As week 2 in Ireland comes to an end, I’ve gained more experience than I could have hoped all while exploring new sights and discovering new things. Gaining work experience at Quantmatix has been fantastic and my coworkers have been giving me great recommendations on how and where to spend my time in Ireland. I have had plentiful conversations about sports, restaurants, attraction’s and much more and it seems like each day I walk into the office at least one person has found a new thing I should go and experience. Aside from our discussion about everything besides work, it has been great to develop new skills as I learn how to complete the projects and tasks that I am given from my boss.
Each night I get closer with my roommates as we are either hanging out in the kitchen or going out into the center of the city and finding new areas. The welcome dinner especially brought the whole group closer together as we were finally all sitting together conversing about something besides schoolwork. It felt like each minute I was meeting a new face and getting to know those who I had already met even closer. The dinner was good but the place did seem to struggle a bit with the amount of people all there at the same time. As you looked further down the table, the portions seemed to shrink little by little until they eventually ran out of deserts to give. Since we were all at dinner together, nearly the whole group was able to experience the nightlife of Dublin together for the first time. Although it was a Wednesday night and an early night back to UCD, it was by far one of the best I’ve experienced here in Ireland.
The only thing worse than the wakeup time on Saturday morning was opening the window to see rain pouring out from the sky. As a group of roommates, we agreed to look out for one another and the first case of that came on that morning when Tennyson knocked on Nick’s door to find him sound asleep ten minutes before the bus was leaving. Off to Kilkenny and revived by a stop at a Mcdonalds for breakfast, we were bound to have a great day. Although the weather app said it would rain all day with no breaks, we stepped off the bus to a sunny sky. Touring a beautiful castle and learning about the history and culture which came with it was an experience like no other. The time spent In Kilkenny was great and Glendalough could only get better as I had seen pictures of its beauty. With our luck we again stepped off the bus to sunny skies and no rain jackets needed. This all lasted for about 5 minutes until dark clouds loomed over our heads, and we were soaking wet from the rain. I would 100% recommend Glendalough to anyone coming to Ireland as it was still beautiful even through the wet clothes and raindrops in my eyes. It’s crazy to see the time that has already passed on this trip but every minute of it has been amazing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
