HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!!!!!!!!
Well, what a celebration. Apparently St. Patrick's Day is celebrated more hardcore in America, as according to the commercials I would see on t.v.:
(deep voiceover)
"Do you want to have the best St. Patrick's Day EVER? Then text the answer to this question, St. Patrick is the patron saint of which country?
a) The United States
b) Ireland
c) France
Answer correctly and you will win a trip to....(enter me thinking, Dublin, Galway, Cork) NEW YORK CITY!"
However, St. Patrick's day in Ireland is fun and crazy and wonderful. There was a parade at 12:30 to the town square, which I went to. It was adorable, local parade, the theme was "tribes" and there were lots of local groups marching. The pubs were open early, although not the ones on the parade route until after the parade. My day started at 9:30AM because our friends across the hall kindly hosted the start of the morning with a 'Kegs and Eggs' party = bring your own alcohol and maybe we'll eat eggs, to start off the day. I brought over cream puffs for breakfast and Galahad...the cheapest beer any of us can find, 80 cents for a pint can. Maureen, Lea and I also tried the legal moonshine I bought, potcheen, before the walk to town. Somehow I remembered it going down MUCH easier when I tasted it at the winery...
Then we walked to town for the parade and pub crawled until 6 or 7PM, the longest pub crawl I have ever done but I've never crawled for six or seven hours straight! We started with Tig Coili, then the Quays (keys), Monroes, the Front Door, Freeneys, the King's Head and ended with a Bailey's coffee in Tig Coili again. Unfortunately we forgot the Crane and Taaffes. I'll just make up for it this week...anyway I'm sure all of the family members reading this blog who don't want too much information, it was a very successful day. Very successful. Definitely ended with ordering pizza and I found Father Goose online and watched it from my bed...with a large glass of water. The Carrolls represented!
Also, I am leaving for my spring break vacation tonight. I am traveling with my friend Kym for the first 8 days, then our friend Maureen is meeting us, then Maureen and I are traveling for an extra 3. The itinerary is as follows:
3 days in Paris, France
1 day in Marseille
1 day in Aix en Provence (Easter Sunday, we're staying with our friend's host family there!)
1 day in Nice
3 days in Cinque de Terre, Italy
1 day in Pisa
2 days in Florence
2 half days in Salzburg, Austria (The Sound of Music tour leaves from our hostel!)
2 days in Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany
I realize it looks like I'll be on vacation forever..wahoo! We are staying for free in Paris, Aix/Marseille and Florence, which should be great and save money. I definitely bought pretty clothes for spring break...but have decided not to feel bad about it! I have been saving for this trip my entire life (or since I've had a job, anyway). The reading list for the trip includes F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and the Brothers Grimms' Fairy Tales, and maybe Wilkie Collins The Woman in White. Also maybe I'll read my homework.
So since I'll be gone so long, I won't be posting for two weeks.
I'm kind of excited and scared to be on vacation for two weeks because I'll be out of the loop. I've been reading the news everyday and the U.S. market is quite scary, to be honest. Last Wednesday, my Environmentalism professor spent the last 25 minutes drawing diagrams and explaining the current state of affairs with the banks, derivatives, selling, sub-prime mortgages, etc. in the most simple but detailed way possible. By the end of it everyone in the class had their mouths open staring at him. I hope the Fed knows what it's doing and JPMorgan does too. Yikes. In Irish they would say, "Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat!" aka, Good luck to you.
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