The days are flying by! I can’t believe that this is already the sixth blog that I am writing this summer. This week was more relaxed than the previous, but was definitely one of my favorites. On Thursday, we all met up at the Irish House Party for some dinner, drinks, and a show. The food was good, and we got to hear some traditional Irish music accompanied by dancing. We had no events scheduled for Saturday, but my roommate Aidan had one of his friends from home visiting, so we went out in the afternoon to show him around the city. We went to a couple beer gardens because the weather was so nice, and ended up going to a taco place for a late lunch. I had been craving Mexican food ever since I got here at the beginning of the summer and this place certainly did not disappoint. After that, we went to one of our favorite pubs to spend the rest of the night hanging out and talking.
On Sunday, we took a long bus ride to Experience Gaelic Games where we learned about the culture of different Irish sports and we actually got to learn how to play three different Gaelic sports. The first one was Gaelic football, which was somewhat similar to football, and used a ball like a volleyball. The next game was hurling, which I had seen on TV at pubs before, and while hard to pick up, was very fun. The last game that we played was handball, which was an indoor game, and we played a king of the court style tournament. I had a lot of fun at this event, and it was fun to compete and mess around with my friends. The weather has been so warm and sunny, which I did not anticipate when first coming here, but it is definitely nice to get some summer weather similar to what I would experience back at home.
On Monday, we had our last class of the summer, which is crazy to think about. After class, we took a bus to the Kilmainham Gaol Prison Museum for a tour. I definitely did not know what to expect when visiting a prison, but it was actually very cool and interesting to see what kind of conditions the prisoners used to live in and how the prison operated.
In terms of my internship, I have been continuing to use the nanoindenter to get force displacement curves for different types and concentrations of gels. I have a few more to make and test, but I am getting closer to starting my analysis and creating my end of the summer research presentation for my group.
As we get closer and closer to the end of our stay here in Dublin, my goal is to savor the time that I have left here and make the most out of my experience abroad.
