Ireland Day 6- The black pool turned blue and white for a day

WE ARE!! 

Today is the day, the day which planted us in the land of the Irish to begin with.  The day Ray has been looking forward to (probably the most) and the day where some of our crew get to witness an American football match firsthand.  Of course Ray’s inner alarm clock gets him up and moving before anyone else… I think I overheard the PSU fight song chiming from the halls of the apartment.  We all hurry up and put on our blue and white… minus one who forgot his shirt and will remain unmentioned (but I bet you can tell who it is from the pictures).  We grab breakfast as we make our way back to Temple Bar.  When packing for the trip, I came across Ray’s blue and white striped overalls placed nicely atop the rest of his luggage.  I thought he was crazy for bringing them and attempted to convince him not to… Little did I know at that time, these overalls gave Ray special powers.  They make him famous!! Everyone wanted to take a picture with him.  And ironically, he was not the only one…

The walk to Croke Park was anything but short; however, it gave us a chance to tour another part of the city that we hadn't been through yet.  It also probably didn't help that we bounced in and out of pubs along the way making our trek even longer.  The stadium was pretty cool!  

Penn State wore their away whites and UCF their home gold (even though from afar it was somewhat hard to tell the difference).    Pepe, of course, had on his blue and white ribbon to show his support.

Although a good portion of the game was spent explaining the rules of the game to some of our crew, I didn't mind one bit.  I enjoyed when they actually started to understand what was going on (or at least told me they did)…

At the end of the game, Ed had to make good on his promise to get Pepe on the field, with a cheerleader or even the “Lion”.  Mirko, Ed and I made our way through the crowd down to the field level, just in time for the entire team and cheerleaders to leave our spot to go to the other side of the field.  I figured in time they would come back to our side… We made friends with the security guards and asked them to bring over the cheerleaders or players if they could.  A few minutes later, over came a couple of players.  

As two of us were snapping photos, Mirko commanded the attention of a fellow in a suit walking by on the field, saying “You get Lion!” I looked over and noticed a lanyard and name tag hanging around the man’s neck.  I figured he was someone official, but didn't realize who he was until a guy next to me said he’s the new president of Penn State.  Wait, what? Mirko just asked, well kinda just told the President of Penn State to go get the Lion, unknowing that he was the president.  He also got offended when the president asked if he was from Russia… As we had learned earlier, Mirko is from Slovokia (“like slug”) not Russia.  After all that, unfortunately, Pepe did not get a picture with the Nittany Lion.  We figured if the president could not secure a spot with the Lion, then we were SOL.  But we did manage a few with some cheerleaders…

Ironically, we ran into the same cheerleader outside waiting for the buses and snagged one more picture.