Thursday in Dublin

The football game was awesome!! I met two of the students for dinner and then we hopped on the 16 bus to head to Croak Park. The bus was very full and it didn’t take much intelligence to figure out who was going to the game, so we just made sure we got off the stop that the football fans did. The guarda (police) had all the streets near the stadium blocked off due to the huge crowd. Our seats were in the lower tier, 11 rows from the field. We were even with the end line and mixed in with many of the Polish fans. We were clued in due to all of the red and white and that was confirmed about two minutes into the match when the Polish team scored and everyone in our section erupted in cheers and chants. Across from us, in the lower tier, were all Polish fans from the end line to midfield. Security was positioned around the perimeter of those sections to keep the peace. Those fans like to cheer, chant, sing and sway. It was quite the sight. We left with about 7 minutes remaining in the game and Ireland down 2 nil. Believe it or not, the game ended 3-2 Poland. I guess we missed a great ending. We decided to skip the overcrowded bus and walked the 45 minutes back to center city. It was a great evening and everyone (and there were LOTS of people) were in good spirits. It was what they call a friendly game, so there were no great implications for winning or losing (except perhaps bragging rights). I am very glad I got to experience international soccer in Ireland.

Today we took the 15B bus to Scoil St. Patrick’s and then walked to Scoil Ballyroan, an all boys school. At St. Patrick’s I observed a PE class of junior infants. I was mistaken yesterday when I referred to them as primary and secondary infants. They are in fact, juniors (4 year olds) and seniors (5-6). I’ve enjoyed supervising all subjects this semester (English, Social Studies, Elementary, Early Childhood, Learning Support) but there is great comfort walking into a gym and being in familiar surroundings, even though their gym is referred to as a hall and is about a third the size of regulation basketball court. The lesson today focused on locomotor skills and balancing, using a bean bag. There were 23 four year olds testing the patience of our two PE student teachers. They were very cute though.

We arrived at Ballyroan Boy’s School as a PE class was in the yard playing hurling. We stopped and chatted with the male PE teacher. I got some wonderful photos of the boys. It looks like great fun. As a former field hockey player I could really get into hurling. The same game for the girls is referred to as camogie. (I learned that from a couple of my students that I had in class this semester. They are Irish exchange students from the University of Limerick.) I observed my student teacher teaching his second grade boys about Thanksgiving. They were a lively bunch, very animated and bright. While they were working on writing five things that they were thankful for, one boy came up to me and stood at attention in front of me and asked my name. I told him and asked him his name, and then we shook hands. Before returning to his seat Kelvin said, “Welcome to our class.” I couldn’t tell if Kelvin was just a very sweet boy, or an Irish Eddie Haskell. He checked back with me a few times and waved. I’ll look for Kelvin next week when I visit. At the end of the class their teacher asked me to pick the best behaved boy in the class. I know Kelvin wanted me to pick him, but I picked the boy who had an ice pack on his head due to a playground incident during yard. Three boys made trips to the principal’s office due to that event. The classroom teacher was a wonderful young woman who has great rapport with the boys, and excellent control as well. At one point Sister Margaret stopped by to remind the boys of the special mass on Sunday. It was a good day in the schools.