The Criminal Courts

Today our class took a field trip to the Criminal Courts in Dublin. We were told to make our own way there and meet at 9:15 in front of the building, which meant I had to wake up at 6 this morning! I got a bus into Dublin with Rebecca, Alyssa, and Ciara. The Dublin Buses were not meant for tall people, the legroom was not meant for this 6ft gal. It was about an hour bus ride (I woke up at 6, out the door at 7, in a bus stop in Bray at 7:20) we got in to town at about 8:30 and walked around. I had a hot chocolate from insomnia, the Irish Starbucks, which was the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted. The criminal courts are huge, the seem incredibly new and modern, probably because they were only built 3 years ago. The elevators were pretty cool, they were made of glass, which meant you could see the way it worked. Their law system is similar to ours, but not exactly. All the "lawyers" and judges wear wigs and robes, which looked pretty funny to me. When we arrived we got to participate in a mock trial. I'm not one for public debate, and I hadn't been briefed on the case as well as the other girls, so I just opted to be the sketch artist. Alyssa was a witness, she did a fantastic job, she was in mock trial at home so she knew all the tricks of the trade. Being a sketch artist was pretty fun, it was a little hard, because I've never had to draw real people that fast before, but I think my drawings turned out well. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of them because the courts keeps all the sketches from the school and they have a competition. The mock trail went well, and was good way to introduce us to the court system here before sending us out to observe cases. There were two murder trails while we were there that we could sit in on, they were really interesting to observe. We met together again at 11:45 and were told to make our own was back to school. A group of us decided to take the bus back and then walk the rest of the way. The ride was long, but we had a lot of fun goofing around. After the bus we had make about a 20 minute trek back to school. We sang songs. In first aid today I learned how to bandages, which might be useful someday. We also went to English where we talked about short stories and Sylvia Plath. Also, Alyssa and I bought Macklamore and Ryan Lewis' new album, it's amazing. We totally recommend it, I enjoy the song "same love" on it. These are the things you discuss when you have been on a bus for over an hour. Cassie is going to One Direction's concert tonight with a bunch of other girls, I'm sure she is going to have a great time. Tomorrow should be pretty calm, but it is expected to rain...