wish my name were irish

three parts to my tale today:

1. i am extremely frustrated with the buses here.  usually, buses have route maps– you can see exactly what streets the bus uses and where it stops.  here, they only put the end destination on the outside and at stops, you can read a list of all the places it stops.  this is completely and totally useless if you’re not familiar with the area.  the names of the stops are meaningless.  thus, i have been too afraid to go anywhere except into dublin and back because i have NO IDEA where any other buses go…where they might stop…etc.  AND all of the ticket scanners are messed up.  on the bus and on dart (light rail).  that’s right, i have to take a bus AND dart.  i COMMUTE.
2. i grew up in wisconsin– where it gets so cold we have cold days, not just snow days.  your snot freezes in your nose.  you get windburn, not sunburn.  but i have never in my life been so cold as i’ve been in ireland…and it’s not even really winter yet!  i won’t let myself wear my warmer outfits yet because they keep telling me it gets much much colder.  GREAT!  TWO THUMBS UP ON THIS GIRL!  my host family has turned on the heat ONCE this entire two weeks (too expensive to keep it on all the time here).  i went to bed the first few nights wearing the most intense long underwear patagonia makes.  i swore that i would never ever wear uggs and i am caving and having them sent over.  i want california NOW!
3. we went to kilmainham jail today (called kilmainham goal in old irish, pronounced the same way).  don’t want to write that much about it.  it’s cool because i learned about jeremy bentham’s panopticon in art history and then went to one that jeremy bentham actually helped design.  the idea is that if all the cells face each other, the prisoners are under constant observation by each other and the guards– much better than a long hallway of cells.  will post pictures that illustrate the point later.  my host mom said, “oh it’s just like visiting alcatraz, right?”  NO, absolutely not.  with kilmainham, we’ve studied the people who were held here…and they just so happened to be irish revolutionaries (now heroes).  there’s a question of JUSTICE there.  the irish being wrongly imprisoned for trying to assert their independence.  with alcatraz, it’s just the filth of american society. completely different.