celebrations

The past few days have been quite interesting to say the least.

Friday was Red Nose Day - a British thing to raise money for charity.

St. Patty's Day was so much fun! I walked into town with Phil and Martin and we wandered the campus of an old college where there was music playing and a craft fair. We found a pub that was serving Irish stew so we went in and had a pint of Guinness (my first one) and some Irish stew for only £3. The stew was delicious and I could do without the Guinness. Kes joined us at the pub too and between the 4 of us we had enough Guinness (4 pints) to get a free Guinness shirt which Kes stole. The barmaid came up and gave me one of the Guinness hats that looks like a pint. It's well good. So I got to wear an awesome Guinness hat all day. We went to the student union pub to watch the 6 Nations Rugby matches and ended up staying in there all night long.

On Sunday Kes, Phil and I walked the city walls so I have now successfuly walked all 2 miles of the Medieval walls! I was in tourist mode and took lots of pictures and read all of the info/historical stuff. It was nice until the freak hail storm we got caught in. Since we were freezing by the time we made it back into the city centre we stopped in HaHa! Cafe for some hot chocolate. Then we walked back to campus and just hung out for the night because it was too cold to do anything but watch a movie.

I woke up quite early Monday morning to go into town and buy my white shirt for the nights festivities and took a little walk around. Martin's friend from Kendal, Mason, who I met last weekend, came to York for the day. Martin, Mason, Scary Tom, Kes and I walked into town and over to Clifford's Tower. I went up the tower with Martin and Mason. When we were about half way up the spiral staircase it was crazy snowing again and very windy. Martin decided that it would be in his best interest not to spare his life on the tower so he went down the stairs and I braved the freezing cold and snowyness with Mason and then we ran like heck for the stairs to get down. Our little tourist excursion ended up being very comical. After dinner Kes and Phil brought me a cake and people sang to me. Then everyone got dressed up in their white t-shirts to go out for my birthday. My birthday theme was grafitti, so everyone wore white and had markers to write messages on everyones shirt. Lucy, Nick and Jess gave me a crown that twinkled and played happy birthday! After going to the student union pub everyone went to Nexus to dance. It was lots of fun. The dj gave me a bottle of champagne for my birthday and the girls found a badge that said happy 30th birthday that I had to wear with my 21st birthday badge from Kes. It was quite a late night as I didnt get back into my room until 3:30 am but it was definately an American 21st in England. :)

12 days until European Adventure time!!