Great craic !!

Well I now only have weekends left in Ireland, and I can honestly say I am 100% happy about that!  Ireland is by far my favorite European country, and every weekend reminds me of that.  However, the idea of St. Patrick's Day in Ireland made me a little nervous!  I'm not much of a drinker, and we all know St. Patrick's Day is most people's excuse to get really drunk.  Let's say I was not overly excited to see the drunken show of St. Patrick's Day, but I tried to put on a smile and get in the spirit - the sober spirit though!  I started off the weekend - on that Wednesday night - by seeing my FAVORITE band, The Civil Wars, play in Dublin!  I've had these concert tickets since December, before I even got to Dublin!  It was one of the best concerts I've seen, the harmonies were gorgeous and I was in a trance the whole night.  They were great performers, and I absolutely loved getting to see them here.

It was then time for the stereotypical Irish day - oh, St. Patrick's Day.  I prepared for the day with a festive outfit - shamrock socks, a green sheep shirt, and a sequin green headband.  Not too over the top, but I loved it!  In the morning, I attempted to venture to the St. Patrick's Day festival - along with 500,000 people.  I waited for about an hour, with intervals of rain, and saw about two minutes of the parade (some sort of marching band) before having to go meet the rest of IES to go to Croke Park.  So I didn't get to see much of a St. Patrick's Day festival, but it was fun people-watching with everyone dressed up!  There were more people than I ever imagined, they were climbing on statues and all over the place!  However, one thing I was surprised about was there wasn't many drunk people milling about!  The crowd was filled with smiles and eyes gleaming with Irish pride, but I didn't witness any drunken stupor!  That is, until I went to go meet up with the IES crowd.  Turns out the drunkenness is more of an American tourist thing!  It was quite an amusing site, there was only about five out of the 50 of us that was sober.  So our big group headed to Croke Park for the GAA Club Championships to see hurling and gaelic football!  It was a great way to spend an Irish holiday, even if I'm not much of a sports person.  The games were brilliant, I had no idea what to expect.  Both sports are extremely intense and I kept cringing, the violence was a little much for me!  I knew rugby was intense, but it seems like all Irish sports include violence!  In the Gaelic Football match, there was several yellow cards.  I didn't know who to cheer for, so I chose to cheer for both teams!  The stadium wasn't too packed, we didn't even have any Irish fans surrounding us.  But it was a great afternoon of St. Patty's Day, and I'm glad I had the option to experience the sports culture! I stayed in at night to avoid the madness, and no regrets there.  Most of us stayed in, because we knew it wouldn't be worth it with all the tourists.  I went out the next night to a pub, so I get that experience enough while living here!

This weekend, I got to share my Irish experience with one of my best friends form home - Claire Nicholas!  I've been in a homesick funk, and I was overjoyed to get to see a familiar face.  She ran into some trouble trying to meet up with me when she got here, because she didn't know there was a time difference, but we finally got together and I basically jumped on her when I saw her! It's so funny to have two worlds collide, and I loved having a friend from home visiting my new home in Dublin.  She really got to see me in my element!  We honestly just spent a lot of time talking and just hanging out, but we did take an awesome day trip!  We did a Paddywagon tour to Wicklow, Glendalough and Kilkenny. It was absolutely stunning!  We got to take a walk through the national park and see Kilkenny Castle.  It was so nice just being able to hangout in the gorgeous countryside with my best friend.  It's been one of my favorite days in Ireland!

 I also got the amazing opportunity to spend a day on an Irish farm!  During...LAMBING SEASON! It was my dream come true - a day hanging out with lambs and puppies.  Sincerely, it was everything I had hoped for.  By the end of the day, I was covered with sheep poo, which is to be expected haha!  I got to see sheep being herded by a sheepdog, bake Irish brown bread, learn how to play hurling (I was decent!), see a lamb right after it was born, milk a cow (I even squirted its milk into my mouth...) and play with sheepdog puppies all day.
A great day all in all!