Final Exams and Transitions

I would love nothing more than to sit down and write about all the things that have been going on in my life lately! I just got back from an awesome trip to Scotland and I've had all sorts of other adventures too.

Unfortunately I have been very busy for the last several days, and I know that I will continue to be for the next weeks as well. You see, I have finally reached the most dreaded time of the semester - final exams! This year it is even more difficult because I am leaving Ireland in just over a week (!) so I need to pack all of my things, and I'm trying to say goodbye to everyone and everything that I won't see again for the foreseeable future.

I really just came to say that I have tons of things that I want to write and share with you guys, but I need to focus on studying and on enjoying Ireland for my last few days here instead of feeling bad for not blogging. Knowing me, when I get home all I will want to do is relax and recover and spend time with friends and family as well, so it might be several weeks before I come back and share more.

I have final exams tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday, and then I fly back to Minneapolis next Thursday.  (For everybody in Minneapolis, I would love to catch up soon! But I'll probably need a couple days to rest and recover from jet-lag).

Hopefully I will be back before too long to share more about my experiences in the end of my time abroad and my transition to being back at home.

My Life and Books

Anybody who knows me probably knows that books are a very important part of my life. I've been thinking about the different ways that books have played a role in my life recently, and how they relate to aspects of my life abroad (like how I'm trying to place less value in material things and how frustrating being an undergraduate at Trinity college can be!) So, here are a few stories.

-When I'm home, I'm somewhat of a book hoarder. I usually only buy books that I have already read or are from an author or series I know I like. (If I want to just find random books to read I usually go to the public library). Now that I'm away from home and I can only bring back what will fit in my suitcase, this attitude has changed somewhat. I've been buying most books with the intention of reading them and then getting rid of them. I particularly like a bookstore that I found over here called Hodges and Figgis, they have a section where everything is 99 cents!

Such a magical place

I think this has been good for me. Sometimes I tend to put too much value in owning something simply for the sake of owning it. In general going to college and studying abroad has given me a different attitude about all my "stuff", and how much of it is actually necessary.

I fully intend to get rid of most of these before I leave Ireland,
but it just doesn't feel like home without a shelf full of books.

-Historically, my usual genres have been fiction and fantasy. However, I have found myself changing more in this regard lately. A lot more biographies and non-fictions have been finding their way onto my radar, mostly with positive results.

I read this book recently, its the true story
of two men trying to find the deepest cave
on earth. I highly recommend it!

In the same vein, I recently started listening more to audio books. I was convinced for many years that I didn't like audio books. I didn't like the voices, I didn't like how slow they moved, I didn't like how it was so much harder to reread a sentence or paragraph. I have been realizing that audio books can have their own place though, such as during road trips when I tend to get a bit car sick and while doing laundry or other activities. They will never replace physical books for me, but its just another way that my literary horizons have been expanding. (I feel like such an adult, actually enjoying non-fiction books and listening to books while I fold my laundry?)

-The library at Trinity is huge, but as an undergraduate taking advantage of its resources can be frustrating. For one thing, we are not allowed to check out a majority of the books (they have this agreement with publishing companies in the UK which means they acquire a lot of books, but one of the conditions is that undergrads can't check them out). Even when I do find books that I am allowed to check out, I am only able to have 4 out at a time. It couldn't be more different than the Wellesley library! It has made for some very long days in the library doing research. This is one of the reasons why Trinity has made me grateful that I go to an exclusively undergrad college at home. There aren't any students at Wellesley that have more privileges than I do.

This is the "Old Library" at Trinity.
Unfortunately we don't actually study in here
anymore, our actual libraries are rather less
magical.

-Soon after I arrived in Ireland, I remembered the fact that the first Harry Potter book was published under at different title in the UK, so I thought it would be fun to buy a copy here. (It is called "The Sorcerer's Stone" in America, originally it was published as "The Philosopher's Stone".) It was really interesting to read it in its original edition, it made me want to re-read the American version and see how different they are. There are a few UK spellings that I was familiar with, but a few really surprised me. (For example, did you know that "pajamas" in the US is spelled "pyjamas" here?) Just another cultural experience I'm trying to soak up before I go back home!

As of tomorrow I only have 3 weeks left here, which is crazy. More to come soon!

Semester Update

Before I get started, I have one small piece of information to share: I updated the tabs across the top of the page and added one called "My Life in Pictures". It is by no means comprehensive, but if you're interested in seeing a little bit more about me, and especially about Boston and Ireland, you might find the pictures interesting.


Classes officially ended last Thursday, over a week ago. Since then I have literally had no obligations. This has led to a nice, if somewhat disorienting schedule. The weather has been beautiful, so I've been spending as much time outside as possible. Especially in the last couple days though, I've been having trouble figuring out what to do with myself! It has been a great time to relax, but it also means that I've been getting basically nothing productive done (example: I've been free for over a week and am just now getting around to writing this blog post).

Speaking of the end of classes, I'm still having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the semester schedule here. At home at Wellesley, we usually have just a few days to study followed by a single week of exams. Here at Trinity, we have three weeks off to study followed by four weeks of exams.

For an international student such as myself this is kind of nice, because it means that I have lots of free time before the end of the semester to travel! (More on that in a minute.) However, from an academic point of view it bothers me. I realize that exams are more important here and that more time to study makes sense because of that, but I would rather just get them over with. My two main exams aren't until the final week of exam period, so I have 6 weeks total between the end of classes and those two exams. I feel like by the time I get around to studying I will have forgotten everything! I feel weird complaining about extra time off, but it kind of stinks that while I'm travelling and enjoying my time off exams are still hanging over my head.

Some of the different-ness of the academic schedule here comes from the fact that at home, virtually all classes last just one semester and finals take place at the end of both fall and spring semesters. Here, there are only exams in the spring, which means that there are a lot of full year classes. This has led to a few problems with being here for only the spring; a few of my classes were technically year-long classes that I joined in the middle. Generally Trinity is pretty good about making this work, but it has still caused some frustrations. Take my Latin class, for instance. There were two different versions of the course that you could register for, one with an exam and one without. The course without an exam is designed for single semester students such as myself. However, the department didn't communicate with us about what was expected to make up for the exam, and therefore the last week of classes a friend and I discovered that we were supposed to have been doing an independent study all semester alongside our normal classwork. Oops. (They honestly didn't tell us anything about this). They changed things around so we are taking a final exam after all, which I suppose is the best way it could have worked out. I was assuming that I was done with that class though, so it was frustrating to learn that in fact I need to study for an exam which will be worth 80% of my final grade.

Anyway, I really didn't mean for this whole post to turn into complaining. Sometimes it's so much easier to talk about the negatives of a situation. Despite how it might sound, I have really been having a great week. The weather has been spectacular, definitely the warmest weather we've had the whole time I've been in Ireland. Luckily this warmth has coincided with our break, so I've been taking advantage of my freedom to spend as much time outside as possible.

I've also been checking items of my list of things I want to accomplish and see while I'm in Ireland. On Wednesday a friend and I went on a bus tour of the Hill of Tara and Newgrange. The Hill of Tara is an ancient location where the High Kings of Ireland ruled from, and Newgrange is a Stone Age passage tomb that predates both Stonehenge and the Pyramids in Egypt. In all my pictures Tara basically looks like some insignificant grassy mounds, but it has a lot of history, and the view from the hill is incredible. Apparently on a clear day you can see nearly 3/4 of Ireland.

The Hill of Tara (click to see the picture larger)

Waiting to go into the 5000 year old tomb

It was an awesome trip, we even stopped at a farm for lunch and I got to hold a baby chick and pet some lambs.

baby lambs at the farm

Yesterday a couple friends and I visited an old church in Dublin (originally founded in 1095 A.D.) that has a crypt underneath. We were brought down to see (and even touch) some of the mummies. The most interesting part to me was the fact that it is technically still an active burial site (several important families in Dublin still retain the legal right to have remains placed in the crypt) so they aren't allowed to light most of the rooms full of coffins or open any of the ones that have remained closed and intact. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures down there, so you'll have to leave it up to your imagination. Or just google St. Michan's church, that works too.

The rest of my time here will basically be full of travelling and studying for exams. Next week I embark on a short trip to England (Bristol and Bath mostly), then the following week I go to Paris. I will do my best to share more details about these trips later! My only currently scheduled exams don't happen until the 18th and 19th of May, so in theory I will have plenty of time left to study after I get back from travelling. I will also have a Latin exam sometime in May though, and I am hoping to work out a trip to Scotland as well. I return to the US on May 21. Despite how much time it currently feels like I have left, I know it will come way too quickly! I will only have a couple of days between my last exam and going back home, so I have the feeling that I will be very exhausted from studying and packing and saying my goodbyes and such. But, I really don't want to think about all that yet.

I'm so excited for all my travels the next two weeks, I've been trying to make the most of my down time before we embark on our adventures. It's been great to just have some time to relax and recuperate!

Academics and Homesickness

As you may remember, at the end of February I went on a trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam. It was my first opportunity to get out of Ireland and into other parts of Europe, so that was really fun. It was a great trip, but exhausting!

Amsterdam

It wasn't really until I got back that I realized how quickly the term is flying by. The academic schedule is somewhat different here than at most schools in the US. We have 12 weeks of classes (including study week, which is when I went on my trip), and then we have 3 weeks to study and 4 weeks of exams. As a result of that, and because the semester here started much earlier than I'm used to at Wellesley, it seems like classes are ending very early. Before study week, I felt like I had all the time in the world. It was only February, after all. However, when I got back, I realized that I only had 5 weeks of classes left! (As I write this, there are less than 2 weeks until the end of classes.) And I also realized that I had four essays to write before the end of classes, none of which I had started. Oops.

(I'm also realizing that I can only do so much writing. Working on essays hasn't left me much desire to write a blog post! I guess it's a good thing that I'm a computer science major and don't need to write essays often.)

Another difference between here and at home is the amount of class work. Classes tend to have less work during the semester, partly because exams are much more important. Compared to home, this term has been a breeze. As a result, it has definitely been more difficult to get back into being responsible with my studying! Having too much free time is a lame excuse, I know. I guess I'm learning that I need some sort of external motivation to work my best. It's been especially bad here because of the new culture and academic system that I need to adjust to, plus the fact that ALL of my classes are pass/fail, and they are much less work than at home.

Only two more weeks until break!

Lately I have also been kind of homesick. It suddenly hit last week for some reason. It caught me off guard - this definitely isn't the longest I've ever been away from home, since I go to school across the country. I guess something about being immersed in a completely different culture has made me wish for home. I've been thinking about how nice it will be, not only to be back this summer, but also to live in Minneapolis again after college. Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely loving my time here. Just this past weekend I went on an amazing trip to Donegal, Ireland, in the north of the country. It was beautiful!

Slieve League Cliffs in Donegal County

I have been very lucky with the friends I have made here and the people I have met, and I know it will be very hard to say goodbye. Sometimes, though, I just find myself longing for familiar things.

Travels

Travelling is one of those things that I've always wanted to do. Growing up my family didn't travel much. Almost every family trip and holiday was spent at my grandparent's house, 2 hours north of the city where I grew up. Those remain some of my best memories to this day. When I think of childhood, I think of waking up at my grandparent's house, smelling my grandma cooking breakfast (like many grandmothers, her cooking was magical) and listening to the adults talk downstairs while I lay in bed.

The point is, my childhood was spent pretty close to home. I might have occasionally been frustrated when I heard about my friends and other people travelling, but looking back now I love the fact that I grew up so close to home and that I had places that meant so much to me, even if they weren't necessarily exotic or exciting.

The first time I left the country I was in 7th grade. I went on a service trip with my school, it was an annual trip that both of my brothers had gone on as well. We visited a nursing home and went to a poor village to hand out food and spend time with the kids, among other things. It was an amazing experience, and it expanded my horizons in ways that I didn't even know were possible. I went on similar trips every year up through my senior year of high school, when my class went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. That was the first time I ever flew on an airplane (we had always driven to Mexico). In my mind that's kind of when I became a "traveler". Travelling across a body of water somehow makes the journey seem more real and significant.

That trip began a deluge of further travels. I went to a college far away from home, which necessitates a lot of flying. (I'm from Minneapolis, and I go to school near Boston.) I went on trips to see my brother graduate from Marine Corps boot camp, to visit him at his new base, and to welcome him back from deployment. I continued going on service trips in college, this time to New Orleans. For the first time in my life I actually became the knowledgeable and experienced traveler in my family.

But still, all of my trips were organized by somebody else or had some specific purpose. To commute between school and home, to see family, to do service projects. I still valued every experience (except perhaps a few nightmarish trips between school and home). I became very familiar with the Minneapolis and Boston airports, the best places to sit and eat and go through security. Everything started to seem routine.

Changing the subject a little bit: another thing I have wanted to do for as long as I can remember was study abroad. I took for granted my whole time in college that it would happen, but it always seemed like the distant future. Until suddenly, it was the week before I was supposed to leave. I daresay I was a little terrified. I may say that I like to travel, but I am also not the best with transitions and new experiences. Especially when that transition involves me going completely by myself to live in an unfamiliar country for 5 months. I knew that I would run into new and strange situations (just look at this post!), and that scared me.

Anyway. This post became rather more complicated than I planned. What I meant to tell you about was a trip that a couple friends and I are taking. On Thursday we will be travelling to Copenhagen for a few days, and then to Amsterdam. (When I told my parents about the trip they asked why those specific places - honestly it was a little arbitrary. None of us have done much travelling in Europe, so we just picked some places that sounded cool and were cheap to get to!). I have been thinking about my past travel experiences because I think this trip will be different than any I have ever taken. We have no specific reason to go, no family to see, our parents didn't plan anything. We picked some places, found some flights, and just went for it!

I think this is what I always imagined travelling to be. Despite all the trips I have been on in the past, the anticipation of this one more than any other takes me back to those childhood dreams of travelling and exploring the world. It's a new and exciting experience, but somehow it has managed to stir up nostalgia. (I suppose that's probably influenced by homesickness as well!)

I believe there is absolutely a place for both well thought out travelling with a specific purpose and spontaneous travelling purely for enjoyment. I have experienced a lot of the first kind in the last few years - take my trip to Ireland for instance. Months of planning went into coming here. But, I'm excited to take a trip that my friends and I are figuring out as we go, with no agenda or even really any rationale for the locations we chose. I'm not a spontaneous person, at least with the big decisions in life, so I'm thrilled that this plan came together so quickly!

Lost

Today I got lost.

Not "Oh no, I have no idea how to get home!" lost, but "I have no idea where I am, but I feel like wandering and I'll pull out google maps when I want to figure out where I am" lost.

I hope somebody knows what I'm talking about...

I had a final destination in mind, but it didn't matter very much to me whether I made it to that specific place or not, or how long it took me. Most of the walk I genuinely had no idea where I was, but that wasn't a bad thing. I wandered any direction that seemed interesting, knowing that I could pull out google maps at any time to figure out where I was.

It ended up being a much longer walk than I intended, but it was also really nice to have no deadline or timeline, or really any plan at all except a vague target destination.

According to google maps I walked 6km (close to 4 miles) but I'm sure my actual route was a little bit longer and less direct. It sure took me longer than 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Of course, I documented the journey with pictures. (Seriously, as much as I hate to admit it, I don't know what I would do without my smart phone.)

St. Ann's Church

I bought a smoothie at the grocery store, and it
came with a mini stocking hat on it...

I get overly excited when I see new things
growing.

Probably my favorite find, several swans
on a canal.

My main detour was due to this building.
I saw it from a long ways away and had
to find out what the giant green dome was.

It was a church. I probably could have guessed!

Double-decker bus

I also kept going because of this building, but
this is where I finally turned back.

I had to revisit the swans on my way back.
Luckily Jet was with me :)

St. Patrick's Cathedral, my original intended
destination. I finally made it! I'll definitely
be back though, on a day when I have more
energy to explore.

Times I've Looked like an Idiot in Ireland

I rather like the alliteration of that title, don't you?

But in all seriousness, there are a lot of new things to learn when you enter a new culture. I had never been anywhere in Europe before this semester, so there are a lot of things I needed to figure out quickly. I've messed up a lot. And I'm sure I will continue to mess up. So, I decided to share a few amusing stories of times I'm sure I looked like an idiot, or at least felt like one. (This list is by no means exhaustive.)

• The very first day I was in Ireland I went to the grocery store to get some basic things. I felt pretty accomplished for finding a grocery store and getting the things I needed and checking out without a problem (using credit cards is a bit different here.) But then, once I was at the end of the checkout I realized there were no bags. I stood there for a while, uncertain what to do. I realized I would just need to wait until the cashier was free and buy a bag, but there were people waiting and I couldn't exactly get back into line and leave all my groceries. So, I awkwardly waited at the end of the counter. The woman after me in line even asked if I was okay, apparently it was obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. But, after one more person checked out I was able to get the attention of the cashier and everything was fine. Until the next time I went grocery shopping... I did slightly better, at least I remembered that I needed to buy bags, but I forgot to ask for them until after he finished the transaction. Third time's the charm, I guess!

I happened to see this at the grocery store
today. Shopping is always an adventure,
even if do I remember to bring bags with me.

• One day at the grocery store I bought a frozen pizza. I got back to my apartment and was all excited to make it for dinner. I looked at the package, and it said turn the oven on to 200 degrees. I was very confused, until I realized that it was celsius. Of course! But then I had another moment of panic when I wondered how I would know what 200 degrees celsius was on the oven dial. Then I had an "I'm an idiot" moment when I looked at the oven and the temperatures were in celsius. When you're used to seeing one thing your whole life, it takes time get used to a different system.

• The first time that a friend and I went out to eat here, she looked at me and said "Do you tip in restaurants in Ireland?" Which made me realize, I had no idea. I had heard that the United States is somewhat unusual in our tipping practices, but I hadn't actually thought to find out how it worked here. Thank goodness for google and cell phones with data! (If you're curious, apparently it's normal to tip around 10% if there is table service, but not customary to tip at a bar or anything like that.) There are so many social protocols that are important to know in a new culture, but not obvious to figure out.

This is not the restaurant from the story,
but it was delicious. Chowder and crab legs!

• The drinking age in Ireland is 18, which I did know before I came here. My second night in Ireland, however, I had kind of a shock. I attended a welcome reception for a program I was part of and they served wine, because of course all of us were old enough. That's something that would never be taken for granted at any official college gathering at home, since a lot of college students in the US can't legally drink. I really haven't drunk much in my time here, because I don't particularly enjoy it (and it's expensive!) but I've spent quite a bit of time in pubs with friends. Everything in Dublin closes really early, so if you want to go out at night pubs are one of your only options. 

We discovered recently that some tea
shops are open late too.