All About Ireland

Still haven't left yet...but I figure I'll share a brief bit about Ireland that I know (which isn't much so correct me Mella if anything is incorrect). Most information is from my Dublin-born geography professor.

Contrary to popular belief Ireland is not ruled by drunk red-headed leprechauns.

Ruled by England until the 1920s after WWI. New government tries an autarky (basically no international trade)...obviously this attempt sucked and in the 1970s Ireland became a place of cheap labor for globalizing companies (similar to Mexico today minus the drug lords?). From the 1980s on, Ireland improved education and increased financial services/technology greatly, forming the "Celtic Tiger" of the 1990s, the period of unbelievable economic growth in Ireland (like China today but more honest and subtract 1 billion people).

Hence, Dublin became a technological/tourist center of Europe and has a very young population (40% under 25 years old). But the Irish still get a large amount of their food from their home country compared to other countries its size. It's now a large producer of potatoes, beef, and cheese, among other things, and it has embraced the local "Farm to table" approach quite well.

Oh and they have that thing called Guinness (apparently Ireland's #1 tourist attraction is the Guinness Storehouse).

Real famous Irish people include Daniel Day-Lewis, Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson, and some guy named Bono and his band U2 (most people reading this will not have heard of half the famous hurling, rugby, soccer players, poets, writers, artists from Ireland so I won't mention them).

No Ryan Merriman from the "Luck of the Irish" disney channel movie is not Irish, surprisingly. However, a good amount of the Harry Potter films actors are Irish.