Bloomsday

It was the culmination of a life long dream to be in Dublin on Bloomsday - June 16th!  Andrew was here with me to participate in the festivities.  It ended up not being quite as big of a deal here as I had imagined it would be, but we still had an amazing Joyce-filled day!!

The day started with a breakfast at the Gresham Hotel which included some recreations from segments of the novel. 

I even tried black pudding this morning!!  Yuck!

Here is the actor who played Leopold Bloom.

After the breakfast we went over to the James Joyce Centre to see the Joyce lookalike and the beginning of the street theatre performances.

Here are the actors who played Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus acting out the opening chapter of the novel which takes place in the Martello Tower in Sandycove.

Next was a journey to St. Stephen's Green to hear acts and readings celebrating Joyce and Ulysses!
Here is a picture of one of the performers - I actually saw her short one woman play Joyced! when I first arrived in Dublin - she performed a segment of it here.

Andrew and I celebrating the day with all the readings.  Too bad we couldn't get up on the stage and delight the crowd with our own reading!  We would have rocked it!

After the readings and acts we wandered over to Merrion Square to find the Oscar Wilde statue.

Next, off to the finally stop of the day...the National Library!!
There was a reading from Ulysses taking place there all day - I think it was the best part of the day!

One of the walking steps of Ulysses that were laid around the city about 20 years ago.  It is right on Grafton Street by college so I walk by it all the time.

All in all an excellent Bloomsday in Dublin!!!
By the way, Bloomsday is the date that Ulysses takes place in 1904.  It is also the day that he first stepped out with Nora Barnacle, his life partner.

Last couple weeks in Dublin

Today was the end of my first of my last three weeks in Dublin.  It is bittersweet because I am thrilled at my progress on the dissertation (completed my 3000 word Introduction and submitted it today) but I am also getting sad about having to leave Ireland soon.  This year has truly been life changing and wonderful...I'm not quite ready to let it go.  I am, however, ready to be done with the dissertation!  I am just happy that the next chapter of my life looks so positive - so many great things to look forward to in Southern California!

Now that the introduction is complete it is time to move on to the first chapter which will focus on the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen.  The introduction was quite long and involved a lot of background information about my use of psychoanalytic theory in my interpretation of the novels.  I also set up the distinct response each of these female writers is making to my guy James Joyce (that part was great!)

Oh and a new press release today confirms how lucky I am to be studying English at Trinity College!  It is ranked 14th in the world for English studies!
http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/pressreleases/pressRelease.php?headerID=2556&pressReleaseArchive=2012

The new apartment

Our apartment is in the city centre and right in the middle of all the action!!  We are only a block from Temple Bar and about a 5-10 minute walk to college (depending on the number of people on the street)!  It is so nice to have a kitchen after a year of sharing the tiniest kitchen and fridge with 6 other students.  I have loved having friends over and cooking dinner.

Here is our kitchen, complete with washing machine!!

The living room.

The view from the living room - amazing!

Me, sitting on the ledge of our balcony TERRIFIED, while Andrew tries to get a good picture.

The small, small bathroom...seriously the shower in this apartment is even smaller than the one in my dorm room!!

This is the outside of our building...

The start of summer

Andrew and I have been living in the new apartment for about a month now...the time has gone so fast.  In that month so much has happened.  We took a trip up to Belfast to go to the new Titanic Museum with Ashley and then we stayed up there and visited the Giants Causeway!  It was a great starter to Andrew's time in Dublin.  Since then it has gotten progressively less exciting.  We have done some local touristy things here in Dublin and spent time with friends which has been relaxing.
On the subject of my dissertation....not much has progressed.  I began work on my original idea and quickly discovered that it was not going to work and that I was no longer really interested in the topic.  So I waited for about a week and a half to be able to meet with the head of my program about changing topics.  Finally, I was approved and have a new topic - Irish Women Writers of 20th century focusing on the role of the failed father started by Joyce.  In this new topic I get to tie in a bit of my passion for Joyce with a new found interest in the writers Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O'Brien, and Edna O'Brien.  My new supervisor pointed out that in my last course paper for her (where this idea originated) I wrote very well using a psychoanalytic reading of the text - especially the relationship between the fathers and daughters.  She suggested I focus on that rather than my original idea of a political reading - failed fathers as a result of colonization and a new State Constitution which made the family unit central in the running of the country.  I am struggling with exactly how to justify a psychoanalytic reading of these texts for my argument - it works well in terms of my analysis but psychoanalysis is a large black hole in so many ways that it is difficult not to get stuck in once you enter it.  And my arguments are not necessarily Freudian - so finding where exactly my ideas fit is the first task for the dissertation and I believe the most difficult task.  I am excited but it was rough going to get to this point.
As soon as I got approved, Andrew got sick...and then I got sick....and here we are with two weeks wasted from illness.  It makes me very upset and sad to have lost that time for adventures - but we will just have to make up for it next week!!  We are planning a possible trip to the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands.  Although I hope that the weather clears up - it has been raining for about 48 hours straight - there are severe weather warnings all over the island.