15. week

Monday was a Bank Holiday so many of the shops were closed. That’s why we didn’t have school, either, but we still decided to concentrate in our schoolwork that would soon need to be finished. It would be the last week of lectures at school so we had already started packing and talking about such topics as what we would do when we get back home – even though we would still have three more weeks to go after the current one.

On Tuesday the school started at one in the afternoon because some of our classes like Teamwork & Creativity and Marketing had already ended last week, which was more than fine by us. We did our last Spanish exam and were happy that we had begun to complete the courses. Our Spanish teacher had prepared a field trip to Dublin on Friday, which would otherwise be the due date for rest of the Cultural Tourism –assignments, so us going to the trip needed to hand in the assignments on Thursday. We had been collecting articles and writing our comments on them for the Scrapbook and it was soon high time for finalizing them. Noora clipped and pasted the articles, the comments and the cover until she was happy with her work and inn the meanwhile Siru wrote the last comments for her articles.

On Wednesday the weather still wasn’t very good, but it was time to continue with our team building games. Our lecturer had decided to have the games indoor this time, but the space we had for them was actually a classroom. We had expected it to be a gymnasium or a hall of some sort, so not everybody could perform their game in the room provided so some still had to be played outside – after skipping around a wet, muddy, grassy patch all participants were sure to have their shoes and legs covered in mud. Soon it was our turn to deliver the game – as mentioned earlier, the objective of the game is to get the team members to co-operate with each other by giving them simple instructions like “2 bottoms, 2 hands, 1 knee”, meaning that only those body parts can touch the ground. There were two teams of five and they were competing against each other and the time – whichever team finished first with the task, was provided with a point. If neither of them completed the task in a given time, no points would be given and in case of simultaneous completion the more creative formation would win. The tasks would get harder by each round and in the end the team with more points would win the game. The participants had fun and our teacher liked the game – all in all we were given very positive feedback.

Back at home Siru started to paste her scrapbook together, but the glue finished before she was done. The due date just behind the corner no wonder she didn’t start to pull off her hair. Luckily her flat mate had an idea. She went to her boyfriend’s apartment and soon she came back with a brand new glue that he was willing to give to Siru. Touched and relieved she went back to work and after few hours she was done with glueing her scrapbook and could finally go to sleep.

On Thursday it was time for us to turn in our school assignments: the Scrapbook and World Heritage Site report for Cultural Tourism course and an Analysis for Adventure Tourism – the last assignments for the semester in IT Sligo. It was not the only last for the day, but we had our last Spanish lesson, too. Not many of us showed up – only two more students in addition to us. Our teacher had prepared us a game, for which we wrote down five characters (real-life celebrities or other famous people or fictive characters) who everybody would surely know. The papers were then folded and put on the table. We were arranged in pairs and we were told to explain the characters on the paper slip that we picked to our partner. The catch was that on the first round we had one minute to explain them in Spanish, on the second round we had to mimic without words and on the third and the last round use only one, Spanish word to describe the character. It was really fun and even though we only know some basics for Spanish, you could explain at least something.

After school we went to a shopping spree, including charity shops, Penneys and finally Tesco for some necessities for the couple of last weeks. When we got home we noticed we had forgotten the most important thing and had to turn back – we bought some beer for Siru’s flat mate as a thank you for probably saving someone’s life by borrowing the glue stick the other day. He was surprised but flattered and gave us hugs and kisses on our cheeks.

On Friday it was time for our daytrip to Dublin with our Spanish lecturer. We were early, as usual, and were the first to arrive to and sit down in the bus arranged for us. Our first stop in Dublin was the Instituto Cervantes – the Cervantes Institute – which is a non-profit organization created by the Spanish government and the largest organization worldwide promoting the Spanish language and culture. We were given a brief introduction of the institute and afterwards we went to see an exhibition that was displayed there. The artists was there to tell us about his artworks and answer any questions we had. We probably had pretty high hopes for the exhibition, so when we saw the artwork, we weren’t especially amazed. The whole visit was supposed to be played out in Spanish, but as the group consisted not only of students studying Spanish, it had to be passed.

Our next destination was the Google Dublin Headquarters, where we were to have a light lunch and a guided tour. The whole building complex of Google was huge and modern. The guide told us that you could practically live in the HQ. They naturally had a cafeteria, break rooms with snacks, a gym, a swimming pool and numerous other necessities in their disposal. We were guided to a top floor to admire the view over Dublin and grab a snack from the break area. The offices were aesthetically pleasing and everything looked too good to be trued – most of us would probably be enthusiastic to work there in the future.

After Google HQ we didn’t have any other places scheduled, but as we soon realized, we still weren’t going back to Sligo. There was apparently some extra time left, so the teacher decided to spend it in Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. We would have been glad to be home early because we had planned to have a party, but there was nothing we could do. For an hour we wandered about, without aim or purpose. When we finally arrived back in Sligo we quickly started getting everything ready for the evening. We hadn’t actually heard of the people we had invited, so as the time passed, we grew more and more worried. We had bought some soft drinks, crisps, candy and all the like for the guests. We had set the table and started to listen some music in the meanwhile. When our guests arrived we sat and talked a little and then we played the same game we had played on Thursday in our last Spanish lecture. Everybody seemed to like the game and the night – everybody had a good craic as the Irish would say. After the game and some more talking our friends decided to continue to T&C to play some pool and Siru gladly joined them.

On Saturday we didn’t really do much before the noon – in the afternoon Noora went to Siru’s and made some pizza and we just watched series for the rest of the day. Everything was fine enough until Noora went back in her apartment. She was leisurely skyping when all of a sudden her laptop made a pop and went all black. It didn’t turn on anymore. Noora was devastated – we still had over three weeks left and we had just lost all the blog entries and the series we were watching. On the brighter side the timing could have been worse because we had just finished all our school work and we didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

On Sunday we both tried to skype to our loved ones because it was a Mother’s Day in Finland. Apart from that we didn’t do much else than start reading for the exams. Noora was extra bored because she had lost all access to Internet as her computer had died. She started reading whatever books we had lying around and we decided to go to charity shops for more books to keep her sane.