One month in Ireland

Sorry about the long silence, I've been a bit ill, especially last week so I didn't feel like writing anything. And well this week, I've just been lazy. And when I finally managed to get something written, my internet connection died and I couldn't finish my writing. But now, I'm officially back.
On Sunday (February 16th), I realized that it's been a whole month since I came here. I really can't believe that I've been here that long, even though if it feels like I've been here even longer, but certainly not in a bad way. The time does fly here, and terrifyingly fast, I might add..
I've adjusted to my new school and hometown better than I had hoped. I've actually noticed small changes in me that I can thank Ireland and the people for. One is the fact that I have gotten more polite, saying things like "Excuse me" or "Sorry" even when it's not absolutely necessary and it has also become dead obvious to me. Sad to say, this is not even nearly always the case in Finland, unfortunately.. Finns aren't completely rude bastards, but the comparison to the Irish, it does no good for the image of Finns, there's no way around it.
I've also noticed that nowadays, I don't get caught off guard or absolutely surprised if a stranger either greets me or just randomly starts talking to me. I've started to like it and sometimes I even properly join in the conversation and tell something about me and my life, in stead of just nodding or going "yeah, ahaa" All in all, somehow I feel more open here than I did in Finland, and it must have something to with the people.

Two weeks ago, I did a trip to Donegal with my friends. Donegal is a nice little place quite near Sligo, ideal for day trips such as ours, since we were able to see the main sights and eat at a couple of restaurants and cafes during that one day alone.
We visited the Fàilte Ireland's (The Tourism info center of Ireland) office there and the lady there was so incredibly friendly and helpful and she was telling us about how there's so much to see in Donegal and pointing out all the important sights, and after all, all we had said to her was that we just arrived to Donegal and yet she told us all that without us even asking.
And since picture is worth a  thousand words, here are some photos of our trip:

Old cemetery in Donegal

    

   

 

Cause no blog is complete without at least a little bit of food porn..

Somewhere over the rainbow..

En route from Donegal back to Sligo

Donegal castle

Nothing new hasn't really happened, I go to school and classes, go out with friends a couple of times a week, kickboxing and that's mostly what my normal weeks are made of. But, I did do something new a few weeks ago; I tried Tai Chi for the first time. It was very relaxing and soothing and afterwards I felt all mellow and like I was in peace with the world or something. Though at first, when the instructor was talking about energy flows and stuff like that, I was wondering to myself, what is this, some sort of a hippie thing. That's why I was surprised, when I found myself really liking the class. Something I'm definitely keep on doing if I just have the time.
One thing most of you have probably noticed is the lack of photos of me and my friends. Which of course is due to the simple fact that I have no friends here.. Or not.
In one way, I'm sad that I don't have a small compact camera nor a smart phone, so I could take pictures of me and my friends when we go out. My camera is way too big to take with me to a party or when going out on the town. But, here is one of the few pictures of me and my friend, taken at some sort of an anti-Valentine's Day party at Velvet, one of the night clubs here. A place that actually has some class, believe it or not.

That's about it, I probably left out a lot of stuff since it's been so long since the last time I've written anything. But I'll try to get on writing more regularly from now on. So, till next time, bye!

First week of school

On Monday it finally began. I had my first classes at IT Sligo. Though the beginning wasn't exactly the most promising one; I got lost. Like really lost. I asked directions to the classroom from one of the faculty members and still couldn't find the damn room. But luckily I met one of the exchange students who was on the same class with me and we eventually found our way to our first class.

On top of getting lost, the night before I had come to the harsh realization that I wouldn't have just one but 3 classes at the same time, which basically would mean serious changes to my timetable. Thank god it turned out to be just a misunderstanding on my part having looked at the wrong timetables. I ended up dropping out of one of my courses due to schedule difficulties. But considering that I switched Introduction to Financial Accounting to Cultural Tourism, we're not exactly talking about a huge loss.

Courses:

At IT Sligo, I'll do 6 courses in total. I thought it would be more work, but I have less classes in a week than I would have thought. But of course that just means more work out side of school, presentations, essays etc.

All in all, the courses seem really interesting. There is quite a lot of theory, but it is combined with practical exercises and examples. The teachers seem to be really competent, not only do they know a lot of their area of expertise, they know how explain it and teach it to us students. And also they seem quite excited about having Erasmus students among the Irish students. Oh, and thing I'm hugely relieved about are the rather neutral accents of teachers. I have no problem understanding what they're saying, which is nice, since especially a heavy Irish accent is something that takes some time before you'll be able to fully understand it.

Also, a couple of the courses include a few very pleasant surprises: On my Cultural Tourism course, we'll do a day trip to Dublin in March, visiting a museum and possibly an art gallery. And another course, we'll get to plan a two-day trip to some destination. Depending on the budget, we'll either go somewhere in Ireland or The UK, or then somewhere else in Europe. So far Scotland, France and Poland are some of the alternatives. I'm excited about going anywhere, even if it's just some other city in Ireland, like Dublin or Galway, so there's really no chance of being disappointed with the destination, wherever we'll end up going.

Campus of IT Sligo and studies in general:

There are approximately 6 000 students at IT Sligo and there are a couple of different centers for different subjects. Of course the campus is huge and I got at least a little lost of everyday of my first week of school. But the thing I noticed though, was the fact that even though the school has a lot of students, it really doesn't like there are that many students. Every time I have some free time during the day and I for example go to the library or just want to take a seat somewhere, there's pretty much always room somewhere. And the campus doesn't feel as crowded as I would have thought. I'd say the cafeterias are the only places that are quite crowded most of the time I go there.

The campus is actually a really pleasant place. There are a lot of windows and light everywhere. The library is big and well equipped with a lot of different books, computers and different areas for studying, depending whether you want to study independently in silence or do a group project. And there are a couple of stores on campus selling things like notebooks, pencils, school books etc. Hell, there are even ATMs on campus!

So all in all, I get the feeling that the campus is better than the campus of my school back in Finland in many ways.

Of course finding my way around the campus takes time, though I think the worst is already behind me. But then there are the different procedures when it comes handing in school assignments, deadlines, doing exams etc. One thing that surprised me and perhaps creates a little pressure on me was the fact that if I happened to fail one of my exams, I'd have to pay 50€ for taking the exam again and the time for retaking it would be some time in August, by the time I have already left Ireland. Not sure should I consider that as encouragement and motivation to study hard for the exam or as a bit of an ultimatum. Anyways, I'm not too worried that cause the courses I'm taking seem really interesting and useful, which is bound to add motivation to studying. And also, the courses don't feel that hard or complicated, for now, at least. So I really shouldn't have any bigger difficulties passing them.

After school:

Especially the beginning of the week was quite exhausting for me, simply due to the fact of going to a whole new school, courses and the excitement and maybe slight nervousness of the new situation. But it was all for nothing, everything went so well, maybe even better than I had hoped. So during the first few days of the week, I didn't go out much. I did go out on Monday night, but I got home quite early cause I was quite tired and I had classes in the morning.

On Thursday, I tried one of the sports alternatives of the school. Kickboxing! I had never tried it before, but it turned out to be so much fun! One lesson cost only 3€, which is not too expensive, even for a student budget. The lesson wasn't too challenging, but afterwards, my legs did hurt quite a bit (and they kinda still do), so I must've really done something at them.

After kickboxing, I went straight home, got ready and then went out with some friends. The beginning of the night was nice. We went to one of the popular pubs among students called Shenanigans (awesome name for a pub, right?), which was a nice place with student friendly prices. From Shenanigans, we went to a night club called Pure. In short, Pure was probably the shittiest night club I've ever been to. Really crowded that you had to keep on shoving people so you could even move in there (and apparently that night wasn't even that crowded, so it gets worse..), people being so beyond wasted that it was just horrible, the sinks of the bathrooms were all clocked up cause they were filled with vomit, desperate guys hitting on anything that has boobs, mostly crappy music played with a really really high volume, and what else..So I highly doubt I'll ever go there again. At the least the company of that night was good, even if the place wasn't, so the night wasn't all bad.

On Friday I only had one class, what a nice way to end the school week. Since I've been out late last night, I took the Friday night a little slower. I went to the movies with my friend, to see Wolf of Wall Street. That movies was 3 hours of pure fucking decadence and hilarity. It was an excellent movie! And the tickets cost only 8,65€. And there was no student discount cause it was Friday night and the movie was 3 h long. So that is the "more expensive" price of a movie ticket here.. I remember when movie tickets were that cheap in Finland, that was years ago! I know I'll definitely go the movies more often here with the prices like these. And the thing that surprised me, was the size of the movie theater here. Sligo is much smaller than for example Joensuu, yet the movie theater is about twice as big!

Saturday, I was supposed to to this Chinese New Year event with a friend, but when we got there, it seemed that the whole event was cancelled, probably due to the weather. It was really really windy that day, for me it felt like a storm, with the wind actually pushing you when you walked.

So in stead of that event we decided to have some lunch at one of the cafes/restaurants. The food was nice and about the same priced as in Finland. After that we had coffee and cupcakes at this nice cafe.After that, we decided to have a little tour around Sligo, since neither of us had really had the time to explore Sligo that much. We discovered some nice shops, restaurants, buildings.. We even went inside one of the cathedrals. I had never been inside one before, so it was quite interesting. The cathedral was really old, I think it dated back to the 15th century or so. 

After the tour, we decided to out again. We went to some party at the apartment of one of the exchange students. At first, it was a bit awkward, since we really didn't know anybody there. But as the night went on, more people came in, even people we knew, so we got to talking with people. A little later, everyone left the apartment to go to the bars or night clubs. We ended up going to a club with one of the Irish we've met earlier. All in all, it was a fun night with dancing, getting to know some new people and all that. A really nice ending to my week.

We'll see what the next week will bring. But so far, life in Sligo has been really good!