St. Patrick's Day

Hi everyone, Sorry it has been a while since my last post. I was actually in the middle of writing this post when my computer crashed. I had to take it to get repaired and they had to replace my hard drive and logic board. Anyway, I have it now, so I'm back in business. I'm so glad to hear that you are doing well Papa. I hear the hospital staff were all very impressed with how well you recovered. I know my mom is out there now too, so I hope you guys are having a good time. I hope that everyone else is doing well too. So the last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy around here. A professor from Pomona came out to visit us all of the kids from my school back home, and he took us out to dinner which was nice. It was kind of weird seeing a professor from the States, but we had a good time and we got to talk about all of the different things that took adjusting to in Ireland (plus we got a great free Thai dinner). On Friday before St. Patty's weekend, after I got done with class, 10 of us went on the Barack St. Pub Crawl, which took up the majority of the afternoon and evening. It was a lot of fun, and the bartender at one of the pubs gave me this ridiculous 7Up promotional hat that they weren't supposed to give out until St. Patty's Day. I was very happy about it, and I will post a pic at the bottom. Along the way, we also met some characters. There was an elderly Irish guy who sat next to us in one of the later pubs who was entirely incoherent. It wasn't just that he was really drunk (although he definitely was) so much as he just couldn't enunciate or was just speaking Gaelic or something. English words did not come out of his mouth, but we did our best to communicate with him anyway. At certain points, though, we would stare at something behind us, although there were no people directly behind us, and carry on a conversation all by himself. Eventually we pressed on but not before I taught him one of our handshakes from the States. On Saturday, a couple of my friends from Pomona who are studying abroad at Cambridge came to visit. They were going to stay through St. Patrick's Day, but their plans ended up changing and they left on Monday. Sunday, we had our first League Cup game for rugby against Listowel (who we played just a couple weeks ago). I started this game at wing, despite having to play a man down due to a shortage of players for Listowel. So both teams played with 14 players the whole game. Our team dominated the game from the beginning, although we did give up a couple of tries out of laziness. I didn't score a try, but I had a couple of good tackles and didn't make any mistakes. So we are in the semi-finals of the Cup now because it's an elimination tournament. The next game isn't until the weekend following this coming one, though. Sunday and Monday night were also good nights. We hung out with some of the rugby guys, and the Pomona kids that were visiting. We took them out around Cork to see the city and the pubs. On Sat. and Sun., there had food and craft booths set up during the day because of St. Patrick's Day and everything. On Tuesday, we got dressed in green and went out to see the parade in the city center. It was a lot of fun, and the whole town went out to see it. The streets were packed, and there was green everywhere. The parade itself was fairly small in scale, with only a few large floats. Mostly it was just bands and groups with flags and everything. After that we did a smaller pub crawl in the city center that was specially set up for St. Patrick's Day. We were supposed to get free t-shirts at the end, but they had already run out by the time we finished. Regardless we had a very good time, and I was glad that I got to experience it in Ireland. Anyway, I will put some pictures at the bottom. And I will talk to you soon. So now I'm adding to the stuff that I already had written before my computer crashed. Classes ended for us last week, which is cray for me because most people back home were on spring break or having midterms. Now, we have this week which is for review and stuff, before getting our month long break. They have a weird setup out here, which makes it pretty easy for kids studying abroad in the spring. Students who actually go here for all of college don't take exams for their fall classes until the end of the spring, so the average student has around 12 exams in May (for both fall and spring classes). On the other hand, I only have 6 because I obviously didn't have any fall classes. So this means I don't really have to utilize the month long "study break" for actual school work as much as all of the Irish kids do. Instead, Laura and I are going to travel to France and Spain. We are going to start in Paris and Mont St. Michel, and then we'll head south to Toulouse for a few days. After that, we are going to Madrid, then Barcelona, and finally Malaga in the south of Spain. We leave for France on April 8, and we get back to Ireland on May 2. Hopefully, I will have some money to make it home. As far as everything else goes, I finished rugby. We played in the semi-final of the league cup this past Sunday against Barringcallaig (guessing at the spelling here). Unfortunately, we lost so our season is over, but it was a very good game. They were unbeaten all season, and they only beat us by one point by scoring in the final minute. Pretty hard loss, but it was a good way to go. Well, I will attach some pictures at the bottom hopefully, and I will talk to you all soon. Love, Jamie When I first got my 7Up hat at the beginning of the Barrack St. Pub Crawl. Part way through the pub crawl. At the St. Patty's day parade in the city center. Probably the best day I've seen in Ireland ever. Later in the night on St. Patty's.