Legally Molly: Lecture on International Peace Studies ... followed by tasty beverages.

My friend Jessica invited me to a lecture she was attending last night as part of her M.Phil programme: "U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Peacemaker or Peacebreaker?", a presentation by Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the programme in Middle Eastern Studies. I'm sure some of you recognize his name as an outspoken Bush critic. Whatever your views are on this guy, it was an interesting lecture and I'm glad I attended.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a bit uneducated on the details of this topic, thus this lecture interested me. I'd really like to understand it in more detail, not for the purpose of discussing it with family/friends (politics, foreign policy, religion...usually high on my list of 'prefer not to discuss' topics), but just for my own understanding in keeping up with current events. I'm glad I went and I understood almost everything discussed. I give kudos to my friends getting their M.Phil in International Peace Studies - I'm quite sure that if I had to write a thesis on this topic, I'd fail miserably.

After the lecture, Jessica and I went for a quick pint at The Pav, where I ran into a few LLM classmates. I had also been invited to meet up with Juliette and her friend, Flora, so I then headed to The Port House on South William Street. This place is lovely - partly sub-terranean with very nice ambiance, lit with loads of candles. A very affordable tapas restaurant.

After a glass of wine here, the three of us headed to Odessa, one of my favorite places in Dublin. I probably shouldn't call it a favorite yet, as I have only been there once before, but it's really nice. Very chill atmosphere. The drinks here are a bit pricier than the pubs, so we kept it to a single pint. We relaxed, ran into a friend of Flora's, hung out a bit more and then headed home.