cheers Mate!

I've made it back to London. Well, actually it was a few days ago, but I've been a slacker with the blog. The more I get used to London, the less I want to update my blog but I have an obligation to all those living through my study abroad experience, so I kind of have no choice. To make things easier I'll go back to Dublin and work my way to today.
Saturday in Dublin was great. The weather online predicted rain for both days while we there, but it turned out to be sunny and even a little warm. During the day I met up with my friend Claire for lunch at a food market in the Temple Bar area. We had some Japanese dumplings and fried noodles, found a spot in the shade, and settled in for some reminiscing about middle school life in Ecuador and the tragedy of being English majors. She guided me on a mini tour of Trinity College, where she goes to school and showed me among other things the room where Bam Stroker wrote Dracula. Comparing Trinity to Cambridge, I prefer the first. It has an awesome atmosphere, like the rest of the city. Ireland has produced some of modern literature's greatest writers, like James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde to name a few. Considering how small the country is, thats a good proportion of geniuses. Dublin seemed to ooze culture. The city isn't very picturesque, but it has a cool vibe that is uniquely Irish. After hanging out with Claire, my friends and I met back up and we explored the area around Dublin Castle. When Ireland became a Republic, they transformed the palace into a government facility which is its primary function today. One of its purposes is for the inauguration of the President every seven years, which takes place in the room at the right.
We left Dublin that evening bound for London and got home around 21'00 and headed back on the tube for Palace Court. On May 1st London elected a new mayor, a conservative named Boris Johnson who vowed to clean up the tube system by banning alcohol and smoking, to take affect on the 1st of June. As Saturday was the last day to drink, thousands of people descended on the tube system for a huge party and we happened to be in the middle of it. We made it home alright but it really was a night of chaos. Heres a link to read about it, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7429638.stm.
Today we had English class in the morning and we discussed a man named Samuel Johnson, famous for his Johnson's Dictionary, and in the afternoon we descended upon his house near the Fleet street area (of Sweeney Todd fame). Before then my bud James and I ate at a pub named the Cheshire Cheese which has been around since the reign of Charles II (15 monarchs ago or since the late 17th century). We had some traditional steak pie with some mushy peas and chips ( a picture of Samuel Johnson is behind me at the right).The house is at the end of Gough Square and was the only building around to survive the Blitz bombings of WWII. It still has a lot of the original walls and floors, which means no right angles. Samuel Johnson was a large, rather unattractive man with a biting wit who would take in homeless people and other dregs of society. He also was a genius who we owe the relative uniformity of the English language to. He had this to say about London, "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
Across the square from the house is a statue of Johnson's cat named Hodge, who showed up in some of his writings as his favorite cat. He even has an entire Wikipedia page on him.
For the rest of week I have some catchup to do on some of my assignments before we head out to Bath on Friday and Stonehenge on Saturday. The trip is wrapping up, just when I feel like I can call London my own.