A few highlights:
• I had to swap my sneakers for my steel-toed shoes at the check-in counter because my bag was .6 kilograms over the 32 kilo limit (70 pounds).
• Upon arriving in the U.S., I embraced my narrow, green currency with its beautiful exchange rate of exactly 1 to 1.
• The first thing I bought was the year-in-review issue of Entertainment Weekly and the USA Today. Less than 2 hours later, I felt mostly reacquainted with American pop culture and current events.

Once I get my film developed, more pictures will make their way into my Europe photo gallery. I'll make note of that here when it happens. For now, this is the end of the road.

Thanks for reading.

Now all that's left to do here in Dublin is Christmas shopping, sending a few last postcards, and packing. In 3 days, I'll leave Ireland, and in 4 days, I'll be home.

Case in point: Thanksgiving in Ireland. While Thanksgiving is recognised a number of places worldwide, nowhere does the holiday receive the recognition it does in America. That means everyone still has work, classes, and everyday life, but we did our best to overcome that.

As a veteran of many RyanAir discount flights, my AerLingus flight was especially nice. Imagine being served food and beverage on a flight without paying extra!

After I arrived at Madrid, Elizabeth met me and we checked my bag at airport luggage storage. Then, I spent the night in true young-Spainard style: at the discoteca. I can summarize the experience using only times. We arrived at Palacio around 12.30am when the party was getting started. We left at 6.00am when the party ended. It was lots of fun for one night, but I can't understand how people could go to the discotecas very often.

"Dollar falls to new low in trading with euro."

Move along, there's nothing to see here....

Friday, though the rain poured down, we went to Glendalough, an ancient monastary in the Wicklow mountains. Thankfully, I was able to review my theology notes about the site before we arrived so I could explain its history. We saw Glendalough's round towers, monastic ruins, lakes, and local pub (with Guinness at an amazingly low price of ?2.65). After returning to Dublin, we cooked fajitas at my flat and went on a pub crawl.

Saturday was our day in Dublin. We walked around downtown, saw Trinity College, the Book of Kells, and the Guinness Storehouse. While the Guinness Storehouse is interesting and many people feel a must-see in Ireland, it's a bit over-the-top. After four floors of learning about the ingredients (water, barley, hops, and yeast), Arthur Guinness, barrel-making, and advertising, you just want to be in the Gravity Bar on the top floor where you can relax.

Later Saturday night, we went to a Notre Dame mass and dinner at our programme director's house. Then, we decided on a whim to see a Black 47 concert at a local pub. Black 47 (named for the worst year of the Irish famine in 1847) is a nationalist band that fuses traditional Irish music with rock. It was a cool experience and the music was excellent.

Sunday saw breakfast at Bewley's, an excellent coffee shop that is older than Notre Dame by 2 years. After a little Christmas shopping in city centre, I put the girls on the airport bus and sent them home.

Back to work....

The details follow:

What's the difference in pronunciation between the word pit and the letters "pit" in the word spit? If you just say the words out loud, you might think there isn't any difference, but there is. Hold you hand directly in front of your mouth and say the word "pit," then the word "spit." You should notice that a puff of air exits your mouth when you say the former, but not the latter. This is because the "p" in pit is pronounced differently; it is aspirated. New things every day.

This weekend: London.
The current exchange rate for the pound: $1.68.

The most impressive stop by far was the Newgrange burial mound. Although it was fully excavated in the 1960s, the tomb at Newgrange is 5,000 years old. (It was built 500 years before the Great Pyramids in Egypt.) Newgrange is the oldest known example of solar alignment. When you enter the the tomb, you descend into pure blackness. But, on the winter solstice (Dec. 21), the sun aligns with a special opening (called the lightbox) and floods the tomb with light briefly. On the tour, the event is simulated using some lightbulbs. It is really amazing to think how ancient people could have constructed such an elaborate mechanism.

We also saw ancient burial mounds, the remains of ring forts, and a crumbling monastary where St. Patrick "lit the flame of Christianity" in Ireland around 432AD.

After some riding, we arrived at Dun Aengus, an ancient rock fortress. We posed with the rocks, 300 foot cliffs, and built a pyramid.

That evening, we hung out at the hopping pub in town, somewhat ironically called "The America Bar." The following morning, we woke up early took the ferry, bus, and another bus back to Dublin.

The Burren region was once a green countryside covered with rocks. Thanks to the work of thousands of peasants, it is now covered with freestanding (no mortar) rock fences that are a sight to behold.

After stopped at some castles and ancient burial tombs, we finally arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. They are amazing. The winds are very strong, making it is intimidating to be close to the edge. I crawled to the edge of the cliffs on my stomach and looked 600 feet straight down to the Atlantic Ocean below. Next, at a pub in Doolin, a small town famous for its traditional music, I ate beef stew in Guinness for lunch. Finally, we made our way back to Galway.

I saw my first Notre Dame football game of the season at a pub in Galway. American football is almost never shown here in Ireland, but this was a special case because two prominent Catholic school were playing each other (ND and Boston College). Thankfully we had the other amazing events of the day to distract us from the (disappointing) final score.

We spent some time at another pub before retiring to our extraordinarily sketchy hostel. It was a night to remember. I can summarise by saying we had 8 beds for 10 people, my clothes smelled, and even the hostel owners described our room as a hellhole. But, every sketchy hostel has a silver lining: the spectacularly incompetent management didn't charge us for the room. That was a good thing—if they did, we wouldn't have paid anyway.

Today 9 friends and I took Bus Eireann for 5 hours to arrive at Galway, a city on Ireland's west coast. Travel literature I have read say Galway is the fastest growing city in Europe — I will research the matter further and report back with the whole story.

This evening we had dinner at a fantastic restaurant called Couch Potato where every meal is served in a potato. They have pizza potatoes, pasta potatoes, and others. I had the Hawaii 5-0 potato, stuffed with shredded ham, pineapple, peppers, and cheese.

In the next few days we are going to see the Cliffs of Moher and the Arran Islands: scenic Ireland at its best.

Kilmainhem Gaol (Jail) is a prison near the downtown area. It is both a monument to the famous patriots held there and a museum about the social institution of prisons. Kilmainhem held famous political prisoners including Irish patriots Robert Emmet and C.S. Parnell, as well as common people jailed for petty crime during the Great Famine. (During the Famine, many people committed petty crime in hopes of being jailed and fed.) It is also the site of execution of 14 members of the 1916 Easter Sunday rebellion.

I really enjoyed visiting the Jail. It is exciting to have the opportunity to interact with the Irish history we are learning about in class. Just a few weeks ago we learned about Robert Emmet's role in the United Irishmen, his part in the 1803 uprising, and his imprisonment in Kilmainhem. On the eve of his execution, Emmet gave a speech from the docket that is regarded as a masterpiece of rhetoric. (U.S. President Lincoln studied it and could give it from memory.)

Later this morning we visited the Book of Kells, at Trinity College. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript from 800AD, considered to be one of the finest in the world. It is quite a sight to see. Also at Trinity is The Long Hall, a two-story room with vaulted ceiling and 200,000 rare books. Believe it or not, The Long Hall was the inspiration for the Jedi Library in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.

Having done the "abroad" portion of studying abroad this morning, it's time to do some research about conversation structure for my linguistics class.

My only plans for the day in Waterford were to see the crystal factory. Using city buses, I made my way to the Waterford Crystal visitor centre and did just that. Here are some interesting facts:

Today in my linguistics class of about 60 people the professor isolated me as "a student from America" to confirm examples of American college slang words. I responded that, yes, sick, bounce, tight, ghetto, and trip are indeed valid American slang terms. Then, having provided my professional analysis, I returned to my blissful obscurity.