Thanksgiving x 2!

Since we were all over here for Thanksgiving, all of the Americans decided that we had to celebrate. My apartment ended up celebrating on Wednesday because Jenna's brother was visiting with his wife and Jenna was going to travel with them a bit on actual Thanksgiving. It ended up working out fairly well. We got to have two Thanksgivings!

Kelly brought an apple pie.

I made a green bean casserole.

Jenna made pecan pie.


Laura's family sent a bunch of stuff for us. Some of it was lights.

They also sent a Thanksgiving tablecloth.

The American cooks (minus Kelly)!

Soon the Spanish kids started turning up. Diana grabbed a picture with us.

Getting the cranberry sauce (sent all the way from the states) out of the can.

Victory!

Our spread: Turkey slices (we didnt want to deal with a whole turkey so we bought sliced turkey at the English Market), gravy (which the Spanish kids had never heard of), stuffing (contributed by Matt), brown bread (contributed by Jenna's brother), mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, squash, and cranberry sauce.

After everyone ate.

Since there was food being served Joe and Liam naturally appeared. They even brought us a couple of bottles of wine since they didnt know what else to contribute.

A bunch of the Spanish kids. They contributed a couple of buckets of sangria.

And then when everyone left the clean-up crew began their work.



The next night we were invited to go to a Thanksgiving dinner where Matt and Dan were baking a turkey. It was at this girl, Sarah's, apartment. Sarah did not appreciate that we were there. She yelled at us a lot and wouldn't let us leave until we did her dishes. It was very awkward and made us super happy that we had our own Thanksgiving first.

The boys needed to come up with a game plan to figure out how to get the juice from the turkey out of the bag to make the gravy.

Eventually Dan braved picking it up. He definitely got burned.

Finally opening the bag released a great deal of steam.

Carving up the turkey.

The meat was literally falling off the bone. As soon as Matt picked up the drumstick it promptly turned itself inside out. At least it showed that the turkey was cooked well.

Evil, menacing Dan.

Wishbone time.

The very...orderly table full of food. There was turkey, gravy, mashed potatos, stuffing, "green bean casserole" (it had brocoli, cheese, and onion rings...soooo weird), and bread.

We gave thanks before we ate.

All of the people eating at the table.

We got the couch because there weren't enough seats at the table and Sarah just didnt like us.

So Thanksgiving in Ireland was pretty awesome. Ours definitely kicked butt in the enjoyable time department, as well as in side dishes, but I have to admit, the boys did very well with their turkey (and man were they proud of it). All things considered we pulled the whole thing off pretty well. It was hard not being home for the holiday, but we were with our Cork family so it was still wonderful (Sarah aside).

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.

Election Party!

This seems like forever ago at this point, but it was a fun night for us and I'm trying to get all of my stuff on here updated before I try the mammoth task of sorting through my Christmas trip pictures (there are 1345 of them).

So, we threw a huge a election party at our apartment back in November since we happen to get CNN consistently. Sadly, the party was broken up about 2 hours in by our manager lady, but a few people snuck back in and we plowed through until the election was called at 5:00 am our time. For the party we had a lot of "American" food and people were only allowed to bring American beer/wine. It worked out really well actually and we had a great time, all things considered.

This is made of digestive biscuits (sounds weird, I know, but they are suuuuper popular cookies over here...and pretty tasty to boot). Kelly frosted them and put on the Cadbury buttons. Sadly, one was lost on the way down to our apartment.

We had cake, cookies, lemon bars, and potato chips to snack on.

Laura made the donkey cake.

The boys brought pizza and beer.

Jenna made the party games.

This is John. He didnt want to get into the debate, so he went with showing off his history skills instead.


Me and Dave Didn't Die (I believe I've explained the name before, but in short, he got e-coli and didnt die). He's from SLO.

Dave Didnt Die (yup, we really do call him that each and every time we see him) and Laura.

Joe realized that we had food and came out to investigate and steal. Liam followed shortly after.

Caroline and Kelly fighting for a spot on the couch.

Toni and Kelly got pretty tired around 3:30...

But we all finally made it through until 5!

It was a fun time. In addition to the Americans, we also had a few Spanish kids, 3 Germans, 3 Danish, and Mrijan...the Nepalise/American combo. All in all, a great night!