I genuinely cannot believe that this is the end of my trip here. I have had so many fun experiences and this really opened my eyes to the possibility of traveling and seeing the world. The part of the world that I am familiar with is so tiny in comparison to everything and offers no perspective on the real world around. As I am typing this, my head is bubbling with ideas of various other places I want to travel to. I would love to see more of Europe, but I would also love to see parts of Asia and Africa. What I really think this experience did was remove the mental block I had about traveling. I did not think that I was capable of being in a foreign country for longer than a week, let alone two months. However, because this experience was so successful and so much fun I now know how to navigate foreign places a bit better to the point where I am way more comftorable going through with longer travel plans.

My final weekend abroad was actually not even spent in Dublin. Or in Ireland for that matter. I traveled over the Irish sea and over Scotland to arrive in Edinburgh! I bought Ryanair tickets a couple of weeks ago and was honestly the most excited about this trip out of all the other ones I had planned out in advance. I had heard great things about Edinburgh and Scotland in general, which made me super interested in visiting this historic city. From the pictures I had seen, it almost seemed like a fairytale town with all of its castles, medieval streets, and ruins from an ancient time. I decided to do this trip with a couple of friends from my program. We made a rough plan for the itinerary for when we get there, but nothing was set in stone. I made a list of things I wanted to do and told myself that no matter what I would make sure to check all of those items off by the end of the trip.

So late on Friday night, I flew out of Dublin and in a little over an hour and a half I arrived in Edinburgh. The weather there was very foggy and chilly which came as a big surprise. After getting some dinner from McDonald’s and getting settled into the hostel I drifted off to sleep in preparation for the busy day we had planned for Saturday. The next day was spent walking around the city, stopping by a few pubs, and exploring the cities biggest attractions. Unfortunately however, it was again very foggy on Saturday meaning that many of the views were inaccessible as you could only really see a view feet in front of you. It was still so fun to walk along the Royal Mile and gaze upon the old structures hidden in the fog. We even ended up doing the Johnnie Walker walker experience which was so cool. The next day the weather cleared up and the sun came out. Therefore I dedicated all of Sunday to hike around the city and get a really good feel of Edinburgh. I ended up hiking around the entire city, including this beautiful hike up the peaks of Arthur’s seat, and also walked to the eastern beach and back. I think I had close to 50,000 steps by the end of the day which left me dead. I saw the most amazing views from lookout points and really accomplished my goal of seeing all of Edinburgh. At the end of the day I settled down in a small cafe and read my book until it was time to leave for my bus to make it to the airport.

I would say that throughout my two months here I have had very little difficult with communication in Dublin. I am so lucky that the host country I went to speaks English as well for their main language. However, the lingo and slang is definitely different from the one I am used to back home. Ireland in general is a lot more playful with their language and even with their culture. I have noticed that Irish people do not take themselves as seriously which leads to a lot of self deprecating humor. There have been a couple times where at work, for example, my coworkers or the service users have said phrases that I had literally never heard of before. I always loved hearing about a new phrase and found them very funny. These miscommunications have never been serious and have always been good fun.