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Published: March 18th 2012
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St. Patrick's Day has always been a part of my life ever since early childhood. I can remember pinching classmates if they didn't wear green, drawing shamrocks in class and having green cookies. As a collge student it was another reason to drink, as if any American student needs a reason. I can remember Molly's bar in DeKalb had a special "Riding the Rail" if you drank so many Irish beers and shots then you received a tshirt proving your accomplishment.
This week in class I explained to my students about the upcoming holiday, St Patrick's Day, and to my amazement none of the students or staff members that I told about this holiday had ever heard of it. I guess none of them have Irish ancestors in their bloodlines, so why would they. It got me thinking, why do we really celebrate this holiday? I had downloaded a ESL lesson from a website that I am a member of and learned more about the holiday and traditions than I ever knew. Click
here if you want to educate yourself about March 17th.
**Sidenote-living outside of one's culture I really have learned more about holidays that we celebrate in the US. The students and staff always want to know why or how we celebrate. Me being the "expert" on the topic I need to be able to explain in detail the why's and how's and have become more knowledgeable myself or refresh my memory as I have noticed it is starting to decline, UGH.
This year, we knew we wanted to celebrate it correctly as we received green food coloring from our dear friends, Kris & Kelly. Also, it would be the first year either of us celebrated with a friend from Northern Ireland, Sean. How could we NOT drink green beer on a Saturday night when our friend is 100%!I(MISSING)rish? So we made plans to meet them at Vineyard Cafe around 8pm to get our free green beer if we wore green, green beers in a mug for 10RMB($1.59) and Guiness pints & Jameson shots for 20RMB($3.17).
On Friday afternoon, I received a private message on Travel Blog from fellow bloggers
Splakawitz. They would be traveling to Hangzhou for a weekend trip and would love to meet up. It is a small community being an expat in
China, I stumbled upon their blog a couple weeks ago as I saw a photo of these 2 with Jason & Kathleen, who we taught with in Shenzhen and now live in Shanghai. Friends of Friends all teaching English in China. We made plans to meet up and they joined us for drinks at Vineyard. It was a great night had by all as we had two of our Chinese colleagues join us who had never celebrated the holiday...2 less St. Patty's Day virgins in the world. I think last night we experienced the most foreigners gathered in one place since living in Hangzhou.
Now we have added another item to our every growing list of "Things to Do Before Leaving China" venture to a Dinosaur Park in
Changzhou ...gotta check this out before leaving China!
We hope everyone had a safe and fun St Patty's Day. As we start to see photos uploaded to Facebook and hopes the hangovers aren't too harsh on any of you.
Cheers to our Irish Ancestors!!!
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