St. Padraig's Day

I know, I know I'm a few days late, but hey better late than never right? So this year I spent my St. Patrick's Day here in Ireland celebrating with my friends and the people of Dungarvan. It was pretty surreal. All this time its been "oh yeah, we're in Ireland" but now on Wednesday it was "Oh.... I'm in Ireland....It's St. Patrick's Day...I'm actually here!!". It was one of those moments where you realize it fully what is going on. It was a pretty exciting day! They raised the Irish, American, Pennsylvania and Erie City Flag early in the morning and then we attended mass at St. Mary's, a beautiful church here in Dungarvan. The mass was in Irish, and the Mercyhurst students participated in the mass by reading intercessions, a reading as well as doing the offertory. I was one of the students who got to read, and I did one of the intercessions. It was a big honor to be invited to participate in this mass, considering St. Patrick is their patron saint. Celebrating mass in Irish was pretty cool, I was able to follow along - after Catholic school for 12 years I better be able to! Which is one of the neat things about Catholic mass, no matter where you are in the world or what language its in, you can follow along because all the masses are formatted exactly the same.

Later that day we lined up for the parade! It was pretty exciting to see all the people that came out for the parade and all the different groups that were in it. I was especially excited that I got to carry one of the Irish flags in the parade! After the parade we were fed a "traditional" Irish dinner of ham, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes at the Dungarvan sailing club. It was delicious!

I'm not quite sure how to wrap this up, I'd like to talk about what we've been reading (finishing Dubliners and Easter 1916) but I think St. Padraig's Day should get it's own post. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about Joyce and Yeats! I'll get back to them next time :)
Until then, Slainte!