Belvedere & Croke Park (Nicholas)

Today, we started the day with some mini lectures by a couple Belvedere teachers. The first one was about Irish politics by Mr. Hogan. We learned how Irish politics worked, and compared it to the political system in the United States. It was interesting to see how the systems were similar and different. Also, it was interesting to see how their party system works, and how they have way more parties and it's different from the sort of the Democrat vs Republican feud we have in America right now. Something that stuck out to me with their system was how if you get a percent of the vote, you get that percent of the seats, therefore that percent of power. It's not as much of a win/lose as the presidency because their president also does not have much power and is almost like a figurehead. After this lesson, we headed upstairs to check out the urban farm and aquaponics up on the top level. There were some fish in tanks, and we learned how their waste was mixed with water and filtering systems to create nutrients for the plants in the room. It was a pretty good space for a school in the city, and they had a good variety of plants as well. The plants were in these stacked indoor little farms with UV lights mimicking the sun. We got to taste some of the plants too, some were a little spicy. He explained to us that the school has sold products to local restaurants for a small profit so the garden did make a small profit. Right outside the door was the bee farm. They had some hives in those boxes on the roof, and they also had a hive built into a window on the side of the wall, which was cool because you could see through the glass into the hive. We learned a couple cool facts about bees too, like the fact that their bees could fly around 5k from the school to find food and resources for the hive. After we finished with the Aquaponics, we headed down for lunch in the Old Ref, and then went out to explore Croke Park and do the Skyline tour.