After the UCD festival, Sara, Jolie, and I ventured out to Sandycove for a relaxing dinner by the seaside. The buzz of the city can be overwhelming at times, navigating through the endless stream of people with the background sound of loud bus horns and chaotic construction. It was nice to spend an evening in a quiet and peaceful area filled with the sea breeze and rhythmic waves. As I looked out over the ocean, my eyes lingered on a quote painted on the wall from James Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man: “The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering.” I felt that this quote nicely embodied my experience of the tranquil atmosphere in Sandycove. It is interesting that in just a few miles a place can drastically change from a bustling city to a quiet seaside town.

I’m also continually enamored with all of the literature and poetry that I see around Dublin. It is everywhere–written on walls, painted into murals, spoken by locals. I will miss being surrounded by a culture that places importance on literary figures, literature, and poetry. When I tell locals in Dublin that I’m here studying literature, they reply by listing their favorite Irish authors and asking about the works that I study. It is different in the States where people ask about the outcome of my studies: “What do you want to do with an English Literature degree?”