Another Adventure

Goodbye my little bed,
Goodbye my shaved legs,
Goodbye my personal bathroom,
I will see you soon.

Goodbye to my Dundee,
Goodbye to all my money,
Goodbye to the Scottish neeps,
I will be gone for three weeks.

Tomorrow I embark on an adventure that...well, something I've never done before. That seems to be my mantra this year. "I'm doing things I've never done before." Moving to Scotland. Living with people from all over the world. Hopping on a bus to London. Hopping on a plane to Ireland. Now I'm going on a three week tour of Europe. I remember being in Mrs. Felder's second grade class and learning how to spell Europe. Conor always bragged about it because he'd been before or his parents went or something, and he had some fancy eraser that he got from Germany or somewhere. He was always so proud because he could spell Europe perfectly every time. "It's like e-u-rope" he would tell me when he saw I spelled it Eroupe.I had all the right letters, I just couldn't ever remember the order...Now, not only can I spell it, but I'm actually in Europe. In addition to the UK and Ireland, I will be going to France, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria. How about them apples, Conor?

Just kidding :) I'm not petty and competitive like I used to be...

I'm extremely thankful for all the people I've met here. Friends to travel with, friends who open their homes to us, friends who write a whole itinerary for Paris with color coded instructions and neatly placed in a plastic sleeve so it doesn't get wrinkled. Just great people. Good people. Genuinely good people. Those are hard to come by, but Dundee seems to attract them. That definitely wasn't in the admissions book I received advertising Dundee, but it's an added bonus I was happy to discover.

Goodbye Scotland.
See you in three weeks.

One of the locals

On Wednesday March 14th at 6:25 pm, I got on a plane for Dublin, Ireland with 6 of my friends from all over the world (and by all over the world, I mean the States and Germany...). From the moment we landed in Dublin to the moment we left, we were constantly going and experiencing a culture none of us had experienced--no matter what part of the world we came from. 

The common misconception about St. Paddy's Day in Ireland is that everyone drinks Guinness for four days straight and just parties nonstop. However, I can attest that this is not true. First of all, Guinness is way too expensive to drink all day long (especially on a holiday such as St. Paddy's). Secondly, the celebration of St. Patrick is much more religious and family oriented than most people assume. 

St. Patrick was actually a British citizen from the fourth century who was captured by Irish raiders and forced to live as a Shepard for a while. He was often alone in the fields and (especially at night) became scared of the wild. So, he turned to God. Thus, blah, blah, blah, he brought Christianity to Ireland. It's also been discussed that before he came with his Christianity, Ireland didn't have a written language. So when he came, he helped modernize the Irish savages. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But St. Patrick wasn't a big partier in his day and I can assure you, he never drank Guinness (Guinness didn't come around until the 18th century). I feel like the Irish try to embrace the true meaning of Paddy's life (which is actually pretty mysterious...no one really knows what he did in his life--but he did not banish all the snakes from Ireland--that has been proven false). 

Anyway, back in the '90s, Ireland formed the St. Patrick's Parade to embrace Irish culture and to display the talents and creativity of...everything. The parade was quite an experience. It was very creative, that's for sure. There were so many colors and costumes and the floats! they were fantastic. So intricate. The "theme" this year was science and discovery (or maybe that's the theme every year...I'm not sure), so there were a lot of mad scientists with their creations running around. Apparently, the parade is pretty well known for the monsters it creates. I'm pretty sure that some of the creatures would have given me nightmares if I had been a child (but that's not saying much...everything gave me nightmares as a kid). Therefore, I didn't take any pictures of the scary costumes. I just got the colorful, creative ones. Below are a many of the pictures I snapped during the parade.

                         This was the first thing to come down the street. We waited about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, so you can imagine our excitement when we first saw this.

                                         Bagpipes! I felt like I was at home again!

                         This guy was kind of scary...he was a sea creature or something, but this boat was so cool and detailed, I had to take a picture

                                                        He had fire in his hands....

In the end, it was a great four days. We were tourists for the greater part of the first two days, but then Friday and Saturday we stayed with one of my German friend's friend. Her house was so cute and she was super nice. She made us all dinner and made us sandwiches for the plane ride on Sunday morning. After the parade on Saturday, we went to a traditional Irish pub close to her house with three other Germans studying in Dublin. We watched the Wales vs. France and the Ireland vs. England rugby games. I've never seen rugby before, so it was definitely an experience to see it with a pub full of Irish locals. That was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. A little old man was the one serving us and he gave us all suckers during the Ireland game. He was extremely nice and just precious. In most places (especially local pubs like this one) we (those from the USA) kind of stand out for being American and I become extremely self-conscious (I usually pretend to be Canadian...), but at this pub, no one cared--as long as you didn't cheer for England. They were all there just to watch the game, like us. They didn't care what we were. It was great. I'm finally starting to feel like a local...somewhat. I just need to find a way to hide my wonderfully attractive accent...