Marquito in Dublin

Marquito arrived in Dublin on Saturday in the afternoon. It was so great to see him! We spent only 4 days together but it was so intensive, so sweet and so wonderful that it actually seemed to be longer and we both really enjoyed it. I felt like we had never been without each other, like if he was always here with me from the very beginning.

First we went to the city centre, walked a while watching the Spire and O' Conell Street (not too much to see anyway) and then we went to a restaurant to eat together and try the famous Guinness which actually tastes exactly the same as Bolivian "malta" which is a beer without alcohol. We ordered plate for 3-4 people - I am wondering who is making the price policy in Irish restaurants because while a single dish costs around 10 euros the cheapest one, plate for 3-4 people cost 15 and we still had a food to pack :)

After the dinner it was already dark outside and we decided to go home taking public transportation and of course walking a lot (after all this is Dublin..).

I got a lot of presents which suprised me and also made me a bit uncomfortable cause I am not really good in getting presents - I guess I have to get used to it :) I got new clothes, wonderful jumper and a new computer!!! This was a big shock and I still can' t get used to the idea neither the computer :) After almost 4 years with my "dinosaur" Dell how they called him in the IT service center here at the university last week when I went to ask for a help..I know it was old computer, 20 GB, no inbuilt wifi, bad battery, non working charger and dilapidating monitor BUT it was my first computer and we have lived so many things together, he was with me in Bolivia and I even have him writen in my passport!!! Well it was time for a change I guess and I am definitelly happy having a new one. But it was a big shock, what a gift! :) thank you Marquito

On Sunday we went to see my university - the ex-monastery and later we spent the day in the Grafton Street making shopping. Even if Dublin is a very expensive city some kind of things are cheaper to buy here comparing to Spain - clothes and shoes. I bought Marquito a new jacket because he arrived to Dublin without any! Again we ate in the city centre and arrived home late.

Monday was a sightseeing time, we sent postcards home, saw the city centre, made a lot of pictures, took a tour in Dublin Castle learning about Dublin's gruesome history, we saw St Patrics Cathedral and finally we went to a small church where are the remains of St Valentine as one bishop gave them as a present to another bishop and so they have them now in Dublin :) There are 2 big books where you can write your prayer so we did..

The time was running but still we enjoyed. Now I am lost again, like if nothing happened, like if it was so far away.. I hate this feeling! And again it is so hard to concentrate on anything else..

Some pictures are here and of course on the right side is a link.

Tomorrow

Marquito is coming tomorrow. I can´t wait to see him!

My new flatmates

I haven´t written anything about my moving almost month ago..I am simply not ready to talk or write about it yet since accommodation in Dublin is a big issue and my stories are a bit painful. I decided I will blog it later once I´m out of here, calm enough to see things may be in a different light. I will put these posts with correct dates so you will be able to find them around September, anyway I will keep you posted.

However, soon it will be one month since I am living in this new house with a lot of people and the landlord..It is kind of the same issue as the first experience, so I will write about this later too. :) But the thing I want to mention here now is that among these people living in this house there are my two classmates Pauline from Belgium and Pierre from France and you can see us on these two picture we took in the kitchen.

Being ill in Dublin

I read something before coming here how difficult and especially expesive is to be sick here, make appointment with the doctor or buy the medicaments.

Well I didn´t really want to try it but finally after all the stress I had last month I was very suprised it haven´t arrived before.

Last week I suddenly started to feel very good, I got a shot of hyperactivity and started to read, study and also committed myself to several teamworks as well as upcoming social events and actions. My positive mood was really incredible and I wonder why I got sick just the day after that! It started as a slight flue so I didn´t lost my positivity..at least the few first days. :) When I lost my voice on Tuesday I started to cancel the actions. Fortunately (for me) both my lecturess from Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled due to teachers illness. I analysed my options: I might have stayed in my bed and wait a bit more, hopefully getting better, I might have gone to the doctor: make an apointment, waite for my date, walk around 45 minutes (alternatively walk only 20 minutes, wait around 30 minutes for a bus and walk another 10 minutes), letting him to send me back to my bed or may be prescribing some pills .. or I might have walked to the farmacy: around 25 minutes, no bus.. I tried the first one and after that I decided to go to the doctor (well to walk to the Uni to use the nearest ATM there to charge my phone and call the nurse asking for an appointment..). This time I met my flatmate from Belgium who offered me her stock of medicaments. I grabbed them all and couln´t have waited till my baby connected himself to discuss all the pills I now had. The interesting thing is that Belgian pills have information "only" in french, dutch and german ;-) the good thing is that you really do not need any of these languages if your dearest is a doctor (thank you Marquito so much for your help!). We discussed my treatment over the skype and I started to use antibiotics. I feel much better today even if my voice is still so "hard", probably I even look much better as all my new friends here can´t understand I do not want to join them yet for a party! I guess they consider me as a really boring person now. :-) I am not sure any more if it is the age what makes the difference, I don´t really know..

I passed the Spanish Oral Exam :D

On Friday I couldn´t join my friends to travel due to the Oral part of my Spanish Exam. As you may remember I had the written part of the exam 2 weeks ago! btw. I am still waiting for results as it was sent to Barcelona, will be corrected there and results will be send to Prague afterwards (I just hope it won´t be lost somewhere on the way). Well truly I haven´t studied for the oral part, I haven´t even practised "economic" Spanish as we usually do not speak about economics with Marquito and after the moving problems I even didn´t care too much.

Well it was a long day, I had 90 minutes to prepaire a presentation on give topic which was football - kind of hard for me - the presentation itselfs took just around 12 minutes. There were just two examinators - Spanish lady and Peruvian man. I relaxed a bit once I´ve seen smiles on their faces while presenting my "best ever strategy" for FC Barcelona. I do not really remember what I was talking about cause as usually I didn´t really follow my preparation and started to create some new strategies right there on the stage, I just know I was talking, talking and talking. Again I have to stress out here that this is probably the best tactic ever how to pass any kind of exam. I guess that especially for men it is very difficult to follow when women speak very fast and as they do not want to feel ashamed they just do not ask us to slow down..My observation was highly confirmed because the man told me he found only 2 grammatical mistakes during the whole presentation!!!

Later on I had 30 minutes to read a short case study and my role as the task was to meet with my 2 colleagues and pretend 15 minutes of constructive meeting understanding each other. I found this much more relaxing even if we took double of time to decide something :-). Right after this part the examinators told us we have passed successfully, but anyway we had to wait the final grade till Monday. So here I am with C1 :)))

It might be confusing with the grading as it is CEMS Europian Union declared grading language system or something like that, so for explanation: the best grade is C2 followed by C1, B2, B1, A2 and finally A1 as the worst. For the first foreign language C1 is required while for the second one (which is Spanish for me) we need to get just B2/B1. It means that I got better grade than I actually needed!!! I know there is still long way for me to go with my Spanish, but at least now I have the EU confirmation and a great feeling and of course 1 CEMS requirement less.

Passwords, passwords, passwords......

Everytime there is some new cool application asking you for a new password. I can use the same one all the time you might admit BUT just untill you work for some fantastic company which forces you to change your password into each application each month and of course to have different password for each application.

Finally having several different passwords into several different aplications changing them each few weeks and creating random new passwords makes you sooner or later forgetting the most important once! Yup I forget password to veverka! and the worst is that it can only be changed personaly at VSE.. Well fortunately I have forwarded all its content to my centrum email; unfortunately the veverkas mail box is full so it is not forwarding anything! I tried all my common passwords, I even tried the less common once, I also tried probably some which I may be never used...after all I have 3 months to keep trying :)