Chapter 57: Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day

I bought a blue lace dress and a golden plaited belt in the West Edmonton Mall. A really cute blue lace dress. So even though we were invited to a St. Patrick’s Day party in Dress-Down-Canada that same evening, I skipped the green and dressed up my new dress, the golden belt and the bright red lipstick. Canada will simply have to get used to my colourful Swedish taste in fashion.

But really, I didn’t stick out as much at this party as I had done in the bar. Atleast the girls were pretty dressed up and in the end, I even got to dance. Raul, the host and one of Frida’s MBA friends, provided pizza and chicha (might be how it’s spelled, the English equivalent of ‘vattenpipa’), and only an hour or so after our arrival, we were dancing to Rihanna, Avicii and the Swedish House Maffia.

It turned out to be a great party and the most important thing that I took with me from it, excepting the slightly sore feet, a wonderfully light feeling in my neck and an extremely good mood, was the knowledge that even Frida’s non-I-House friends were a bunch of really warm and friendly and generous people.

On the walk back to I-House, I sang Swedish folk songs for Kate and Hortense and Frida managed to slip on some kind of metal ring and fall right into a mud puddle. Of course we laughed, but in the morning, in the light of day, we saw that her coat was covered in mud, her white mittens were completely black and her thigh was sore and stiff. But hey, St. Patrick’s Day is not a real St. Patrick’s Day without a trip and fall.