Time to say goodbye...

If you're not already humming the melody, here is the link - to put you into the right mood... :-P

Since I have already written a post about the Carol Service in the last week of my semester abroad, you might have guessed it: the end is near! (dramatic music starting here)
Or at least the end of my time in Maynooth. I still had to write two essays after returning to Germany, so technically the semester was not over. But I won't bother you with my essay issues now - and emotionally it was definitely over by December 21st.

So next to writing essays and stuff (essays, it's always about essays) we had to make the most out of the few remaining days. For example, eating in Pugin Hall, the restaurant on South Campus, again. I had only been there the week before for the first time. It was more expensive than Phoenix, but well, it was way nicer as well. And it gave you the proper Hogwarts feeling, that's probably something worth paying for.

Oh, and speaking of Hogwarts: we finally managed to do the Hogwarts photo shooting on South Campus with all of us wearing our Penneys shirts/sweaters/hoodies. I mean, if you don't even have courses on the beautiful Hogwarts-like part of the campus, you have to make use of it in another way. :-D

And since we didn't expect to manage meeting for another shooting at another time, we just added the Tesco jumper shooting afterwards. So the instructions had been something like: "Bring your Hogwarts hoodie and your Tesco jumper, no matter what it takes you to fit them into your backpack!" It somehow worked, and we have a nice picture now:

And we also have some incredibly beautiful selfies that had to be taken before... :-P

Furthermore, we had at least two goodbye parties, one in the Roost (not to be commented on...) and one on the first floor of Brady's Clockhouse. I didn't even know this floor existed before we had to go there because there was no other pub that had enough free places for a group as big as ours. But after we had occupied a lot of space there, we had a really good evening with Secret Santa (German "Wichteln"), cake and water melon (part of Secret Santa xD). Later, some of us even entered the dance floor:

You can see my Secret Santa present in the pic. :-D

On the next day, we went to Dublin for the last time. Basically to do a lot of Christmas shopping. Which might not be the best timing on the day before the fourth of advent, the last Saturday before Christmas - but actually, it was the only possible date: after the essay deadlines and before going home. But, of course, it was nerve-racking and we had to treat ourselves with pancakes afterwards...

Well, and Sunday, December 21st, was the seriously surreal day when I went home. This time I had reached the 23 kg limit for my luggage and had to put on like 6 layers of clothing - but I managed to bring all my precious stuff, including my shiny rain boots, back to Germany. Since I went home in the evening and couldn't find my camera among my luggage any more due to overcrowding of my backback the pictures I took at the airport and on the plane are quite shitty. This for example:

So I decided to end this blog the same way I posted an ending post on Facebook: with the annoying field, in this way saying goodbye to Ireland.

Thanks for the memories!

Carol Service in the College Chapel (15.12.)

The beginning of the last week in Maynooth...

Since it was the middle of December already, the annual carol services took place in this week. Of course, as Erasmus students we didn't have a clue about stuff that happens every year. But Alena, our International Coordinator, was so nice as to tell us about the lottery a day before the deadline. No, I'm not kidding: you had to have tickets for the carol service, and in order to get them, you had to participate in a lottery. I can prove it:

(sorry for the stupid size of the screen shot)

So we had a funny time in the library trying to download the application form ("can't open file" and stuff like this) and properly completing it (what the hell is my university email address?) before going to the Music Department to hand it in.
Most of us won tickets and since winning meant getting two tickets, all of us (and some more people) were able to go to the Carol Sevice. The only problem was the day because there were tickets for Monday and Tuesday.

(Sirkka's finger nails, not mine.)

So some of us (me, for example) went there on Monday, some on Tuesday. I guess, the day didn't matter because it was amazing anyway. Firstly, the college chapel was really beautiful. Unfortunately, I hadn't brought my camera with me since I had come directly from the library (that's also where I went back afterwards - it was essay time...). But there are a lot of impressive pictures online. Due to copyright uncertainties I won't post any of them but you can just ask Google for help if you're interested. ;-)
Secondly, of course, the Carol Service itself was also amazing. There were four different choirs singing! And you can actually listen to them because the service was on the radio! The person who posted the link in one of the Erasmus groups on Facebook said it's for the people "who missed the angels sing". :-)