My Ireland Blog - Joel Galilea

 For me, this experience has been the best of my life, since in addition to serving as a measure of learning at all costs (since I have learned the language and different educational aspects), it has helped me learn about the culture of a completely different country and to see life from another point of view, I have learned a lot about how they learn in Ireland, in certain aspects they have more effective measures and study techniques than Spain, and another aspect in which I have improved is responsibility, since You go to a new country without any family, you have to adapt to the rules of your host family and your reception center (which are much more restrictive than in Spain) and you also learn to do many things by yourself that maybe before you didn't know how to do and now it helps you a lot. And finally, the title that you are an Erasmus student can help you a lot in your resume to access a job. In summary, it is a super innovative, beautiful and magical experience, where y...

 This day we had planned to go to the house of Naroa's host mom, Fran Stone, Alba and I were going to go, but in the end she couldn't come because she got sick, a pity since she rides horses, I woke up about 10, since at 11 I had to go to Fran Stone's house (who lived in the same town but very far up the mountain), so I had my potato waffles and sausages for breakfast, I got dressed, and they took me to her house. Fran Stone since my host parents were away all day. When I arrived they showed me the house, which was huge and had a lot of animals, from dogs, cats, ducks, horses to peacocks, and like Fran I had to go horseback riding with Hanna (Naroa's host sister, who She is German and spent a term there), so Naroa and I stayed inside the house chatting and playing with the animals. When they returned they gave me horse riding lessons (very simple, it was my first time), so we walked around the house several times, when we finished, we all went to have lunch at a Superma...

 This day I got up, I showered and dressed and had breakfast, at the end, around 8.30 we went to school, first thing in the morning we had a musical where we were dancing the two parts of the dances that had been prepared and we were also singing in the canteen, later, In the second hour we had Religion where we talked about faith and its importance as well as how our faith was evolving over the years, in the third hour we had mathematics and we were reviewing some simple exercises on second degree equations, in the fourth hour we had Business where They showed us a movie and at fifth hour, after having lunch at break, we had Spanish, where we talked about idioms and different things (we Spaniards helped the Irish). When school finished, we stayed in the pitch for a while until 7 o'clock since that night was Irish Music Night, there all the international students sat to watch the different traditional dances they performed, traditional songs they played and sang. At the end, they p...

 This day is quite special since we went to the 'Ploughing Championships', the most famous plowing competition in Ireland, it is a festival with all kinds of shops, markets, brands, in a huge open field in a town in the east of Ireland, We went by train, since some of the Irish and their respective Spaniards were going, Wednesday (the day we went) was the day when there were going to be the most people, but on Tuesday and Thursday there were also a lot of people, we took the train in Limerick Junction station (Dillon, Cian, who was a friend of Dillon, and I took it), but we got there 15 minutes later than the other friends and at a different station, so we arrived a little later to catch the bus that It would take us to the open field where the Plowing was being held. When we arrived at the open field, everything was full of mud (which our host families previously warned us about and therefore they left us bad clothes and boots so that we wouldn't stain our clothes), the Ir...

On this day, we went to school as normal, I got up at 7:30, I took a shower and dressed in bad clothes since we were going to get dirty while hiking and I went to have breakfast, when we finished, we went to school, the first three hours we could do different activities such as self-defense activities, swimming, cooking or go on an excursion to a mountain in Ardpatrick (where I lived) to go hiking, many of the students from Spain decided to stay at school doing self-defense activities but Naroa, Amber, Marina and I, among others, decided to immerse ourselves in the experience of going hiking, since Dillon, who is from that town, told me that it was very windy in the high mountains where we were going to hike, So we wanted to go. We got on the small bus that took us to the place where the route began and when we arrived they explained the activity to us and we began to walk, at first it was not very cold and windy but every time you went higher, it became more windy, when we reached the...

 This was probably the most tiring day of all, I woke up at 7.30 to go to school, but we had an excursion, we were going to go to the Cliffs of Moher and Lahinch beach to surf, I had cereal for breakfast, and I got dressed, at At 8.35 we left home, upon arrival, all the Erasmus students got on a bus to go to Lahinch beach, which is near Galway, in the west of Ireland. Upon arrival, they explained the activity to us and divided us into groups. 4 different groups, we each put on a suit that they lent us (each of us our own size) and we took the boards in groups and we went to the sea, my group, which was the blue one, was the first to surf, it was not The first time I surfed but I fell many times, but I also caught a lot of waves, we ended up super tired and returned to the place to shower and change. After this we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which were quite close, it was too windy but we had a great time and took many photos, at the end of the visit we went to eat inside some shop...

 On this day I woke up not too early, at 10 o'clock, I showered, dressed and had breakfast as usual and for breakfast I had potato waffles, white puddin, fried bacon and sausages, when we finished, we left, it was around 11 and Liz took Dillon and me instead of taking the bus like the others were going to do, when we got to the city we met Tom (who is a good friend of Dillon) and Lucia (who is from my high school and also participates in the Erasmus program), and then we went to where the others were, they were in a Burger King and we all ate there, later, we headed towards The Crescent shopping center walking, it was very far from where we were, but we walked for a long time while we talked and took photos. After spending some time in the shopping center and buying different things, those who came by bus went to catch the bus and the rest of us waited for our families to come pick us up. When we got home there were meat sticks for dinner, after eating we were chatting and playing ...