Although I've only been here for a couple of weeks I kinda miss home. I spend a lot of time walking around the countryside and it reminds of being at back in Wexford. The countryside here is really similar to Ireland, lots of green fields, trees, etc. In fact, the Indiana countryside is probably more vibrant than Ireland (emeralde isle, my eye!*).

So I've come up with a couple of ways of feeling less homesick.

Watching technolotics. Technolotics is a vid/pod cast about tech and political news made by a couple of people from Trinity. It's really funny and if you read slashdot you'll find the stories pretty interesting. (Btw, Gareth your hair was better before you got it cut ;p).

Technolotics made me feel a bit less homesick, but then I found an even better method. Listening to Today FM's live stream. It's exactly like being at home: the accents, the lame jokes, all those ads for SSIAs. I could almost smell the hobo pee*. In fact it reminded me so much of what it's like back in Dublin that suddenly I am glad to be here.

*For any foreigners, 'my eye' is an Irish exclamation which essentially means, 'yeah, right' or 'as if'. I like to use it just because it sounds so silly.

*Living on Townsend St, only about 20 metres away from the geographical centre of Dublin has given me a rather tainted view of Dublin life. There is a methadone clinic I pass everyday on the way to college, which happens to coincide with the daily distribution of chemical goodness. Every morning I awake to the sounds of drunken or soon to be drunken skangers yelling at each other. On the way to the shop at night I have to go down Fleet St, passing by the refuse point for Independent Newspapers and the Westin Hotel. So I am required to scurry down the street holding my breath while trying not to step in the trails of hobo pee. I know this isn't what city life is about but sometimes I just can't get over the fact that people are pissing outside my front door. Vote Sarah for public urinals!