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ceathair: Two months in Ireland

Veröffentlicht: 04.11.2020

hey everyone,

I'm really excited to say that I am now officially two month in Ireland. And what a journey it has been already.
So I'm going to do a little round up of what happened in the last month.


the first week

This week pretty much started with my birthday. I wasn't expecting too much for my birthday. I was happy enough to be able to spend it in Ireland. But my family sent me a few gifts and we opened them while we were on a video call. And I couldn't have asked for a better start of that day.
After I also got a small gift from my host family I had to leave for school.
One of my friends here then got some of her friends to sing happy birthday for me before school started. And as embarassed as I was, it made me just as happy. Also nearly at the end of the day two girls from my class got my entire class to sing for me again. Which again was kind of embarassing but it made me happy people would do that for me.

That pretty much was my birthday. And as great as it was it definitely wasn't the highlight of the first October week.

Because two days later we went on our first trip. We didn't go to the originally planned location, but the one we ended up going to was quite good as well.

Our program included a sky park and paddling. the paddling was a lot of fun and quite the team building experience. And we even got to see a "waterfall" (it wasn't really a waterfall but just imagine it was) and we were allowed to stand under it. It was a lot of fun but maybe not the best idea considering it was the first October week.

The skypark was just as good. We got to do some courses and had the chance to just talk to others. i have to admit this trip is still one of the best days I had since I've come here.


the second week

Starting from this week the corona situation slowly got worse. We were moved into Level 3 of the restrictions but it wasn't too bad yet. School was slowly become a new normality and I also talked to new people from my class.
There really wasn't much else happening this week.
I started becoming closer with the people here and I enjoyed every moment.
On the saturday of this week I also carved my first pumpkin this year and probably the first one in such a long time. And I had the best day that day. 
But also around that time the government started to think about another lockdown.


the third week

Probably one of the first things that happened that week was the annoucement that Ireland would go into another lockdown, meaning nearly everxthing except school would get closed for six weeks. Which was quite a sad announcement but you have to live with this decision. I knew what I was getting myself into when I left Germany this year.
On the Tuesday of this week our year took part in a 5k run. Apparently this is one of the highlights that week, considering I'm writing about it.
On the wednesday I hung out with the other exchange students for the last time before lockdown would officially start. It also was our last week before midterm break, so we wanted to spent one last afternoon together. 
We had a small ArtTrip with our year on Thursday. All we did was walk around town and look at some graffiti artwork. I'm not exactly interested in art but I wasn't complaining considering it gave me four hours out of school and being able to talk to others.
The last day of school was quite unneccessary. We had a Style Me Workshop, which totally wasn't interesting to me. And besides that hardly anyone was doing anything productive in class. And after that midterm break started.


the fourth week

From this week onwards the hardest part of this exchange up to now started. I wasn't too excited about going into midterm break. Mostly because I knew I would barely speak to anyone close to my age. And I knew I would miss it.
I didn't really do much that week, the country was still on lockdown so except for one time I didn't see any friends.
Instead I mostly spent my time relaxing and doing homework.
But I also got back into my music obsession, which made me happy.
I did watch a movie with one of my friends online and video called. But other than that I was pretty much alone.
On Halloween as well. Because of Covid you couldn't really meet anyone, so I just stayed in and hardly celebrated it.
And after that things sadly took a turn to the worse...


the last few days

I want this blog to be as real as possible and I want to be able to look back on everything that happened later on. So I want to write about the last couple of days.
Corona has made this year a lot harder.
And after I was quite excited to be able to go back to school this week and see everyone again, it crushed me to be informed that this wouldn't happen.
I won't give any exact details, but someone close to me tested positive for Covid. They are okay. Which is a relief. But it still meant I would have to stay home for the next 14 days. I can't say that these news were easy to take in. However it's the way things go. So I talked to the people I knew would help me through this and everything was okay.
I didn't look forward to staying home for another two weeks without anything to do, but I had to do it no matter what.
And with the support of my loved ones, not just at home but in Ireland as well, I wasn't feeling as alone anymore.
I have great friends back at home or on an exchange as well (but in different countries) who looked after me the last few days as well as my family who helped me a lot as well. But I think the one person helping me the most right now is my closest friend here in Ireland. If you read this, thank you!


in conclusion

It's not that exciting start anymore. I am faced with some harder times right now. But knowing I'll never be alone is helping a lot. I'm still very excited about the next weeks/months and I already have so many plans.
But right now nothing of it will happen. Instead I want to use the time to myself to start thinking about what will happen next year and where I want things to go.

Most importantly I started to realise this exchange won't be perfect. I don't think I will come back saying only positive things. But even hard times are teaching me a lot right now and I'm grateful for this. I don't want everyone to think this is the absolut best time of my life. This is just my life. And it won't be the best part of it magically just because I'm in another country. And I'm more than okay with this.


Until next time,

Slán,

•Anneli•

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