04.04.2023 Ireland

After our breakfast at the hostel we had our basic introduction to Ireland by the organization.

How to handle the culture change, how to behave in the project and host family and more general infos.

Though it was mentioned that the child care projects had a very strict policy on how to handle the children. No yelling at them which I can understand but also no physical contact.

Ireland has a bunch of different laws to protect children from abuse so there are a few things that you are just not allowed to do.

I am not sure how strict these rules will really be but I am a bit worried since the main way that I learned to engage with children is from my cevi days. And there it is normal to fight, catch, play and wrestle with all the kids.

After lunch we visited a bell tower where you were allowed to ring the bells any way you wanted. So every tourist that visited the bell tower was just ringing the bells.

Thats probably why the tower closes at 15:00 because the people living nearby would just go insane.

Then we did a quick stop at a big english market in town before we packed all our bags and went to the bus station.

Me and Svea said goodbye to the others and took the bus to clonmel. It was a few hour drive through a very beautiful landscape.

In clonmel we were picked up by our host vincent. He showed us the city for a bit and also were we had to volunteer tomorrow.

The rest of the evening we used to get to know the other volunteers that were staying here by playing some games. Kajan and Lars have been here for quite a while and leave, during the next week. While Hannah is staying somewhere else and is just here because there are no other volunteers at the other house.

I have a very nice room with my own bathroom. Quite the luxus feeling after always sharing it.

Tomorrow at 13:00 the real project starts, then I will find out how serious the child protection laws really are here. I might have to change my old cevi ways were it was totally fine to just tackle a child during games or yell if they weren't listening.