5/26/2025 | Monday
After seven long hours, Neila and I arrived in Dublin not so bright eyed. As if they sensed my malaise, however, the airline sent my bag to a different carousel, giving me a mild heart attack and most definitely waking me up. We hung around the airport for some time, met some others from the Program, then took a bus to our apartments. We got checked in, took a tour, and then started moving our stuff in. Neila and I ran to Boots, the Irish equivalent of a CVS, for some house essentials, then came back to the apartment to get some well needed sleep. Before we slept though, I tried a sausage roll for the first time from Centra, and while it was ok I do fear I will never be purchasing that particular one again. I think I need to try one not from Centra because I do really like it in theory. Trying new foods has been an exciting part of this experience because it has opened the door to different talking points I could use when conversing with coworkers and others.
5/27/2025 | Tuesday
After a very slow morning, we headed to orientation to get… oriented. Lots of the information was repeated, but it is good to solidify important facts. The orientation ended up finishing early, so we decided to head into town. I almost didn’t go on account of the fact that I was falling asleep in my chair during orientation, but I decided to power through. Very glad I did! We bussed into city center and needed to hit up a few stores for some clothes. I went to a Zara for the first time, which I found to be similar to H and M, then we went to a couple of charity shops. While I did not plan on buying anything, I found a red dress at on of the charity shops that filled a gap in my closet I had been looking for (semi-formal but still casual dress). Shopping on no food worked us up quite an appetite, so we stopped into a Chinese restaurant for some soup and fried rice, then back to the apartment for some chit chat and eventually sleep!
5/28/2025 | Wednesday
Wednesday was a hoot. My roommate and I went to do some more shopping for the apartment and almost got stranded because the bus did not come when it said it was going to. Adjusting to the buses has been interesting because tracking the buses is a bit harder to do. In Pittsburgh, if a bus is on the map it will usually show, but here buses will just not show up. I took a mental note of this, as it’s important to consider when trying to be on time for my internship. That was a little nerve wrecking, but we ended up getting back in time to hop on the bus for Gaelic Games. Granted, the mindset we had going into GG was less than ideal, the bus ride over was fun and we spent nearly the whole time looking out the window at Dublin. It’s very interesting to see everything from the top of a double decker bus, because your view is not impeded by cars or people. We got to the facility and learned a bit of background about the Gaelic Games. Overall, the games are hurling, gaelic football, and handball. They each have deep historical and cultural ties to Ireland that I was excited to hear about. I was really shocked to learn about how popular the games are; he told us the games in Ireland alone bring as many live spectators as some Super Bowls. This is insane when you consider that the US is over 50 times more populated than Ireland. We played each game for around 45 minutes. My favorite by far was Gaelic football. It was the one most familiar to me, and where I felt I at least had some of the skills to handle it. I ended up scoring a goal, which was funny because in the ten minutes of Gaelic football I played I scored the same amount as I did five years of soccer. Draft me for Gaelic football I guess!
5/29/2025 | Thursday
I woke up early to do a dry run of my commute to my internship because I had a meeting with my supervisor anyways. The office is located at Trinity College, which was exciting because it was a place I wanted to check out anyways. I got to my interview two hours early so I got coffee and a sandwich and sat and read and ate. About 45 minutes before my interview though, I realized I had no idea where I was supposed to meet my supervisor. Thus, I spent the next 40 minutes with some lovely administrative workers in the college walking around the building trying to track down what office I should go to. We ended up being able to call my supervisor, and we walked to a cafe nearby to have some coffee and tea, a baked good, and a chat about the placement. My placement is with Coastwatch, which mentioned in the last blog. We talked about what amount of field work I wanted to do, my background, and what they needed me to do for them. We settled on me doing a mix of research, field work, and write ups, which should prepare me very well for the future. I am a little hesitate about the work, because it is a lot of stuff I have never done, but I am looking forward to learning new things, as well as applying some knowledge I have to a brand new environment. The anticipation is what is getting me right now.
5/30/2025 | Friday
This was certainly a packed day. At 8 am we took a bus to the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough to see the Saint Kevin monastic sites and take a hike around the lakes. It was so peaceful and beautiful there. Ireland is so lush and being in a less urban area really showed it off. The weather was also perfect for it, and the sun lit up the scenery even more. After hiking around and looking at the graveyard and old tower, we hopped back on the bus and went to Kilkenny. We had less time in Kilkenny, which my roommates and I used to have a quick bite to eat on the Kilkenny Castle lawn, and then took a tour of the castle. It was renovated to the styles of the late 1800s, but the castle itself was built in the 1200s, like much of the surrounding town. The castle was beautiful and the final gallery room was breathtaking. These excursions were fun because they not only gave us an activity, but familiarized us with some Irish history. It is really important to get oriented with a country’s history when you visit, as it gives you cultural context and makes it easier to hope into conversations.
5/31/2025 | Saturday
Another early day, my roommates and I woke up early to take the bus then train to Howth. Howth was beautiful The sea cliffs and small tucked away beaches were magnificent. There were multi colored flowers blooming all over the cliff sides, and the water was turquoise. We took a hike along the cliffs and I saw some of the most breathtaking views of my life. Afterwards, we went into town. I’ve been thinking a lot about this small interaction we had with a pharmacist at the pharmacy we went into. As she was ringing us up, she was asking about where we were from and why we had ended up in Ireland. We told her about our internships and she told us how excited she was for us, and how happy she was that we were able to have this experience. Coming to a different country is hard, because you know as soon as you open your mouth (or sometimes even before you open your mouth), people will know you’re different. The reactions so far to this I would say range from disinterested to positive usually, but I was always fearful that it would be negative. Like I was taking up space, in a housing crisis, from a country that is making waves for all the wrong reasons. But her genuine happiness for us and the excitement when she told us how well we would do helped me a lot in feeling more comfortable here.
Reflection on my placement
As I’ve mentioned, by internship is at an NGO focusing on marine and aquatic environment protection. In my mind, this definitely seemed like a more internal placement, and like I would be interacting mostly with my supervisor and other team members. After my conversation with my supervisor, however, I know that it is not. She told me a lot of their work is with locals, teaching people how to survey, learning from them their practices, and interfacing with the community. Interestingly as well, I was informed that the locals can be rather suspicious of environmental workers; they see them as a potential threat, as they could have the wrong reasons for learning about their ways. Considering the history of colonization and exploitation, I do understand this deep need to figure out the motives of being here, especially from someone who is not a native to the land. I totally understand this, and it’s made me have to consider a new skill I have to develop: being able to get people to trust me, and more importantly, doing it quickly. In my personal life, I would say I have this skill, but I haven’t had to do it on such a short time frame. Usually, the trust is built over weeks, months, or even years, but here I may only have an afternoon to do it. This is an interesting predicament, as I can be rather quiet when I first meet people. I know my reasons for being here are good, and I am sure I will be able to convey this, so I am in a weird way excited to be tested by the locals.
