Dia duit!

That means hello in Irish -- actually, directly translated it means "God be with you." As you may have guessed, we had our first Irish lessons today! It's such a crazy language as pronunciation is often very different from how the word is spelled. There are weird tricks to learn, like "dh" and sometimes "du" is pronounced as a "g," and "mh" is pronounced as a "v." We had a fun first class though; we did a lot of practicing our basic conversational skills.

We also had our first seminar today; it was on the topic of emigration. Emigration is a huge part of Ireland's history, and was essential during the economic decline in the 1950s. We also discussed how this effected and was recorded in terms of literature and music and dance. It was pretty cool setting, and it was interesting as emigration is not often discussed in the United States. (We're more about immigration!) However, emigration definitely related to the families of the majority of my students, whether they know that vocabulary word or not! It is definitely a topic that should be discussed with them in terms of their culture, especially if we want to represent their families in our own literature.

We also had two theater lectures this morning -- very entertaining of course. It is so great to dissect a play with someone who knows all of the intricacies, and can lead you to look at scenes and characters in many different ways.

As it was a long day, I am in for the evening -- there is always plenty of reading to do, and I need to start researching for my papers. Tomorrow my friends and I plan to go into the city center for some shopping and dinner, and then come back here to Mary and Billy's for tea (which I have begun to drink). The rain is suppose to move in tonight, so it looks like we might have a few days of more traditional Galway weather -- I just hope it clears up for our weekend trip to Dingle!