Auntie Naomi and Dublin

Very sad news from home today. My lovely little Aunt Naomi died a few days ago. She was utterly ready to go Home, but it's hard to imagine family life without her fantastic, quietly sarcastic and bitchy self. She taught me the art of retort and hated holding hands.
We leave for the west of Ireland today. Dublin has been a fantastic host as usual. I'm exhausted from explaining how to walk, though. Yesterday several of us just got up and began walking like normal people. 5 of us would arrive at a site and then 5 minutes later the rest of the herd would show up. It's not hard. I'm always mistified by Carson-Newman students difficulty with walking.
I will miss Avalon house (our current hostil). Swell people who play great music and people from Glasgow who speak Spanish.
Next hostil doesn't have internet and money will be tight, as my bank account is in a sense frozen until my mother gets back from Aunt Naomi's funeral. I had expected more to go into my checking account for the second half of the trip, but more important things are being taken care of! Luckily the west is about a quartar of the price of Dublin. I wish we hadn't started out with the most expensive city first. The trip definitely works better starting in the country and heading east.
In other notes, St. Patty's cathedral has 3 candles lit for my Irish Studies professor at his request. The man is a lovely arse and I'm happy to oblidge. We ate Fish and Chips yesterday, salty, hot, vinegar goodness.The Dublin Writers Museum is beautiful; filled with quotes, portraits, timelines and crossovers. I would live there.
The Irish Uprising of Easter 1916 is a main topic of study on the trip, so we had a tour with Lorcan Collins, a major Dubliner and historian. He's a friend of the college and has a major gift of gab. I loved talking with him, it is certainly an excercise in sarcasm and BS. Beautiful. I wish we had more time just to hang out with him, but this trip he has kids to take care of. Even Lorcan is growing up, sheesh.
Must log off now. I am finding the real impact of this trip inexplainable. Perhaps philosophy will poor forth soon. Suffice to say the pace of Dublin and the beauty of Saint Stevens Green (filled with statues of Oscar Wilde and riddled with bullet holes from several risings) fits my post undergrad mind quite well.
Slante-
hannah.abigail.margaret/ HaRingo/ HAMO/ whatever endearment you've come up with...