Virginia, Ireland

My name is Júlia and I am 16 years old. The first time I travelled to Ireland I was only 14 years old and, two years later, I can honestly say that that experience totally changed my life.

I studied 4th of ESO (Transition Year in Ireland) in an Irish secondary school situated in a small town called Virginia, in county Cavan, an hour away from Dublin city centre. When I first arrived everything was so different from what I was used to but the truth is that I got a very good impression of Irish people and life became normal after a few days. I made a lot of friends in school and I became part of the family very easily.

My everyday routine in Cavan was quite different from my Catalan days, most Irish schools start at 9 o'clock in the morning and finish at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Normally, I had dinner once the school was over at around 5 or 6 in the afternoon and then had a snack at around 9 while watching my favourite Irish TV shows along with my family. In my school, we had nine classes which were only 40 minutes long and two breaks of 20 and 40 minutes each in between. Students brought their own lunch in school or bought it at the school canteen which offered hot food during the lunch break. The subjects in school were very different from the ones that I studied in my previous school, that's why I found the first weeks a bit challenging. There was a subject called Road Safety which consisted of learning about the road dangers, doing some driving tests online and we even did a real practice in the school playground... that was the first time I got to drive a real car! Another subject that was new for me was Engineering. The Engineering room was full of computers in which we worked on design programs. Normally, we worked on wood designs that we could later build in the wood room. Some of the things that we made were Christmas decorations, a can-opener and a bird cage.

My favourite subject was Mini-company without a doubt. In this subject, we separated into groups of 4 or 5 people and we created our own mini-company. My group and I had a Christmas decoration mini-company which we called Crafty Creations. We built all the decorations during the Art classes and we sold the decorations at the Virginia Christmas Fair and during the parents-teacher meetings in school. Also, I loved participating in a Science Fair in Dublin and all the workshops and talks that we had in school. One of my favourite talks was when an ex-drug addict came to talk about his experience on drugs and the workshop that I enjoyed the most was writing and recording a rap song with a famous Irish rap singer that came to the school.

It's true that it's not always easy to be far from your home and I am sure that all exchange students suffer from homesickness at some point of their exchange. I was lucky of knowing other exchange students who were studying at the same school as me so I could share my feelings with them when I was feeling low. It really helps and also makes your experience more enjoyable.

Something that is very important too is to feel comfortable with your host family. If you are lucky you won't have any problems but sometimes it can get difficult for both you and your host family and things can start to go wrong. I think this is not something to be scared of since sometimes things just don't work out the way we would like them to do. That happened to one of my exchange friends and our agency did its best to find him another family in which he felt more comfortable. It was just another experience to learn from!

Really, this experience made me feel part of something special, something I would've never had the opportunity to experience if I had not taken the risk of leaving. Now I know that I have a second home in Ireland and amazing friends for life. That is why I absolutely recommend you to take the step and overcome your fears; it is an experience definitely worth living.