none of the latter.  Instead, the parade was a lot like being at the Cirque du Soleil.  It was interesting and a fun time.

After a short afternoon break, and trip to the carnival, and some dinner, we went out to the pub for another Saint Patrick's day tradition, Guinness.  The day was a bit more subdued than I was expecting it to be, but it still was a lot of fun, and I would love to be back in Ireland for next year's celebration!

Me and Pam

Dame Street

Ferris Wheel at the Carnival

View of Merrion Square from the Ferris Wheel

South Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains from the air

Dublin from the air

Cherry Cup Quartert Competition

As you may well know, I sing in the University of Dublin Choral Society here at Trinity College, Dublin.  Right now, we are preparing for our next concert in April, where we will be performing Verdi's Requiem.  It is an amazing piece of music, and if have the chance, listen to the Dies Irae section.  We are singing at the Grand Canal Theater, which is a brand new performance hall in Dublin, and we will be joining the Guinness Choir and the Ulster Orchestra.  We are even going to Belfast to rehearse with the Ulster Orchestra, which my friends and I are planning on making a weekend trip out of it to see the city.

Every year, the UDCS hosts a quartet singing competition, and some of the my friends and I decided to enter.  After having some initial difficulty getting a group together, we finally did.  We sang two songs, a set piece, "The Long Day Closes," and a piece of our choosing, "Psallite, Unigenito," a Latin and German song.  Here is our group singing our chosen piece:

While we didn't win the competition, we had a lot of fun participating in it and we are looking forward to the concert in April.

Justice Scalia at TCD

Today, the Hist, one of the debating societies at TCD hosted Justice Antonin Scalia, of the US Supreme Court.  A friend of mine from my program, Nicole, and I waited in line to get tickets to hear him speak last Tuesday, even at this risk of being late to statistics, though we weren't too concerned about that (we were still on time).  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see Justice Scalia speak.

It was a very interesting, and well attended, talk, titled "Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters."  During the talk, Justice Scalia spoke about his judicial philosophy of originalism and judicial restraint, and how the concept of a "living constitution" was not appropriate for a democratic society.  He even took a few questions from the crowd, and was very good at talking off-script (perhaps Obama could learn from him about that), and made the audience break out in applause or laughter several times.  Someone asked him about how he would vote on Obamacare when it reaches the SCOTUS, but he wisely declined to answer so that the left could not use it against him and force him to recuse himself and someone else (an American) tried to bait him into answering a question about whether he would wait for Obama to be out of office before he retired, but he also chose not to answer that question.  It was a very good talk, and I was glad to have the opportunity to hear him speak.  Here is a short video that I took of some of his concluding remarks:

Belgium 2011

Last week was reading week for me at TCD, but that also meant that I had two papers to write and a statistics problem set to finish.  Luckily, some of my friends and I had planned for a trip at the end of reading week (After all of our work was due) to go to Belgium for a three day weekend.  Even though I have traveled around Ireland a bit (and technically left the country when I went to Northern Ireland, it doesn't really count), this was the first time that I had gone to continental Europe.  For an added bonus, my friend Amy (from Lycoming) is teaching English in France, and was able to come meet us in Belgium.  It was great to see her after six months, and to see a familiar face from home.

Our trip started very early Saturday morning with a 4:30 am taxi ride to the airport for our 6:40 am flight to Brussels.  It was a very quick flight (about an hour and a half), and after a taxi ride to our hostel, dropping off our luggage, getting a quick bite to eat and picking up Amy, we were off to the Zythos Beer Festival in St. Niklaas, in Flanders.

The beer festival was huge, there were over 200 variates of Belgian Beer, and people came from all over the world for this event.  When you first enter, you buy tokens, however many you want, and "rent" a glass and trade tokens for a beer at any of the stands.  We tried many different types of beer, but my favorites were Gulden Draak, Delirium Tremens, and Magnum. 

At the festival

The coasters for all of the beers available

Me and Amy

On Sunday, we spent the day around Brussels.  We walked down to the Grand Place, the medieval town square for a delicious French breakfast.  From there, we went to see the Mannekin Pis, eat some waffles (what a trip be to Belgium without waffles?), got tea and coffee on a rooftop of a museum that overlooked the city, visited the Cathedral of Saint Micheal and Saint Gudula, and went to visit the Atomium, which was built for the 1958 World's Fair.

Grand Place

Grand Place

Our delicious breakfast

Grand Place

Grand Place

Mural of TinTin

Mannekin Pis, dressed up for the Academic Order of Saint Micheal

Waffles!  In Belgium, they are not breakfast foods, but street/snack food.

The Waffles the Amy and I got.

The Cathedral

The group outside of the Cathedral and stained glass in the Cathedral (below)

 

 

 

                                                   

Organ in the Cathedral

A chapel in the Cathedral

The Royal Palace

The Atomium

The Atomium

The Grand Place light up at night

The Grand Place light up at night

 

For Monday, our last day in Belgium, we checked out of our hostel and then headed off for a day full of politics naturally.  Brussels is not only the capital of Belgium, but of the European Union, so we headed off to see the European Parliament and then got a briefing at the United States Mission to the European Union, which was set up by my classmate Clarissa, who had interned there.

Entrance to the European Parliament

European Parliament

Group shot at the EP

We then made our way to the airport for a very short (hour and fifteen minute) flight back to Dublin where lots of reading and statistics homework awaited.  By any measure, I had a great time in Belgium.  It was great to take a little vacation with a group of wonderful people, to see Amy, and practice my French (I remembered more than I thought I would, which is good).  I can't wait until my next trip back to the continent!

Life in a college town - SunGazette.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - Williamsport-Sun Gazette

Life in a college town - SunGazette.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - Williamsport-Sun Gazette

I wrote this article for the Lycoming College Alumni Magazine after the Tour Choir trip to Argentina in May.  Afterwords, it was reprinted in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, so I thought I would share it.  

General Election 2011

So today, there is a general election in Ireland to elect TD's (Member of Parliament) to the Dail Eirann.  The previous session of the Dail was dissolved at the end of January, and the entire election campaign has only lasted a few weeks, culminating in today's election.  It has been quite interesting to follow the campaign and contrast it with my experiences with campaigning and elections back at home. 

The Irish use a system of voting called the Alternative Vote, and the only other country that uses this is Malta.  Each district elects either 3, 4, or 5 TD's, depending on the population of the district.  Each citizen votes by ranking their candidates by preference.  Once a candidate reaches the predetermined quota of first-preference votes for a seat, all the rest of their votes are transferred to the other candidates, based on how they were ranked by the voters.  It is an interesting system that provides for many opportunities for voters to act strategically, but parties must as well.  If a party does not believe they have enough votes to get two quotas in a district, they might only run one candidate to ensure that they get the one seat.

The largest party in the previous Dail was Fianna Fail, a centrist party who have basically been in power in Ireland for the past 70 years.  Now, they will be lucky to be the third largest party in the next Dail.  They popularity has tanked, and many voters blame them for turning the surpluses from the Celtic Tiger years into deficits, for raising taxes, and allowing reckless lending by banks, which led to a government bailout and then an IMF/EU bailout of the Ireland (Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?).  The main opposition parties are Fine Gael (a center-right party) and Labour (center-left).  Other parties include the Green Party, which will be lucky to have any representation in the next Dail after being part of the ruling coalition with Fianna Fail the past few years, and Sinn Fein.  There are also several independent candidates running, as well as a few far left/socialist candidates running under the label "United Left Alliance."

My prediction for the election is as follows:
Fine Gael- 79 Seats
Labour- 40 Seats
Fianna Fail-25 Seats
Sinn Feinn- 11 Seats
Greens- 1 Seats
Independents/Others- 10 Seats

Fine Gael will form a coalition with some of the more centrist/center-right independents and Enda Kenny will be the next Taoiseach (prime minister).

We will know soon how close (or how far off base) I am in my predictions.  During the past few weeks, a couple thousand signs appeared all around Dublin, which has really been most of my contact with the election (not having a TV, I was spared any campaign commercials).  In addition, Fine Gael, in what I suppose is an attempt to connect with younger voters, created a video game where you actually shoot political opponents with the logo of the Fine Gael party.  The first time I saw the game, I thought it was a joke, but it is very real, and annoyingly difficult to beat (http://www.finegael2011.com/game/).  Here are some of the pictures of campaign posters:

A Day Full of Irish Politics

As you know, I am studying Comparative European Politics here at TCD, but we do not often talk about the politics of the Emerald Island, even though there is a lot going on and a general election coming up.  After out visit to the President's Mansion two weeks ago, we made plans to tour the Dáil Éirann, the Irish Parliament.  One of my classmates has an uncle who is a TD (Member of Parliament) and he arranged a tour of the Dáil for us.

It was a very interesting tour and since the Parliament was not in session, we were able to get up close to the Senate meeting chamber.  Now I have been to two parliaments (Ireland and Québec), but I still haven't made it to Congress...perhaps this summer I will call up Leonard Lance and make that happen.

Leinster House, home of the Dáil Éirann

The Senate Chamber

After our tour of the Dáil (and coffee) we headed back up to TCD to hear Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland, speak at the University Philosophical Society, a debating society that we attend every so often.  It was a great opportunity to hear President McAlesse speak, and I think that some of our politicians could learn a few things from her.  She was very personable and seemed easy to connect to, but also commanded the room's attention.  She is the second female president of Ireland, and the first one born in Northern Ireland.  She is finishing up her second term as president, and as she is term-limited, she plans to return to school and further her already advanced career in law.