The Green Machine

So many blogs, in so little time! Hope you are keeping up!

This past weekend was of course St. Patrick's Day. However, in Ireland it's not just St.Paddy's day, it's St. Paddy's week. Four days are observed for the occasion (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday). All because some guy got rid of snakes in Ireland. It can't be that hard we extinct species all the time, just look at the polar bears.

I only spent Saturday (and sort of Sunday) celebrating as I had to catch up on homework/studying. Believe it or not I was so ready to go back to school this week, I've been off on break for over 2 weeks!
Anyway Sunday morning I met up with my Irish friend, Emma, from hockey and we took the bus to city center in order to watch the parade. We also met up with my friends Corinne and Jesse from Ithaca AND two of my high school friends Emily and Cat. It's a small world after all.

Myself and Emma at the Parade

The parade was interesting. I thought there would be more shamrocks and leprechauns but instead there were a lot of  marching bands, bag pipes, and some strange circus like acts. It was still really cool. After the parade Corinne and I went to Croke Park (a large stadium in Dublin) to watch a hurling match and a gaelic football match. Both were really cool to watch even though we had not idea what was going on.

Hurling is like a combination of field hockey and lacrosse. That's the way it was first described to me and I can't think of a better way to explain it. The goal is a like a soccer goal but with American football posts on top of it. If you score between the football posts it's one point, if you score in the soccer goal it's three points.
Gaelic Football scoring works the same way and is played on the same field. Gaelic Football is like soccer, basketball, and handball. You can carry the ball but every four steps you have to dribble or kick it.

The sporting events continued that night as I rejoined Emily and Cat at a bar/restaurant to watch the England versus Ireland rugby match. I also had a traditional Irish meal of bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes) for dinner. Unfortunately Ireland lost the game but I had a wonderful time catching up with my old classmates. Having a few drinks, chatting about Europe, being all grown-up...Good job  LGHS, you have produced some classy ladies.

Emily, Myself & Cat

All in all one successful Paddy's day.

Sunday, I continued wearing green for the final games of the Olympic Qualifiers for Men's Field Hockey.
Conveniently, the matches were at the National Hockey Center on the UCD campus.
The first few matches were phenomenal, I've never seen hockey at such a level before.
The last match, Ireland versus Korea, was definitely the best though. Even the president or Ireland was in attendance. If you have read the Hunger Games, which I strongly advise you do if you haven't' already, the president of Ireland looks eerily like President Snow.

Continuing on, hearing the Irish sing their national anthem was also quite amazing. Although it wasn't Ireland's true anthem. They have two because of conflicting opinions between the North and South. Since the team has players from the North they sang "Ireland's Call". I got a clip of it on video, it sounded better in person though.

Much like the history of Ireland, the Irish had trouble winning this past weekend. The hockey team lost within literally the last two seconds of the game.
If you don't like hockey or aren't familiar with it skip the next paragraph.

At 2:2, the game was headed into sudden death overtime or as they call it "Golden Goal". Korea had a free hit into the circle but there was only two seconds left. Nobody thought anything would change. Any good hockey player knows that a shot taken outside the circle is not a goal unless it bounces off somebody and goes in. Moving on, we heard a loud bang into the back of the cage and the Koreans began their victory dance. Hold the phone, you can't score a goal in two seconds?!! All of us Irish fans were like "No way" and the officials hadn't even awarded them the goal.
No worries this is the Olympics so everything was caught on tape and can be brought back for slow motion replay. There was some communication between the video tower and the officials.
We knew it was over as the official raised two arms pointing towards the opposite goals. Some of the Irish players collapsed and  people in the stands just started balling. It was more depressing than watching SU FH lose this year's NCAA semi-finals to Maryland via live stream internet.

Here's what was on the news...

After this I should be back to regular blogs once a week. Some exciting things I have coming up are Relay for Life, my last hockey game, and Easter in Rome. 

I am raising money for my Relay for Life team at UCD. It works just like Relay for Life in the states. On March 28-29th we do a big 24 hour event and we raise money for cancer awareness and research. If anyone is interested in donating/sponsoring email me (joconway@syr.edu) and I'll send you my address. (Postage for an international letter is about 2 to 4 dollars)

Thanks for reading! Slainte!