Ceili Sunday

I spent my Sunday afternoon today at a ceili. Not at some fancy ceili venue--nope, downtown in the middle of the street. A ceili is Irish social dancing, much like OSU's country western nights. There's line dance, set dancing, waltzing, two-step, and plenty of other partner dances. I didn't know how to do anything, but I didn't need to. A) It's too much fun to be embarrassed at how awkward you are; and B) There are plenty of lovely people to help you along. Half of the instruction was in Gaelic and that was lovely, too. I turned to my friend and told her, "Yep. 'Agus.' I got that." I can tell when someone is connecting two phrases in Gaelic. Actually though, many of the words used to give direction dancing I had heard before in my Gaelic class. So really, going to the ceili was just like studying for my Spoken Irish class...kind of. Well, it's why I'm here. I had great craic, met wonderful people, and it was an overall wonderful experience. In fact, it's probably the most fun I've had all winter. I also figured out how to properly swing someone ceili-style, which is very fortunate because I've accidentally butt-grabbed people on two separate occasions trying to swing them. Both cases were very awkward.