Orientation in Dublin

Dublin Orientation:

Upon my arrival back to Dublin I was looking forward to two days of orientation. I met 19 other UC students, 8 who will also be studying at UCC with me, and 11 attending Trinity College. Aside from informative meetings, orientation consisted of authentic Irish food, a bus tour of Dublin, and a couple nights out with new friends.

Ireland is not celebrated for its cuisine, but there are some dishes you must try if you are in the country. One is Steak and Guinness Pie. This is essentially thick beef stew topped with mashed potatoes and crunchy pastry, nothing special, but delicious nonetheless. On the more adventurous side there is black pudding, which is just one component of the loaded ‘traditional Irish breakfast.’ Black pudding is a mixture of meat, oatmeal, and blood, among other things. It has a dry, gritty consistency and is surprisingly bland. Given the ingredients of the dish, it tasted much better than expected. 

(The black pudding is the circle of black spotted stuff on the bottom right)

After getting a taste of the country through food we-got a feel for the city through a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. A bright green double decker bus drove to several main attractions of Dublin, the most memorable of which were: the Guinness Brewing Factory, Stephen’s Green Park, and Kilmainham Goal.

Kilmainham Goal is an old jail that holds the history of the Irish Revolution in its walls. It was originally built to house regular prisoners-but eventually held debtors, thieves, beggars, and even children occupied the cells.  During the potato famine, times were so rough that people deliberately got caught undertaking petty crime in order to be put in jail and receive bread and water twice a day. When this started occurring prisoner rations were cut in half, but that did nothing to stop the overcrowding in Kilmainham Goal. Kilmainham was home to famous Irish Revolutionary leaders, and we were shown the cells where they spent their final hours, and then the yard in which they spent their final seconds. The building itself grew with the population as extra hallways and cells were added in the same style. Years later, in yet another renovation, another wing was added to the prison that utilized the theory of the panopticon-an all seeing eye. This is similar to prisons today where individual cells line the sides of a circular room with a guard station in the middle.