Last night the Irish department had a party, and all of the international Irish language students were invited too. It was the first time I really heard people conversing normally in Irish rather than just inserting well-known phrases into English. For a long time it seemed like Irish was just a dead language that people were trying to revive for cultural identity, but last night I saw how much it could really be used. Students here are required to start learning Irish in primary school, and the people who take the course at university are far more fluent in it than I am in Spanish. They had musicians performing-- a harp, tin whistle, and fiddle-- and the harpist did some Irish step dancing (the first I have seen here!). Lots of different people performed songs in Irish, and our class was roped in to performing several of the songs we had learned. There are many songs that every one seems to know and they all joined in. I'm really glad that I took the class and picked up a bit of the language, although I had almost no idea what people were saying.
I've added pictures from other people's cameras throughout the semester, especially from when I was running out of batteries at the Giant's Causeway.