Ireland Erasmus 2024 _ Violeta Garrote Alonso

I was very surprised by the difference in number of siblings between Ireland and Spain. In Spain it is most common to have one sibling or to be only child, while in Ireland most of the friends I made had at least two siblings. An Irish exchange boy has five brothers and my roommate’s dad Rebecca told me he has twelve siblings!   In relation with this, I also noticed that families usually live very close together, in my case we lived between the grandparents' house and Rebecca’s aunt.   The Irish weather is colder than that of Spain, although the first week it made very good weather, the second and third week we hooded jacket because you never know if it will rain. We were very lucky in this respect because it rained little.  Another thing I liked was that they always keep the empty plastic bottles to take them to the supermarket machine when they go shopping. When you deposit the plastic bottles, these machines will give you back the money you paid for the container. It’s...

As we lived in Effin and the school Scoil Pol is in Kilfinane, every day a bus picked us up next to home, like every student from the road where Rebecca’s house is. The bus driver was very nice, Rebecca told me that one day she had stopped and invited all the children of the bus to eat an ice cream.   The classes are very different from the subjects taught in Spain this year as we do not have the Transition Year in which all the Irish students of the Erasmus programme are now. I have attached a photo of the schedule I followed during the three weeks and some things we did in subjects like home economics, fitness or agricultural science. Rebecca explained that before finishing the course they have to create their own curriculum and work for a couple of weeks to gain work experience.

Irish food and schedules are quite different from Spanish meals. Breakfast is similar to ours, when they get up they, take a cup of milk with cereals. The most notable differences are that they do not drink as much coffee as we do, they drink tea. And on Sundays they make a full Irish breakfast which is usually composed of eggs, sausages, beans and bacon. The next meal is the luch, in the second school break they eat a sandwich, pasta or something similar. The first break is only ten minutes and they usually eat a snack like cookies, a bar or an apple. They have two breaks and eat at school because they finish classes later than us. And then, when they get home from school, they have dinner. Dinner is usually between three and six in the afternoon and consists of meat or fish and vegetables (mainly broccoli, carrots and boiled potatoes). I liked the food quite a lot but I stick with the Mediterranean diet.

On Sunday, September 22 all the Erasmus students went to Cork. Some of us went by train and others by bus. When we arrived in Cork we took a walk through the center and along the river until we reached the Marina Market, where we ate and saw the clothes stalls. Just that day we met a solidarity marathon that took place while we were eating. The idea for spending the afternoon was to go to some recreation places although we realized that they were too far away since we had to be at the station by five o'clock to catch the train back and we prefered to stay in the center of Cork.  

In Ireland both Hurling and Gaelic Football are very popular sports. Hurling is more common in the countryside, while Gaelic Football is typical of cities. In the area where we have been during these three weeks, almost all Irish of our age spend their afternoons at the pitch of the village, either entering or watching their brothers or friends training. Also, I’ve been to a lot of games because Rebecca referees whenever she can. Our girls do not practice hurling, but camogie, which is almost the same sport only in the women’s mode. They only difference in rules like in hurling the only part of the body which they can hit the opponents are the shoulders and in camogie is the hip.

On September 18th we had the opportunity to travel to Laois to attend the Ploughing Championship, which is a major agricultural event held annually in Ireland. It celebrates traditional farming practices, ploughing competitions, machinery, and agricultural innovations.  It attracts thousands of visitors of all ages because it also has some amusements and clothes stores that attract the attention of teenagers. We liked it a lot because in Spain there is no event like this famous and that attracts so many people. In addition, it was a splendid day, we could go even short pants the sunny that was, we were very lucky, the previous year it rained so much that cars couldn’t get out of the mud that was in the parking!

  On Wednesday 25th of September we went to Clare to visit the cliffs of Moher, it was very windy and raining but the views were breathtaking. After a walk and taking pictures, we went down to the area for the lunch. At the end of the lunchtime we got back on the bus and went to the beach of Lehinch for surfing.   When we arrived there were almost no waves but as we put on the wetsuits the tide was rising. We had a great time despite the cold weather and rain. Once we had changed clothes, we had a hot chocolate to get warm.  It was one of my favourite days along with the excursion we did the hiking day and the day we went to the ploughing championship.

  The first week, the activity that I was supposed to do during the three hours of physical education in class schedule was swimming as it is what Rebecca had to do, but the second week there were gaps and we were allowed to change to hiking, so I changed and it’s the best I could do.  On Tuesday the 24th we took the bus from school to go to Ballylaundess, and from the parking lot we went up to the Cush mountain. Early morning was cold but as soon as we started walking and moving we got warm. There was a lot of fog and as we were going up it got colder, sweeter we were and less we could see the landscape that we left behind. We crossed with sheep and despite passing by them did not move or scared, they seemed accustomed to people. When we reached the top we had lunch and took pictures while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. All the fog was gone just as we were up so that we could appreciate the amazing scenery and views from there. The descent was very fun, since th...

  My exchange student is Rebecca, she is 16 years old so we have the same age. She lives with her parents, her five-year-old brother named Jack, her 12-year-old sister named Caoimhe, her two cats and her dog.   During these three weeks in Ireland I also met her maternal grandparents, as they live next door and their uncles, aunts and cousins, since they came to celebrate Caoimhe’s birthday on September fourteenth.  I haven’t been bored at any time because on sunny days we ate and played camogie in the garden, and on rainy days we watched movies or talked until bedtime.   On weekends we did things like take a walk to places like Lough Gur (lough means lake in Irish), go to the Black Rock mountain or watch camogie games at the pitch. The family has made me feel very welcome from the first day I arrived.