Irish-land

In honor of St Patrick's Day I am going to pay my respects to the 'homeland' (can you call it the homeland if you never actually lived there and you aren't a small Hungarian woman wearing a babushka?) Anyways I am more Irish than anything else (you wouldn't believe it though because all I do is talk about Iceland) but I am very proud of that 'Mc' in front of my 'Reynolds'. 

First up - St. Paddy himself.  According to Wikipedia St Patrick (who practically didn't exist, there are only 2 letters of his ever found, so who knows how saintly this guy really was) lived in the north and the west of Ireland.  yay.  not much else is known. 

But he is widely credited with banishing all snakes from Ireland!!  Go Pat Go! If thats true then he totally deserves his saint-hood. 

Next! St. Patrick's Day.  Who are we kidding?  This day has nothing to do with St. Patrick at all.  Its for drinking green beer and pretending that you are more Irish than you actually are!  I have had some good times doing this.... including one very awkward time when my mom saw me and my boyfriend wearing each others clothes in a pub..... 

Me: "Um Hi mom... This is my boyfriend.  He's wearing my clothes"

Mom: "Hi BF... why are you wearing my daughters clothes?" 

BF to contest organizer: "We should totally win.  I just met Jane's mother while wearing her clothes!!"

BF to mom: "Hi, nice to meet you." 

Me to BF: "Perhaps we should go switch back our clothes now" 

Contest Organizer: "Wow that was awkward.  They still don't win though.  Congrats to Guy who looks way to good in a green tank top and Girl who didn't bother to put on her boyfriends pants.  You win..... More green beer!" 

Moving on.... 

Last year I went to Ireland on an impromptu vacation and so I thought I would share some stories and pictures.  

Heather is the wonderful lassie (did I sound Irish there?  because thats what I was going for) who I went to Ireland with.  She luckily grew up there and has tons of family who live there and let us stay with them. 

I would also like to note that we had a 'no retakes' rule on this trip, which I would later come to regret.  All our pictures are terrible.  We just didn't want to be 'those' girls.  You know the ones.  "Omg I think I look better from my right side.  Can you please take this picture 100 more times until we get it right?" 

This is Hairy O'Eyeball, our Irish tour guide.  If you look closely you will notice that he has a hair growing out of his eyeball.  We felt that no one else would want him as a tour guide, so we took pity on him and asked him to show us around. 

This is Heather, Hairy and me at the Guinness brewery.  I'm not really a big fan of the stuff but Heather and Hairy loved it. 

Hairy wanted to make a sand castle on the beach.  I have no idea why because it was terrible out, but we said ok (because we felt sorry for his hairy eyeball) and helped him to make a miniature (London)Derry sand castle 

The entire point of us going to Ireland was to be able to stand on the edge of a cliff and stare of into the distance while the refreshing ocean breeze relaxed us a helped to take our cares away.  Just like for Keira Knightly playing Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.  As you can tell, we accomplished our goal. 

Yay! its the Giants Causeway.  Gotta love me some columnar basalt. Anyways this is 'supposedly' were St. Patrick walked across the ocean from Scotland and came to Ireland to banish all the snakes.  

I was also able to accomplish my life-long goal of herding sheep.  

The End