This week at my internship, I was able to do some hands-on work with my company’s projects, which included wiring components together using electrical drawings and programming variable speed drives (VSDs). It’s been really exciting to learn so much about how electrical work is done in real applications and grow as an engineer as I have learned a lot of new information in a short amount of time.
On Saturday, we took a trip to tour Kilkenny Castle. It was really interesting how the different areas represented different time periods based on the renovations that had been done by the family living there over the centuries, from the original castle walls to the lavish decor of the 18th century. After seeing the castle, we had some time to explore the town of Kilkenny on our own. We walked through the main streets of the town and stopped for lunch before getting back on the bus for our next destination, Glendalough.
Glendalough is the ruins of a monastic town nestled in the Wicklow Mountains. My favorite part was seeing the amazing scenery through the bus windows as we approached the town and the views from the town. It was like going back in time and seeing the beauty that made Saint Kevin decide to settle there. Sadly, the town had been destroyed by Vikings before we got there, but we got to learn about what life may have looked like for the monks of the town hundreds of years ago.
On Monday, we visited the Archaeology collection of the National Museum of Ireland. Our tour guided us through the history of Ireland from the Stone Age through the Viking’s development of Dublin and eventual fall as they lost in their battle to rule the entire country. I had no idea how old the Irish civilization really was, but it turns out they were one of the first in the world, going back to over 12,000 years ago! We also got the chance to see the iconic bog bodies, which were bodies that had been preserved for thousands of years in the marshlands of the countryside until the people living there dug them up by accident while harvesting the peat. It was a bit unsettling, but I found it really fascinating how they were preserved. I didn’t expect them to be so shriveled while still maintaining such a high level of detail.
