I have seen and done so many more things than I can report. Most of it has been unequivocal pleasure: a dolphin leapt beside our ferry back from Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands, on Tuesday afternoon, and that felt typical of the kind of luck we've had on this trip. For the most part, our weather has been glorious. (Today was an exception, but we didn't have plans anyway, so everyone was able to take a day and just relax.) Only one person has had to go to the hospital, and that was for a condition that pre-dated our trip. Some moods have gone low; fewer feelings have been hurt than I would have feared; tempers have only smouldered, not flared. And we have seen, and talked, and heard, and moved, and eaten.

And eaten. One of the students said tonight to next year's group (with whom we chatted briefly online), "You will probably never eat as well as you will eat during this program."

He's probably right--for us all.

Also: perhaps my favorite landscape of the entire trip--an almost unbelievable place called the Burren.