DECEMBER! Definitely one of my favourite months of the year. A month filled with loads of happiness, thankfulness, food, presents, drinks and parties. Yes, why can’t it be December at least twice a year J?

The first excitement of December was getting tickets to the Christmas Carol Service in the College Chapel (or actually my colleague Pauline got them, but she took me with her). The Church itself is absolutely stunning! I’ve been there a few times before, but still, every time I walk in it takes my breath away. Even though I’m not a religious person, I did enjoy the Carol Service and it was interesting to witness something like this.

We also had our office Christmas party and Secret Santa. I got some cool reindeer slippers which I found really funny (yes, I’m 24 and yes I still like reindeer slippers and I wore them proudly). Also, the dinner we had was very nice (delicious Thai food) and the bonus was that I could finally wear my Christmas jumper and man, that felt good! After weeks of looking for the perfect one, it was found at Pennys (I love that shop).

One of the biggest excitements of the month was the visit of the ex-intern Lena J!! She arrived the Friday and of course we started the weekend with a Diceys session, which lasted long enough for the whole weekend (but, off-course we didn’t only go out on Friday). On Saturday evening, our colleague Cliodhna invited us to her home for a lovely dinner where she made her AMAZING brownies as desert. I swear, those brownies are one of the reasons why I would highly recommend you to do an internship at the International Office! Our lovely evening ended in The Roost where we had a few drinks and some laughs about certain people entertaining us there (I will not go in to details about this one, but it contains Irish students who can’t quite handle their drinks).

The last weekend before I left Ireland for the Christmas break I had some friends over from back home again. It was a good weekend wherein we actually got the best of both sides (with that, I’m meaning the day and night J). During the day we did a lot of sightseeing. I did my 5^th trip to Howth (and again saw the seals), went to the Kilmainham Gaol (which is still really interesting for a second time) and we went to the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough. This was so beautiful! Even though the weather wasn’t the best, the scenery is just so amazing. This was definitely something very high on my ‘things to do in Ireland’ bucket list thingy. Besides our very cultural and adventurous trips, we also enjoyed the nightlife. Besides Diceys we also visited River Bar and some friends I made here joined us. It was a good night J.

One of the sadder things this month was that we had to say goodbye to the group of UNCW students. They finished their semester at Maynooth University and had to go back home. We did have a nice dinner with them and this was a good moment to say goodbye. I think it’s all part of the studying/interning/living abroad experience I guess?

Before leaving Ireland for Christmas, we (of course) had one last Diceys night to say goodbye for a few weeks (it’s almost like going into Diceys rehab).

Celebrating Christmas at home was really nice. My weeks back home were completely filled with seeing my family, meeting up with my friends and former colleagues, loads of food and more than enough parties. So it was a nice break, but it also feels good to be back in Ireland now J!