Welcome back!
I had some pretty nice, but also some pretty terrible days since my last entry. The last week in school before work experience was quickly over, which I was glad about. Additionally to not missing my school uniform I also really struggled with finding positive things about the Irish school system as I go on. Theresa and I had long discussions about this topic, looking at it from various sides and coming up with arguments. It really didn't help to lift my mood to stumble upon defensiveness and denial every time I try to bring up my critiques to Irish people. I mean, I mostly tried talking about it to teachers and I guess they felt attacked, rather than noticing that I don't have a problem with them personally, but the school system. Whatever. I am just glad I have a longer break from school now.
In that week, I had two rehearsals, the online diving course (we ended up not being able to do anything since the school's computer blocked the website we needed) and the North Leinster cross country race in Phoenix park. Plus, I went to the gym. Also I visited the stadium to watch the matches, which was fun and I enjoyed spending time with Lena and Laura.
Starting work experience, I went in expecting strolling through Dublin the whole day, visiting museums and galleries. The first couple of days were less that and more driving to the airport and getting new groups of students. Oh right, I forgot to mention, I am doing my work experience with MLI, the partner organisation of AIFS. MLI is the agency that takes care of me while I am here, so I am not really working with strangers. In fact, the people I have been spending time with for the last week are all super nice people and I got to know so many kind and interesting people. Mostly, I am doing tasks together with Meena, a Japanese student who I enjoyed talking with. Wednesday evening I got ill. It was probably a cold, leaving me unable to get up the next day. So I spent Thursday lying around, trying to get better. Friday morning I felt well enough to go back to "work", but I was glad when Alex let us go earlier than the other days.
I also have two exciting things to share with you. First, I started creating a story (I refuse to call it book, yet). I have been working on the characters and the plot for a couple of weeks now. My inspiration was the book series "All for the Game", by Nora Sakavic, which was a very nice read and motivated me in ways few books achieved this far.
Second, I found a new obsession: Bullet Journals.
Like, I am quite sad that I haven't found out earlier about this, but I am eager to start doing it from now on and I have been working on my journal for the past days (being sick gave me a lot of free time).
For those who never heard of bullet journaling, let me explain. If you are a person who doesn't like to be restricted by normal calendars, notebooks and lines, this method is perfect. So basically, you are making your own journal/calendar/diary from scratch, starting off with a blank note book, which normally doesn't have lines or squares, but faint points, indicating lines or whatever, but you can draw the lines where you want some, you can doodle wherever you want and create a journal 100% fitting your aesthetic. Pretty cool, huh?
So this has been another update, hopefully giving you a good insight on my life here. Since I arrived I have grown so much as a person, discovered so many things about myself and opened my eyes to new views, new roads and new ways to interpret things. I can't put the gratefulness i feel into words, I just know that going for a year abroad has absolutely been one of the greatest decisions of my life, maybe even the best one. Now, after having been here for a while, I made a big discovery. Before even deciding where to go, I knew that I didn't want to go too far away from home, which was one of the factors that made me choose Ireland, not a main one, though (at least not consciously). In the past weeks I have been thinking a lot about "What if I didn't restrict myself that way?" Not saying that I regret going to Ireland, but I can certainly imagine me now going even further away and part of me wishes I had that realization before coming here and deciding on this country.
My advice to everybody who plans to go abroad as I did, but is unsure if they want to get far away from home, do it. Don't let that fear hold you back. You will grow to love the place, no matter how far away from "home" it is. It will become a second home. Open your mind up to the idea of being far away from your comfort zone. To quote a poster in the classroom of my religion teacher: "The comfort zone is a nice and comfortable place, but nothing ever grows there".
For me, Ireland has opened up my mind to travelling, to going further and further away from "home". Now, I have no issues whatsoever imagining myself living overseas for a year instead of Europe. Now, I have no issues with the idea of grabbing my suitcase and just leave, discovering far away places. God, I just want to travel so, so much. This experience so far has opened me up to so many new things and will continue doing just that until I get back to Vienna.
I hope you have a nice weekend and to my Austrian friends, nice holidays!
Evelin
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