St. Patrick's Day

So now that I have nothing to do for 5 hours in an airport I guess it would be a good time to get caught up on things.

After Killary we literally had 2 days of classes before IFSA was taking us out on another trip. All of IFSA’s programs flew into Dublin and were supposed to have their orientations there and spend a few days in the city just seeing the sights. Cork, however, started classes on January 4^th and we arrived on the 2^nd. So they automatically drove us down to Cork and the next day they moved us in and we were pretty much told to have a great semester and they would see us around. To make up for the fact that we didn’t get to spend time in Dublin, IFSA planned a trip for us to go up there for St. Patrick’s Day and a spend a couple days just seeing the city and being there for the festivities. As usual they gave us the vague we’ll see you here at this time and we’ll be gone till Friday e-mail. On Wednesday they drove us up there and we dropped our things in the hotel, they handed us a bunch of papers, including maps of the city, and then treated us to lunch. After lunch was over they brought us to a park where there was supposed to be a ceili, which is an Irish dancing session, and they left us. The ceili hadn’t started yet because they were still setting up the stage and the 3 people who actually knew where we were left us all in the middle of the road not really sure what to do. Since things weren’t really going on a few of us decided to walk through the park and just look around for a bit. At one point we started a search for a bathroom and we found the Museum of Natural History, I believe, and we figured why not walk around after. We were literally in the museum for 5 minutes because we walked in right before closing. So we found our bathroom and a large collection of taxidermy animals. It was actually really weird. I still took pictures of some of them because I thought they looked cool and others because they creeped me out and then the museum guy came around asking us to leave since it was closing. As we were walking out of the room we walked by a sign that said “no photography” on it. I somehow manage to always miss those signs and it’s not on purpose, it just happens since my attention is usually on a bunch of other things. I’m not sure if the guy just didn’t notice or didn’t care, but he never said anything about us having out our cameras.

That night we were abandoned for dinner, as always, IFSA figures if they at least guarantee us one meal a day that they can leave us on our own for the other 2. So we went to Centra, one of their corner stores, and got dinner since it was really cheap and we didn’t want to figure out how to get into any of the pubs, which were beyond full. We hung out in the hotel and watched a countdown of the top dance crazes of all time. The great thing is that we knew pretty much all of the songs that they played, maybe not the dances, but the songs were the important part. The number one dance craze is Thriller, which was not at all a surprise to any of us. By the time the countdown finished it was midnight, or after that, and the next day was St. Patrick’s Day, so we wanted to head to bed so we were up in time for things in the morning.

Claire and I actually got an early start on the day and started it off by walking down to the Guinness factory and doing the tour. A part of the tour is that you can learn to pour your own pint, and then drink it, or wait till the end and get a free pint at the gravity bar which has a 360 view of Dublin. I don’t drink so Claire started off her day with 2 Guinness pints and I just got to wander around and take pictures of everything for 3 hours.  Actually the Gravity Bar was my favorite part of the entire tour. It wasn’t just because you could see all of Dublin from it, but it had quotes on the windows from James Joyce, who happens to be one of my favorite authors. One of the things I love about Dublin is that it is a literary capital of the country. Unfortunately I didn’t really get to see all I wanted of Dublin since we didn’t have the time, but I’ll be headed back at some point and I just want to walk around and see the different statues and homes of famous authors from Ireland. We did get to see the statue of Oscar Wilde, and as eccentric of a man as he was, his statue of him sitting provocatively on a rock was a little odd, even for him. I guess if that’s how the people of Dublin knew him, then it would make sense, but it just didn’t seem right.

After the Guinness Storehouse we made our way down to the main street for the parade. The streets were lined with so many people who were decorated from head to toe with paraphernalia. The difference between the parade here and the one back home is the lack of drunk people. Granted I’ve only ever seen the parade back home from being in marching band and performing in it, but still, there were so many more families at the parade in Dublin and far less drunk people. The kids who were there were so adorable. There were these two little boys sitting on top of a step ladder so that they could see and they just looked so cute all dressed up. After a while Claire and I realized we were far down on the parade route and that we would be there for a really long time if we waited there. So we walked further up the parade route and stopped across from the grand stand and stood there for a little while. There was the most adorable little ginger girl with an “Irish Princess” tiara and ribbons in her hair. I just melted when I saw her; she was seriously the most precious little girl ever. We stayed in that area for a while but Claire wanted to see if we could catch the parade a little earlier, so we ended up walking even further up the parade route. We finally ended up seeing the parade in the distance so we stopped for a little while and watched what we could. We were in the back so it was hard to really tell what was going on. I recorded the first 20 minutes of the parade but considering where I was standing I’m not entirely sure how much there is to see. I did watch the video that night but fell asleep while doing so and I haven’t looked at it since. I’ll really have to attempt to figure out how to put videos up. I have a bunch, but it’s easier to put up pictures since I know how to do that already. I do remember the video being really shaky though so I apologize. I was standing on the little bar on the back of a ladder to help get some kind of height to my camera in hopes that it would see more than I could. So that really wasn’t helping much. I also can’t stand still for very long.

After a bit of the parade Claire wanted to go get lunch so we headed out and kind of watched the parade that was passing us at the time. We went and got lunch at this crepe shop called Lemon which had so many different kinds of crepes. It was so hard to figure out what to get for lunch, but I settled with a sandwich of some sort and a salad instead of a crepe, only because it seemed a little odd to me to have a crepe for lunch. As we were leaving we ran into a bunch of the other girls and we talked for a little bit before letting them get to their lunch. We went back to the hotel and I ended up falling asleep as I was watching the video from the parade. I was out for a few hours until Katie, Rafa, and Colleen came over. Claire told me they were coming and I was all for it even though I was still sleeping. It gave me a reason to get up though, which was good because I would have been up all night if they hadn’t gotten me up. We hung out in the room until about 11 just paying games while they were all drinking, and me in all my class was drinking water out of a Guinness pint glass I had gotten that day. The games pretty much just turned into a huge heart to heart conversation between the 5 of us. We’ve spent the past 3 months with each other and we’ve gotten to know each other as time has gone on, but that night we all just started talking and pretty much everything came up. It was one of the most interesting nights ever. After our long heart to heart we turned on music from Glee and I sat back and recorded them all singing and dancing to the songs. I’ve been told that for the sake of their dignities I’m not allowed to put up any of those videos, so I won’t, but dancing made them want to go out and find a pub or someplace where we could just go out and dance.

We ended up finding this lounge place and we hung out there for a little while, we had made a deal that no one went anywhere on their own so when we got to the lounge we all eventually had to go to the bathroom. While we were waiting for each other we stood at the base of the stairs and there were a few guys from the states who we ended up talking to. One of them started eavesdropping on our conversation about somewhere to go to dance. He was just being nice and telling us where we could go, and we just started talking. For the first time since I’ve been here I met someone else from CT. Most people ask where I’m from and as soon as I say CT it has to be followed by “it’s next to New York” and then people know where it is. One of the guys happened to actually be a fire fighter from Hartford, so of course we start talking. After a while all 5 of us were finally all together and we thanked the guys and left. They were really nice and unfortunately the place he recommended was full for the night, which on St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t much of a surprise. So we just kept walking down the road to see what we could find and there was another place we found. We get there and the two guys at the door asked something about drinking, to be honest between the music and people inside I really could not hear anything they said to us. We showed them our IDs and they let us in. Actually one of us didn’t have an ID but as soon as they saw the rest of our ages they just let her in with us. We’re all of age, it was just a long night and she forgot her wallet in the hotel. That was certainly an interesting couple of hours we spent in there. It was our last stop and we agreed that it was just a girls night, we stayed together and no guys were allowed to dance with us. The thing with guys here is that they like dancing face to face because if you’re both drunk enough when he goes to kiss you 10 seconds after meeting you, you don’t think about it. So we were doing our best to avoid letting that happen. It was a game of musical spots. We stayed in a circle and every time a guy came up to one of us that person would switch spots with another person in hopes that the guy would take a hint and leave. If that didn’t work the method of actually pushing them away worked fairly well. After that they all wanted to go to BK for drunk food. I have made a deal with myself, under no circumstances, will I ever buy fast food in a foreign country. I refuse to. So we went into BK and I was good about it. I guess personally I just can’t justify going to a fast food restaurant in the middle of Ireland. We headed back to the hotel and Katie and Rafa actually aren’t IFSA students, they were staying in a hostel on the outskirts of town, so after they got their stuff they headed out to their hostel. The next morning we left Dublin and headed back to Cork. It was a short IFSA trip, but definitely worth it. The St. Patrick’s celebration wasn’t over. They actually celebrate starting the day before to the Sunday after, or for a total of 5 days seeing as it isn’t always on a Thursday. So there were still plenty of festivities and things to do around Cork that weekend. Although I can say I really didn’t do a whole lot but hang out with some of the girls in one of the apartments. We had a great St. Patrick’s Day and that was enough for us.

With Love Always