I’m writing this blog entry on a train back to Dublin from Sligo, following a 5-day work trip. Some things in life make you feel really grown-up; things like paying taxes for the first time and looking into car loans and such (can everyone tell that I’m pretty much just playing adult at this point?). But the first sentence of this entry is legitimately one of the most adult things that I’ve written, let alone done, in my whole life.

Going on a work-trip when you work for an organization that promotes the better practice of volunteering and encourages corporate volunteering is a bit different than if I went on a trip for a profit-sector internship. There were no suits, no board meetings, no schmoozing (again, can everyone tell that I just know things about the corporate world from television shows). There were long days, into the nights, at a volunteer work-site at a local school. Over the week over 300 volunteers were expected to come out to help give anywhere from one, three, eight hour(s) of their day to help out at the project site. Despite just running registration, it was really nice to get to know everyone that came in the door, day-in, day-out. The project managers, the interns, the big-wigs, the line-workers; everyone showed up to give back to their local school. I talked about the weather countless of times, and made the same “keep signing papers until you either run out of papers to sign or you lose your hand, and in that case, we just need you to switch to the other one” joke tens (maybe hundreds?) of times. Irish people are lovely, and it was such a nice few days speaking with some of the nicest in Sligo.

I also got a chance to play tourist in another Irish town. I think this was the first time though that I was kind of traveling on my own; I had other co-workers up at the site, but in my free time it was just me. I went to a movie solo (my first time doing that, oddly enough), and toured the city. If every business trip could be like this, catch me living the full-time business trip lifestyle. Hopefully, more (business trips?!) to come.