URI to Galway: St. Paddy's Day

I've been hearing about St. Patrick all semester in most of my classes, so today was the day when he finally got his parade. And wow, it was a long (but good) one.

Today started like normal: a bowl of cereal after making my bed and getting dressed. I had planned to meet Alice and Courtney at their place at 11 to get painted and such, but I was just too excited to sit still, so I walked over around 10:30. We sat around and watched horrible shows like Maury and Jeremy Kyle (today's special was a bunch of women who weren't sure who their babies' fathers were...craziness) before breaking out the paint. All of us were wearing as much green as we could find, and Alice even had orange gloves, but our attire was ironic. Alan, one of their flatmates, came downstairs and refused to be convinced that he should wear green even though he's Irish. Also, outside the window we could see lots of Irish people walking around...with maybe a green scarf, if even that. Especially after we got all painted up, you could tell that we were the Americans in the crowd because we went over-the-top.

Anyway, we had tattoos, make-up, paint, and glitter spray, as seen below. Courtney and I used the paint, Alice used the make-up, and we all got tattoos and glitter.

I got my face painted first. I wanted it to be something small-ish but flag-like; instead, I got a full-on flag all over my face. Let me tell you, we did not see anyone else over the age of 2 who looked like that. It was awkward and involved lots of staring/glaring people.

After Alan and I chased her around for ten minutes, we finally got paint on Courtney's face. This is as much as she would allow me to put on her...

And Alice.

Walking in to the city center was an experience. The closer we got, the more patriotic people's outfits became. By the time we got to Shop Street, which was about halfway through the parade route, the crowd was quite large and quite green. We ended up standing in a crowd of tourists from some random country, so they weren't as decked out as other people, but it was still a sight.

After an hour of the parade, we decided to leave for home so we could eat. Everyone else wanted to go out afterward too, so they were going to change and what-not. I decided to just stay home and get some work done. So far I've written an assignment for tomorrow's class, finished the first page of my ten-page report for Castles, and added two people onto my housing list for URI. Hopefully I'll get some more done tonight...

The first thing I did when I came home, however, was wash my face. When we were applying the paint, we noticed that it stained our fingers. Yeah, that made me nervous...and for good reason. The white came completely off, but the orange left me looking like I have fake tan on for a club and the green tinge on the other side makes me look incredibly seasick. Maybe I got dizzy on the dance floor and ended up both colors? Whatever your explanation, it's quite a sight. Probably a good thing I didn't go anywhere the rest of the day...

See? My nose is normal colored...