It's St. Patrick's Day!

Technically,  it doesn't really concern me. I'm not Irish of any sort. Neither did I really even know that people celebrate St. Patrick's Day at all since coming to the US. I mean I knew the whole deal about the Irish and green and the leprechaun but that's about it. Reminder to self: Ask Bridget who St. Patrick's is. And why drinking is such a big part of this celebration.
Didn't really do anything to be a part of this celebration except go out for one drink of Strongbow and wear green tonight. What I was a part of though, was Miami's version of St. Patrick's Day. A very own Miami student inspired St. Patrick's Day that we call Green Beer Day. In the beginning this was just a day to retaliate against Miami making Spring Break on the week of St. Patrick's Day so students wouldn't celebrate and drink during a weekday. But now... Green Beer Day, is seriously the biggest festive day of the year for our school. Students make business ventures out of this day by designing and selling GBD tshirts and other apparel and accessories. Bars and Clubs uptown have special promotions of green alcohol drinks. Everyone wears a green shirt to class. (Everyone also goes drunk to class, but lets not talk about that). I was always too innocent and scared to be a part of this celebration.. it just always seemed to be only for the rowdy Americans. But this year, I finally was a part of the celebration. Didn't go all out or go all crazy or anything. The tradition is that the celebration uptown starts at 5am. Restaurants uptown serve green breakfast food (and pizza, because its the perfect alcohol food) starting 4.30am. Then there's green beer and other drink promotions all day until 2am the following day. So basically, the idea is to wake up, put on your GBD shirt and anything else you have that's green, have a green breakfast with a drink in the morning. Maybe take a nap if you have the time. Go to class. Maybe that a nap again if you don't have too many classes. Then go out again for drinks in the night and dance all the way till 2am, still in your GBD shirt mind you! That's basically what I did. Except I did it all sober. I hated it when I saw kids in my classes with green lips and tongue and a green face like they were gonna throw up because they were so drunk and I vowed never to be one of them. And so I wasn't. The following are the chronicles of my first and last GBD...

9am in the morning on the streets of Uptown. After hosting a not-green breakfast in our apartment for a few friends (not-green because green coloring in all the supermarkets were sold out). We headed to our usual hangout: 45 to grab a green beer.

Check out our cool GBD shirts! And the Green Beer!

Annie and I sharing a slice of fattenning pizza before heading for home at about 10 am.

Night time dinner at Sushi Nara, all decked out in green - the asian way. :D Then PUB CRAWL!!!

Hui and I found a very crazy but very nice green guy? Don't know how else to describe him. haha.

Here's the very happy Pub Crrawl members including Hui who took this picture. Ah it was fun. Stopping by the bars uptown. Sometimes having a drink, sometimes not. Chatting and poking fun a little here and there. Then a tap on a shoulder to each other to signal that it's time to leave for the next venue. ;D

Last stop for the night. The usual place: 45! Check out the sea of green! Imagine this on a bigger scale. Imagine this on the scale of maybe 80-90% of the whole student body. Aaaahhh... now you know how big this day is.!

Senior year is so full of many Firsts for me. And it makes me so happy. It's the year to do everything possible before graduating from this place that watched me grow and mature to who I am now. The year to experience as much as I can with the people who are the sunshine of my days here. So that I can graduate saying that I've done the most that I could in all my days here.