Before I met Keegan, I never really celebrated St. Pats. I wasn't one to go out to the bars and get drunk so I never really did much on this holiday. After meeting Keegan however, that all changed. Keegan went to an engineering school and Saint Patrick was the patron saint of engineering so St. Pats was a huge holiday for him and his classmates. The school gave them a 4 day weekend (mostly because numerous students would start drinking early on in the week and come to class hung over,) and the city really got into it.
Students, especially the fraternities and sororities go all out
(The redheaded girl is actually one of Keegan's friends)
There's a huge puck in the middle of campus...
The town and students paint the streets green...
And the city puts on an awesome parade with help from the frats and sororities
Numerous drinks (both green and not) are consumed and even the professors get into things.
Now it's not the drinking that I miss (I'm not a big drinker at all,) it's the friends and camaraderie that I miss the most. This was probably the biggest day of the year for the students and the school and our friends from numerous cities and even states would come in to celebrate. For as long as I've known Keegan, I always drove the hour and 30 minutes to come hang out with the boys for the weekend and take part of the shenanigans that occurred. Because of St. Pats, I became closer with his core group of friends and met many others that I might not have had the opportunity to.
It just really sucks that we can't make it this year. Because we moved to Mississippi, the drive would be about 8 hours for us. Keegan can't take off work because we're trying to save all of his vacation days for the wedding and the honeymoon. We would have to leave around 6 tonight and not get in until about 2 a.m. tomorrow. That basically leave a few hours for sleep before the parade and a day of seeing as many people as we could before we had to leave again Sunday morning. I understand Keegan's reasoning, but part of me just want to say f*** it and leave tonight anyways. I miss our friends so much. So many alumni come in for St. Pats so we'd see people we haven't seen in a year.
I guess I'm just really homesick and missing our friends like crazy right now. Not being up there for St. Pats is just hitting really hard right now. It's also hard because no one down here understands why I get excited about this holiday.
At least we have a few friends coming down here next weekend for their spring break. It's not the same, but I'm super glad to see them. We might have to do a few shots "To St. Pats!"
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