Fresh In Week Five

It’s hard to believe that we all have been on The Emerald Isle for over a month now. Do you know what that means? This is week FIVE of classes.
Our classes are moving right along; we have already made presentations, written papers, and finished Irish novels.
As a Professional Writing major, I have to take two online classes. However, I do take four classes at the Champlain Dublin academic center. I can guarantee that every student would say, “I am learning.”
And, not just learning. We aren’t talking about American History or re-reading the literature that we were introduced to in the ninth grade. We’re learning about Ireland. That would make sense, right?
In Jacinta Kendrick’s Cultural Immersion through the Fine Arts course, we have spent our weekly class time out of the classroom. In our first week, we went to The National Museum where we looked at bog bodies. These bodies were preserved in the layers of earth in Irish bogs. As well as the bodies, Irish relics have been found; our assignment was to sketch one of these relics. I chose The Tully Lough Cross. In our other class periods, we have gone to The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Georgian House Museum, and walked past the Leinster House, which houses the National Parliament of Ireland.
The Irish Parliament has been a hot topic in Anthony O’Halloran’s Modern Irish Social History. We have discussed the issues present in Ireland and America and learned that Religion and Government run parallel through more societies than we thought. We have been shown the disturbing intensity of the Famine through important historical documents and speeches and can recognize the recent developments in Irish society like women’s importance and the approval of divorce. Most important, we have been shown the affect America has had on Ireland and Ireland on America.
I have two classes with Caroline Elbay. One of these classes, Writing the City, I am illustrating the city through my writing. In one piece for this course, I wrote about a brunch my roommates and I devoured. We write creatively to inform the reader about an experience we had at an establishment like a café, restaurant, park, theatre, and more. One of our courses was spent at The Irish Writers’ Center, where we listened to four authors read their short stories while enjoying a glass of wine and the company of other writing appreciative people.
In Caroline’s other course, Cultural Immersion through Irish Literature, we have just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Our class learned about Irish history and evolution in culture through this novel. We now recognize the urbanization in Irish history, the emergence of the “new woman”, and the ideas of Darwin and Freud. We have moved onto James Joyce’s collection of short works, The Dubliners. This collection has illustrated the different lives of people in Dublin; we have read about Priests, young boys skipping school and traveling across the Liffey, and young women leaving their families to pursue life and love.
In each of Anthony’s classes, he tells us, “You will need to know this when you get back to Vermont to know the real story.” And, we listen. And, to be completely honest, I feel relatively proud right now. I feel proud to be able to tell about all that I have learned in Dublin. It is an amazing, exhilarating, even ecstatic feeling to be able to recall five weeks of courses and have every idea be fresh in my mind.