However you say hello in Celtic! I did make it back this weekend, but I haven't made it back to posting until now. Hello, Blogger. Hello, leafygreen. Hello, take it easy.

Anyway, it was a wonderful trip that felt a lot longer than a week. Irish coffee: yes, yum. Tate Modern: yes, fabulous. LSE: yes. Cliff walks: yes, unbelievably beautiful. Book of Kells: yes, interesting but overly touristy. Guiness factory: no, too far away and too expensive. Weird tower place: oops, totally forgot about that one, but we did get to the Dublin Writers' Museum. Seder: yes, hilarious. Bowling: no, and no punting either, but seeing Cambridge was great. I would absolutely love to go to school there -- the place is like a dream, honestly. Iceland Air: um, not again. Five hours of delays due to a snowstorm in Reykjavik does not make for pleasant travels, although I did meet several amusing fellow passengers and learned about international yarn and fabric exhanges. Who knew?

Also, I learned that I really like this:

If anyone has the burning desire to purchase it for me, please feel free. :)

Also, I am still exhausted. And actually kind of happy to be back.

Also (shifting gears now), the situation in the Middle East has me really worried, angry, unhappy. I tense up every morning before looking at the paper, and I react to the media's rhetoric and vocabulary instead of the situation itself because that's easier to handle. I can't believe things are this bad... I can't believe Sharon thinks isolating Arafat and rolling tanks into West Bank towns will accomplish anything, or that Arafat and other Arab leaders can continue to call for the destruction of the state of Israel and condone suicide bombings and NOT be condemned for it. I can't believe the media continues to use uninformed, ignorant, biased language like "occupation" and "offensive."

(A preface to the next paragraph: Way too many Palestinians have been killed, too. Way, way too many. I'm focusing on Israel and its casualties, though, because they're comparable to the US side of the equation.)

Israel is the size of Rhode Island, and hundreds of Israelis have been killed already this year. There have been suicide bombings -- acts of terrorism, if you prefer -- every day for the last week. Every day. How would this country be responding if this was done to the US on a comparable scale? Bombings? Invasions? Nuclear weapons? And our government has the nerve to sit back and urge restraint, to ask Israel not to respond with violence, to continue to try negotiations, to offer a hand of peace. I think the Israelis have been pushed to their limit and are responding with too much violence, and I believe in these pacifying actions in varying degrees. But to have the US request them is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I could continue in this vein for quite a while, but I'll refrain. I'm feel like I've been forced to clarify my beliefs, and own up to them in a way I never had to before... and although it's certainly my choice, in a way it feels like being pushed. To be pro-Israel at all, even a pro-Israel leftist who believes a Palestinian state is the only way to have lasting peace, is to be on the defensive now.