By Anne Rieger
Ok so I don’t know if anyone is actually following this column very actively, but you may have realised that I was gone for the last one. The Irish flu hit me and even loads of tea couldn’t get me out of bed. I decided for this part of the column I am just going to give you a little life update of a German student in NUI Galway – I hope that is as interesting as me ranting about Irish bureaucracy or going on about tea consumption.
I’ve been crazy busy. That’s one sentence that describes my life pretty well at the moment. I hope you can relate to that, with work and midterms, I have lived in a little tunnel of getting up, studying and then bringing people coffee (my job, if anyone thought I’d do that for fun). Midterms are approaching at a fast pace for me, and I still need to write a mere 2000 words in seven days, which seems doable but also insane at the same time.
Insane because there is exciting news! I am finally moving, to a warm and fantastic (mostly warm) place in the city centre. I can’t wait to step out and just take a walk around Spanish Arch. To be fair, I’ll probably never do that because I’m already moving too much at work, but I could and that’s what counts, isn’t it?
I also can’t believe I’ve already been here for seven months, in this time I found the most amazing friends, ate a ton of junk food and studied more than I ever have. The only thing that still gets to me is that people still call me Anna. Pretty random, I know, but please, stop. There is an E in my name, not an A. (Just wanted to include that in case you ever meet me, thank you very much!)
I’ve also had a visitor from Germany, which was fantastic as well. A friend that I haven’t seen in two years just decided to stay with me for a long weekend and she actually reminded me again why I love and hate this country so much at the same time (mostly love to be fair). She went to the Cliffs of Moher and to Connemara, typical tourist stuff but just hearing her talk about the landscape and the history really brought me back to being proud to live here. Thank you for that, Ireland!
Anyways, I am very sorry about this very random article, but that is mainly what happened the last few weeks and I thought I could just use this as a little diary to let it out. Next time I’ll go back to tea. Or weather. Or both.
