Happy (almost) St. Patrick’s Day! This weekend I got to experience one of Chicago’s traditional events- dyeing the Chicago river and the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. I had never heard of this tradition before, and this was the first year that Chicago was able to do this again since COVID began. Unfortunately for us it was only projected to be 10 degrees on Saturday, and we spent most of the day outdoors. The river dyeing started at 10am, and so we were up and heading downtown by 8am. There were an insane amount of people out and about already, and it was really strange for me to see people begin to bar crawl this early in the morning. It’s traditional for the bars to host events all day Saturday, and this was amusing to observe.
The parade was rather overhyped in my opinion, nothing really stood out to me. It consisted of some traditional Irish music and dancers, and then marching bands that came in from all over the US. It was also VERY packed, and the density of people was so high that I doubt many of the people standing there could even see what was going on. We got lucky and were in the front, but I don’t have any desire to do it again.
It’s hard for me to believe that March is already halfway through, as that means that I will move back to Holland in about 6 weeks. I have been searching for graduate schools within Chicago though, and plan to move back here at some point within the next few years. It’s weird to me that my life really has not been going the way that I had ever thought that it would, but in the best way possible. This experience has taught me so much about myself, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to grow here.