St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

The week after my Inis Mr trip, I caught a flu. One thing I did not like too much about being in Ireland in March was the cold weather. I had really expected it to be a bit warmer, but I was constantly in need of wearing tights under my jeans.

On some nights, however, I did not do that (well, girls never listen to their mums or grannies), so I had to bear the consequences. On Thursday night I went out to a pub with some other students and after one drink of Bailey's, the room was almost spinning around. I also have to say that I am not too used to alcohol... but the next day, I was definitely not in my best form.

Ironically, in conversation class, we were talking about workers who were skiving, dodging work, by "ostentatiously dropping scarfs around their necks and coughing"... I was doing both, but I was not pretending! My classmates looked at me like I was - isn't the world mean?

After classes, we were served a little Paddy's Day meal. The school was to be closed on "The Big Day." We were served some pate, and some soft drinks, but no green beer - it didn't get that corny.

After spending Saturday and Sunday at home feeling sorry for myself, I mercifully felt much better on Monday morning, March 17. St. Patrick must have put in a good word for me on that day. I had arranged to meet some Japanese people somewhere in Galway City, but we hadn't yet arranged where and when. I decided to look for them around the cathedral because that's what we had discussed. However, when I had just gotten up and showered, my little host sister greeted me with an announcement: "Andrea, someone is at the phone for you!" It was my Japanese school mate, and we settled everything to meet.

When I got to the cathedral after a nice, refreshing walk (of course there was no bus that early - it was a holiday and we met at 10:30 a.m.) I met all kinds of people, but not the guy who had phoned me. On my way to the cathedral, I saw a lot of people in the streets selling little toy snakes, whose most obvious characteristic was that they did not look like snakes at all. They were longish, fluffy things in screaming pinks and yellows. I saw people passing by, some with the Irish flag painted onto their faces.

Everything still looked quite peaceful, but action would soon set in... the parade that I so eagerly wanted to see was about to start. I expected a great event of several hours. Were my expectations correct? Read about this in the next issue...

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