Santa, elves and a shopping trip in Dublin. All part of an Irish Christmas.

I know, you’ve seen my way to school, but I just can’t help it: I love it so much! You need to know, I’m really not a morning person. I wake up maybe in the third class of the day, but when I get out of the car and see this, it never fails to make me smile.

Depending on which class I have next, I either continue smiling or pull a face, but that just happens when Maths is first. 😀

School in general is pretty different to the school in Germany. First of all, it’s so much longer, I miss going home at 13:00! 😀 Here we finish at 15:10 on Wednesdays and Fridays and 15:50 on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Another huge difference is the amount of noise! I always thought German teachers were strict – well, I was wrong. Irish students are so quiet all the time!

One of my favourite subjects here is agricultural science. Last week, we went on a trip to a farm, to see how all those things we learned in class work in real life. It was really nice, even though we all were freezing way too much!

In the picture, you can see me and two of my friends. You can tell by the look on their face (especially Belen, the one on the left), that they enjoyed the cold very much! 😀

Do you remember the grandniece Sophie? She was taken to Bunratty castle to see Santa, and guess who got to come with her! It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen!

Bunratty castle is usually a folk park, where several houses stand around and represent an epoch of time in Ireland. Every year at Christmas, they decorate everything with Christmas trees and loads of other Christmas items.

The first thing we saw when we arrived was Mrs. Claus. We all had to sing “Jingle bells” for her and she told us how it is to be Santa’s wife.

(You can see her in that picture – she said, that it’s no surprise that Santa has such a big tummy, because the whole pudding in front of her was for him. :D)

After spending two hours walking around, eating mince-pies and riding three carousels, the time came to finally see Santa. In the picture above you can see me and my host mother, wearing matching Christmas jumpers! 😀

After a few more minutes of waiting, an elf came out of a separate room and told us, that it’s now our time to come in. We went through a small corridor and a big door, and right behind that door, he was sitting there with his red Santa-suit, the big tummy (which he got from the pudding, as we now know) and his white beard.

He talked to Sophie about always behaving good and brushing her teeth, we took two photos with him and soon had to go again, but we saw Santa Claus!! It was actually my first time to see this, because we don’t really do that in Germany, but after this day, I totally think that we should!

A lot happened this month, but something very nice was a trip to Dublin! Anna, Francesca (two very good friends of mine) and I wanted to see Dublin long ago, and so we decided to go there.

As we discussed our plans in school, a boy called Brian (one of my Irish friends) heard what we were talking about and offered to show us the city, because he is from there. At the end, we didn’t really spend much time looking at the city, but we went shopping for four hours. 😀

On the picture you can see me and Francesca walking across the “Ha’penny Bridge” which was built in 1816 and is still one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

One of the most beautiful things this month was actually coming back to Galway after the trips to Santa and Dublin. Being away the whole day, as wonderful as it was, makes you tired, and when I arrived in Barna, it didn’t feel like coming to the house of my host family.

For the first time, it felt like coming home.