Captain's Log: Day 4 - Return to America

No our trip was not cut short but we did feel American soil between our toes today.

I will come to that later but first we will start with our breakfast with Irish Times Reporter Rosita Boland. Rosita met with our group in a tiny coffee shop this morning and we were all bought coffee, tea, or juice by our tour guide, Rachel.

Rosita sat down and offered here brain up for us to pick and she gave a ton of great advice to those of us who are up and coming journalists. One thing that is very interesting is that she is such a great writer but originally she went to school for, and worked as, an actress. I think that her work as an actress allowed her to study human emotion. That, along with her natural writing skills, makes here a very effective and interesting feature writer.

After breakfast, we hopped onto our tour bus and made a mad dash across town through terrible traffic to the U.S. Embassy. We had a strict and thorough search of us and our belongings as we entered to compound. Once inside, I realized that we were once again on American soil... and it felt no different that the ground outside the walls. ;)

We met with Karyn Posner-Mullen and John Murphy, Director of Public Affairs, and John Murphy, the Embassy's Press Assistant. Oh and the Ambassador to Ireland, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and native of Pittsburgh Dan Rooney.

We did not get to talk to Dan Rooney for too long due to a phone call with the Irish President tying up a lot of his time that had been allotted to us. The little time we did get was very interesting. He handed our Irish-American pins to all of us and a few people even got Steeler pins as well. After, we sat and talked with the very interesting and young John Murphy (23 years old) about his job and his past work with radio.

After the embassy, we took another bus across town to Dublin City University for a lecture. We ate dinner on campus and took a tour of the University Sports Complex -- a sporting facility where professional teams train that would rival anything located at Penn State or Ohio State or another very large, very athletic school. It was frankly amazing. The school even had a competitive trampoline team!

We then had an interesting lecture with Prof Helena Sheehan about the history of the Irish TV Drama. It was an interesting way to look at Irish society and was quite interesting despite the fact that a few people were nodding off... you know who you are... ;)

After that busy morning, I came back and took a 3 hour nap -- interrupted by Kristen and Brittany :'( -- and then we had a fun night on the town. We meet a cool entrepreneur named Caesper from Latvia, a creepy guy at a pub named Jay, and Kristen even recognized some random guy on the street from our taping of the Frontline. Definitely an interesting night.