Class in Ireland has been quite a new experience.  I would compare it to a chalk board.  Not just any chalk board, this chalk board.  This is the chalk board in our daily classroom.  If you notice, there are three main colors.  Yellow stands for my culture class, pink stands for my history class and blue stands for the literature class.  My Special topics class is the black board itself. 

Yellow:

My culture class has been a great experience so far.  We have had the chance to learn to bake some fresh vegetable Irish stew and cheesy potatoes.  We have learned the basics of the Irish language. For example we have learned to say hello, and their Irish welcome which is "A hundred thousand welcomes".   We have also been learning about Iris folklore.  My favorite story so far is about the mermaids and how they lure people out then capture their souls.  It definitely is the complete of opposite of what we think of mermaids.  Ariel would be disappointed.  Our next item of learning in our culture class is the Irish tin Whistle.  This has so far been my favorite part about this class.  A younger music teacher who plays her Irish instruments amazingly, comes in three or four Mondays and teaches us the basic of Playing.   Our class definitely sounds like the5th graders learning the Recorder.  We have learned the difference between a polka and a Waltz, and other unique Celtic Instruments.   

 Pink:
History class is the designated color, as when I think of the color pink, I tend to think of a little crazy and bright; Which is how I would describe my History class.  We tend to get into raging debates taking most of the class period.  Our instructor is a little more careful about the topics he tends to ask us about now. Our Professor tries to relate Irish history to us as much as possible, knowing that we do not have all the Irish background history that most kids our age here, would have.  We are talking about the Easter rising since it is the Centennial year of this monumental year of 1916.  We also had a debate in one of the most famous Pubs in Galway. It is also very historical as it is called the Kings Head.  It was named after the first king who was beheaded to stop the monarchy and start a democracy.  It is an amazing feeling to learn something in class and then to go out the next day or so and see something you just talked about.


Blue:
My literature class would be described as blue because blue is a mellow color.  In literature class, we study a lot of different types of poetry, literature styles written by Irish authors and a couple different plays. This class can sometimes be lengthy as our professor is very into what he is teaching about.  The poet we are studying a lot of is Yeats.  When we went into Sligo for a weekend, we saw murals of Yeats' poems.  We found out later that he was from the town of Sligo.


The homework load is pretty manageable.  There is a lot of reading if you don't pace yourself.  The books to choose from for Lit are really good books.  It is nice to grab a book in your free time  and sit down in the sun and just read and read and read.







The class room where we study is a nice little lounge with comfortable couches and red carpet .  When the Wi-Fi  is a little weak, we come inhere or we come in here just to hangout.  We mostly do our work in  our cabins, but when you need a change of scenery, this is the place to go. 








The room where we have class is the hotel activity room.  I like this room  as  it has wood en floors and antique style desk chairs.  They have a pool table and a ping pong table.  There is a big window in the front  that gives off a lot of natural light for class.

Since our special topics class is the black board, it is the basis of all our classes.  As we go out and see things on field trips, and our service projects, we are able to apply each color on our chalkboard.