THis weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, marking something most Americans are skeptical about, but it is a good excuse to have a 4 day weekend. Aoife and I were invited to our next door neighbour, Kate's house. So on Wednesday a friend of hers gave us a lift from O'Hare Airport to Madison Wisconsin. The train ride to o'Hare was dreadful as half the city began to leave to travel to visit family. When we found the car at the airport the traffic was unbelievable and ...

Well its been another fairly quiet week. I have 3 weeks until exams - in fact its 4 weeks on Thursday until I am flying home. i have booked my flights home arriving on the 21st December and leaving again on the 3rd january. The one bit of excitement this week has been the Christmas parade. Well it was called a holiday parade! There were thousands of people out in Chicago lining the streets to see the parade and the lights switching on. We stood about for ages w...

well its been a quiet week recovering from Washington. However I did make it to the legal clinic at the homeless shelter which was another eye opening experience. I felt much more confident this time, and felt much more useful and was even given a small task to do some research. It is hard to see people brought so low, some through no fault of there own, some through medical bills, some because they closed the psychiatric hospitals in the 1980's and some because ...

Well I'm back from the Capitol of the United States and what a weekend it was. I don't think I have walked so much in a long time. The weather was picture perfect with blue skies and sunshine, even if it was a little cold and windy! Clodagh and I arrived in Washington on Thursday morning and went to the house where we were staying. The National Lawyers Guild who were hosting the conference had organised low cost housing for all the students who were coming ove...

Hi all! Its Halloween here tonight and the US has gone mad!! Theyve had the decorations up for months now all gearing up for tonight. Most of the partying went on last weekend but there are still loads of people heading out tonight. In fact there were lots of people dressed up walking round the streets, in college and work just wearing their costumes, like this was normal. It was very strange! The last 3 weeks havent been much fun for me, Ive had a nasty stomac...