Belfast Week 8

HAPPY ST PADDY'S!!

People around the world celebrate the great holiday of Saint Patrick's Day. Usually people think about it as a day to eat corned beef and cabbage, drink loads of beer and celebrate with friends. However, there is a real reason we celebrate Saint Patrick on March 17. Shocking to most people, Saint Patrick had nothing to do with beer or corned beef, but was a Catholic who spread Catholicism around Ireland, he also banished all snakes of the island of Ireland.... almost as good as inventing beer! All jokes aside, I think it is important to remember why we celebrate this day.

Generally, celebrations include a large group of friends heading to the local Irish pub in your town...BUT imagine being in Ireland where there are DOZENs on DOZENs of truly authentic Irish pubs? WOAH BABY!! In true Irish-Catholic fashion I knew I needed to celebrate this holiday with family, so off I went to Cork!

To start our Saint Patrick's day weekend off correctly we went to TRAD night to listen to an Irish band. The Irish folks get pretty passionate about their TRAD music. We had a little situation where two young guys were getting agitated and kept pushing each other into our group of girls. So, 5'3 Han looks at the two boys and yells "NO!". They take a look at me and move their wrestling elsewhere. Glad I didn't have to pull out any of my self-defense class moves, ya know I can break a wooden board in half with my hand. LOL

Day 2 our travels continue; Caroline and I hop on a bus to Galway. Our bus has some problems and we wind up sitting on the side of the highway for a bit but we make it! We decide to walk along the Claddagh to recreate some of my sister's study abroad pics. Finally done with the photoshoot, we decide to eat our lunch on the river. As I am getting ready to eat lunch I put my hand down to make sure I don't fall in and I PUT MY HAND IN BIRD POOP!!! Anyone know if any luck comes from sticking your hand in it??Caroline goes to toss a bird a little piece of her bread and uses the wrong hand and almost launches her phone in, needless to say, the Claddagh and the Leary gals do not have a good history!

While in Galway we witnessed a huge sustainability protest where young kids were parading up and down the streets, very interesting to see. We determine maybe the indoors is more our vibe and retreat to a coffee shop where we share endless amounts of laughs. Wow, I feel so lucky to be on this study abroad journey with my absolute best friend.

Kinsale is the move for day 3! We get dropped in the center of the coastal town but the weather is absolutely wild. Hail, wind and crashing waves...OH MY! The elements calm down a bit and we take the scenic walk to Saint Charles Fort which has amazing panoramic views of the water. There's an option to climb to the top of the fort and take pictures in the viewing tower. Since it had just rained the pathways were straight up puddles, so Caroline decides she can use her upper body strength to lift her body over these puddles by balancing on the railings...yeah sounds like a bad idea even now. She doesn't execute it well and winds up getting her shoes all wet in the puddle anyway. Wet shoes and sore arms, c'mon Caroliney you're better than that!

We take the early bus back from Kinsale to go watch Caroline play volleyball. The volleyball was fun to watch and I made friends with her 65+ year old coach. Well, I guess friends is a loose term since he absolutely reamed me out for not having a boyfriend HAHA.

Our conversation went a little like this:

Coach: "Hey I'm Caroline's coach, do you have a boyfriend"

Me: "No, I'm living the single life and so is Caroline"

Coach: "Do you want to be each other's bridesmaids?"

Me: "Yes, for sure. Why?"

Coach: "Well, you better hurry, you're running out of time! You're already 21 and who knows what will happen if you don't hurry, you might never get to be each other's bridesmaids"

OKAY SIR, NICE TO MEET YOU TOO! Anyone else think that escalated quickly HAHA Not to worry though, he gave me some advice on who would be a good boyfriend from the people on the team he knows LOL. Too funny.

Day 4, the long awaited celebration of Saint Patrick's Day!! We get up, start our day with mimosas and get ready! We gave ourselves some nice temporary tats and made delicious homemade chocolate chip pancakes. Caroline, Kerry and I played some games and then headed out to Reardens for a really fun day. Live music, never ending dancing and lots and lots of green. Wow, I love it here....do I ever have to come home?

We head to Hillbilly's for the girls to get some lunch and then head back to Reardens for part 2. After a bit of discussion, we decided that there were two crowd: the crowd that napped and the crowd that didn't. We are in the crowd who didn't. The crowd for Rearden's part 2 is 100% the crowd that napped because they are WILD, too wild for us. We are packed on the dance floor unable to move when a weird liquid is spilled all over Kerry! Within a few minutes I get absolutely decked by a girl. I think she tripped but she managed to hit me in the back of the head and I go FLYING! Caroline's feet are killing her so we decide this maybe isn't our scene and that we should call it a night. We recap the lovely adventures Saint Paddy's has given us and head to bed.

Back to Belfast for me. Caroline, you have once again been an amazing host and Cork, thank you again for some wonderful memories!

Next stop, SPAIN!!!!

Until then,

PQTH,

HAN