Throughout my first five days in Dublin, I have experienced some of the great parts about being abroad along with some challenges that needed to be overcome. Arriving in Dublin early in the morning and getting to University College Dublin’s campus around 11am I was already prepared to go to bed but knew that staying up and not napping was one of the few ways to combat the jetlag. Shortly after arriving and unpacking, two of my three roommates arrived at the apartment. I only knew one person who was on the program from Bucknell so I knew that I would need to make conversation and meet people early on. Building these connections with my roommates Tennyson and Nick, as well as Max from another apartment, was the best experience I have had yet. Meeting new people is always a challenging thing but I felt that it was especially easy to connect with them due to us all being in an unknown place surrounded by hundreds of other unknowns. Just knowing that we are all from Bucknell instantly made each of us comfortable around one another. Even this small group of people which I had just met made it easier to navigate Dublin and explore the unknowns of being fully immersed in a different culture. Together we found out that google maps was by far the easiest way to get around the city by public transport and surprisingly we have yet to get lost, at least when I was around. I’m grateful to these new friends as well as the many others I have met in the program who have made diving into something completely foreign not that scary.
The work culture in Dublin is an interesting and refreshing change although it is still all very new to me. Compared to the United States, the work environment here seems to be a lot more laid back and relaxed and every single person at my internship so far has been extremely kind to me and Riley. Our supervisors and other members of the company were not only telling us what we will be working on over the next few weeks, but they were genuinely attempting to get to know us on a personal level. They showed us maps of the city explaining what places to go and avoid, where we could find good restaurants, where to go shopping, where to go out at night and how to navigate the streets of the city more comfortably without losing our way. Aside from the more introductory work we are just starting to take on, members of the team offered to allow me to shadow some of their more complex work so I could learn more about my interest in data science. The bosses took me and Riley out to lunch on the first day and got to know us better as well as to share information about themselves to us. On two different occasions we were invited to go out to dinner with members of the team on Friday night, and I am excited to see how all of the experiences go over the rest of the week.
