St. Patrick's Day

First of all I would like to draw attention to an incident which occurred on St. Patrick's Day... There was a riot in the Holylands when a bunch of house parties spilled out onto the street. People threw empty bottles at riot police when they were called to the scene. Some were fighting. A couple policemen were injured. Several students were in court yesterday facing various charges. Although the riot happened very close to my dorm, I was safe inside doing some reading and Arne was taking a nap. Whew!

If you're interested in reading a couple short articles about the incident from the BBC, here are the headlines:
Riot police called to disturbance
Students in court after trouble

I'm happy I didn't have to deal with any of this. My day was nice and quiet. Got up around 10:30 and had a tasty breakfast with Arne, Layla, and Torsten. We met some more friends outside and then walked downtown to see some of the parade. Unfortunately we arrived at the tail end of the parade lineup; we walked alongside the parade route, trying to get ahead and see the beginning, but we didn't get to see very much. When it was over, I went to Carroll's gift store and bought a cheap Ireland hoodie and an Irish flag. =D

After that, some people went out to a pub or to Grant House, but Arne and I returned to Mount Charles for him to take a nap and for me to do some reading for class the next day. I had coffee and a couple beers and had to force Arne to drink some coffee to wake up! We went to meet the others at GH, but met them along the road, and went with them to Esperanto (a kebab place) for some fast food. After that, we crossed the road and went into the Bot for a few hours. We tried to stake out a spot of our own, but didn't manage to get any seats. Instead we stood around a small round table so we could talk and enjoy our drinks.

Later on we all returned to Mount Charles and played drinking games for the rest of the night. Good times all around. =D

~Catherine