First Day of Work!

Hi, lovely people!

If I had to explain to you what the weather was like today, this is what I’d say: I woke up to beautiful, warm sunshine! But after about an hour, it disappeared behind the dark, ominous clouds, and the wind and cold temperatures came back. And then it was sunny again after a while! But literally three minutes later (while Derek and I were walking around outside), it started raining again. Pretty hard. Then the rain turned to a misty drizzle. Then it started pouring. Then it started HAILING (yes, in the middle of summer! Dublin has some pretty cray cray weather!). And then it was cold and windy once again. And then it was sunny. And then it was rainy. And then it was cold and windy. And then sunny. And then cold again. No, that wasn’t an exaggeration. It was 100% true. Really. I know I complain about the weather every day, but I really don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.

Anyway, today was our first official day of work! We got really lucky today and had the opportunity to visit Swords ETNS. After ten years, they finally moved into their permanent building. Today, they were celebrating this momentous move, so Paul invited Derek and me to go. Getting there was quite the adventure (as every journey to and from work appears to be). Rather than catching the 151 bus like we normally would, Derek and I had to catch the Swords Express Bus, which was located all the way across the river and over on Eden Quay. We made it in time for the 8:05 bus and stuck our hands when the bus approached, only to have the bus driver shake her head, sign “no” with her hands, and drive right past us. Confusing much? Because there was terrible traffic, Derek and I were able to follow the bus to the next bus stop, several blocks away. We thought she was telling us to go to the next stop, but she told us that she wasn’t taking any passengers because she was driving to Swords to pick up passengers from the opposite direction.

Dear Ireland, please make your public transportation clearer. It makes no sense.

Luckily, the bus was running a bit behind, and we were able to catch a ride and make it to the school just in time.

Swords is a rather large city in Ireland that is north of Dublin. The school was located next to this HUGE grass field that was perhaps the most vividly green grass I’d ever seen. Rolling hills and houses were in the background, making the scenery picture-perfect. I wish I could’ve captured it in my camera.

To celebrate the school’s move to its permanent accommodation, the entire school came out and performed for the mayor, the Minister of Education, and many proud parents. The talented students sang and danced energetically, which certainly made me smile. The theme of the event was about “building your own future,” and it was evident that the school encouraged students to pursue their dreams and passions. Once again, the schools and students and teachers never cease to amaze me with their positivity and cheer.

One difference between my elementary school and Irish primary schools is that my elementary school had six classes per grade, while Irish schools (or at least the Educate Together schools) normally only have eight classes per SCHOOL (junior and senior infant, and then first through sixth class). At most, they’ll have two or three streams per class (two to three classes per grade), making large schools that consist of sixteen or twenty-four classes. Crazy, right? The class sizes are normally about 30 people, which is pretty large for a primary school. On the drive back to the Educate Together office, Deirdre also explained to us that schools in Ireland enrolled students on a “first come, first serve” basis. While the system sounds fair enough, she explained that there was many challenges behind it. The FCFS system sometimes separated siblings and often was unfair to foster and adopted children or children who recently moved in. This is because parents can enroll in a school years in advance; in fact, they can enroll their children in a school as soon as their child is born. Now, many ET schools still enroll on a FCFS basis, but they also have exceptions for special cases, such as those mentioned above.

After Derek and I got to the office and ate lunch with our super kind and interesting coworkers, we got to work. Our task this week is to go through these two summer online courses that Educate Together has put together. One is an introduction to ET and its Learning Together curriculum, while the other course is encouraging teachers to make a difference. Going through these courses for primary school teachers serves two purposes: to familiarize ourselves with ET and their mission and vision and to help them catch mistakes, fix broken links and videos, etc. It was a surprisingly tedious task, but I suppose it will help us before we start on our own projects next week. Luckily for us, we don’t face the same technological challenges that our friends face in their placements; many complain of using Internet Explorer and really old PCs and extremely slow internet and even a physical appointment book instead of a computer program to record meeting times. In fact, ET is completely Mac-based, which is proving to be a little to tech savvy and complicated for my technologically-self to figure out at times. Thank goodness I have Derek sitting next to me to help me out if needed!

Getting back to our apartment was a struggle as well. Derek and I actually just missed the bus because we left late after saying bye to Emer and everyone else at the office, so we ended up waiting at the bus stop for over half an hour before the next bus came. Total travel time was about a little more than an hour (not including the waiting time). After we got home, we immediately dropped our stuff off and headed out to the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology to partake in some World Refugee Day events. We walked in super late but were able to catch a panel with six refugees/asylum seekers from various countries (Iraq, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Somalia, etc.) who were being interviewed by this guy. What I loved about this panel was that they didn’t focus on the hardships they had gone through (which, of course, are important and heartbreaking); they instead focused on the positive impacts they had made after coming to Ireland. They delivered messages of positivity and hope, persistently thanking the community for helping them (which is a very different view from other people we had talked to who seemed bitter and angry about the blatant discrimination that still existed in Ireland). These six people were all incredibly inspiring and uplifting, and despite how exhausted we all were, we were so grateful that we went anyway.

Tomorrow is going to be another long day! First full day at the office now! Here’s to hoping that Derek and I figure out how to get there, seeing as we’ve never taken the 151 bus there before, only back. I can feel another adventure approaching!

Smiles,

Anna (: <3

P.S. Nutella gelato is perhaps the most delicious thing I’ve tasted. Without a doubt. Also, Gino’s Gelato makes me SO incredibly happy (I think this is our third trip there). It, surprisingly, has better gelato than the gelato I had in Italy last year! It’s literally happiness in a cup! http://www.ginosgelato.com/