St Patrick's Day Down Under: A successful day, followed with a rather unsuccessful evening

Ahhh St Patricks Day, a wonderful holiday celebrating in the U.S. which involves more drinking than actually recognizing Irish culture. The U.S. took the idea of getting drunk in support of another group of people and totally ran with it and of course, that is what I am used to as a born and raised American. Last St Patricks day I spent in Arizona and I'm pretty sure I puked (sorry adult readers) from having too much fun. I'm just sayin we make a big deal out of it and I typically have an extraordinarily fun time. Well, here in Oz it's a bit less recognized but we tried, nonetheless, the make it an eventful day. And the best way to do that is of course is with day drinking and dying everything green. (Beer, pancakes, milk... nails: everything!)

Green "Gold"

Whoooaaa my hair is RED

We had a green themed brunch around 11 am where a group of about 12 friends came over to enjoy green milk, green eggs, green pancakes, and a ton of bacon. We enjoyed this tasty meal amongst no one who was Irish and I'm pretty sure we cheered to America.

Anyway, after brunch we began our drinking festivities. Unfortunately, upon the return of the boys with many cases of beer, there also came a quite violent rain storm. We migrated inside and continued our drinking indoors (not your typical day drink, but it still worked). We hung out and drank and listened to irish music until about 6 pm.

The drinking crew... with me in the corner snarfing Hummus (Ali Goldstone)

Successful??

I then realized that we were all heading down hill fast unless we ate some dinner. So we ventured out in the rain storm to a Thai restaurant down the street. Yeah, I know, eating Thai food on St Patricks day is a little off but when you're drunk it seems like a really good idea. And a good idea it was! It was so delicious and so much fun to go out to dinner with a big group of moderately drunk people. After dinner however, is when things went south....

The restaurant was a sit down, but we still paid individually at the front counter (kind of like Dennys, totally craving that by the way). Mind you there was a group of about 12 people all trying to pay and then leave so we could go to the bars. I was one of the last ones to pay with Danna and Camilla. After the last person paid, he said we still owed 17 dollars or something stupid like that. To keep it short, he made us stay and call all the people who had already left checking to make sure they paid. In the end, Danna just grabbed all the receipts and counted them and sure enough there was 12 and he just forgot to take one of them off the tab.

Leaving a bit frustrated, we just wanted to get to the city and have a beer in a relatively irish setting. We get on the bus (still raining by the way) and there is about 9 of us sitting in the back being very quite and respectful. Next thing I know, there are transit security guards on the bus and they proceed directly to the back where we are sitting. The dude asks for my Go Card (the passes we use on all transit) and he notices it's a student card. He then asks to see my student ID which of course I didn't bring in my "going out" purse because it's small and I only bring the necessities (duh). Soo, I got written up. Yep, I got a Translink transit citation for travelling with a student card and not carrying any proof that I'm actually a student. If you are confused as to how dumb this is I am right there with ya. And to make it even worse, I am now in their database so if I get caught again... it's a $200 fine. Cool Australia, as if you're not ripping me off already with your obscenely expensive McChickens.

After departing the bus I seriously just wanted a drink. I was so annoyed/frustrated/wet from the rain and I just couldn't get back into the St Pat day spirit. In sum, we went to a few bars that night searching for Irish fest, but our lack of energy combined with the vast amount of obnoxiously drunk people that were lurking the Irish pubs caused us to retreat home early. Me and my roommates then talked shit about our landlord for a good 30-40 minutes which is always fun and I went to sleep, happy to get a good nights rest before wakeboarding on Sunday.

Conclusion: St Pat's day in the U.S. is much better, especially with Krystal in sunny Arizona. Spring Break 2013??