Céilí!

Our next big adventure was attending a function put on by the Irish Society at college. They are a society that's all about Irish traditions. They speak only in Irish and put on traditional Irish events. One of these events is the Céilí. A Céilí is a type of dance and this turned out being almost like an Irish prom. They were all super dressed up (we were not) and had been planning this forever. We decided to go to the whole event, which was recommended to us by our Irish teachers, instead of just the dance part. It was a great experience, but definitely very different. First off, though we are taking Irish, we are by no means fluent, so conversing was interesting. For the most part we did introductions and the like in Irish, then when they realized that our knowledge was extremely limited, we would switch to English. It was difficult but fun. We were the only non-Irish people there, which made the whole situation slightly awkward for us, but everyone was amazing and we ended up having a really great night!

The lovely centerpiece.

The table was all decked out for dinner.

Jenna

Me and Brid (pronounced Breed). We met here and have actually stayed in touch since. She's really fun and we've seen her out a few times since this night.

Jenna and Laura


The dinner wasnt all that exciting, but the dessert was amazing!

Brid and Jess (another girl we met there).

Kelly and Gary (he actually went to the Christmas party we were invited to by the staff at the Thirsty).

I dont know the girl on the end, but the woman in the middle is Marian, my Irish teacher.





Taking a breather outside.

And then we went back in to the dancing! It was really fun, but very exhausting and kind of intense because they were calling it in Irish, so we were all totally lost.

Laura and Tomas. She liked him a lot, but when she went to meet with him the next day he was wearing the same thing he had been wearing at the Céilí and had apparently just continued drinking all night and day. Needless to say, that was the last time she saw him.

Jenna and Julanne. She's the one who actually convinced us to come. We met her at the Thirsty one night and she mentioned the Céilí and we told her we had been thinking about it, and eventually she got us to go to it. I'm really happy she did.


So, all in all, the night was sooo much fun. We went into it knowing nothing about it, but it was really fun to learn about it and to see something traditional. It was definitely a wonderful experience.