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There will always be a place for you back home no matter how long you’ve been away.

As you all may or not know I have been in college nine weeks now, I'm settled in amazingly and everything is good to be honest! I just was thinking about how my home here in Kilkenny is a place I rarely can be found anymore.

While you end up missing college, being at home for a while even if only for a day has its perks. The bus journey home seems infinitely long. You look out the window, see endless lights, houses and unfamiliar roads for what seems like forever. Then slowly but surely you start recognizing places, even if it’s a roundabout, or the giant Tesco in Clonmel. Pointless yet significant at the same time, I start to perk up a little bit at the sight of them.

I always get a surge of happiness when we drive past the sign at the edge of Carrick on Suir which says “Welcome to Kilkenny”. I’m back where I belong, the county of black and amber, home of hurling contrary to what my Tipperary mother thinks. I’m still not used to seeing the Limerick flag everywhere. Home is constant even though I’m not constantly there anymore.

It’s usually dark by the time I arrive home on the bus, tired even though I’ve just been sitting on a bus for two and a half hours. I’ve lost count of how many buses I’ve taken since the start of the semester, all the trips have blurred into one. My dad always says he feels lonely the moment my twin and I leave the car to get on to the bus and I understand where he’s coming from. I’m making memories they’ll never be part of when I’m in Limerick and they are creating their own back home.

When I walk into the kitchen mother is waiting with a nice warm dinner ready for me. It feels like I’ve never left, my bedroom is still the same, everything is familiar yet it’s alien at the same time. My youngest sister will slouch up the corridor and try to slag me off but it’s lighthearted and it’s what we do to greet each other. I’ve found that since I moved away that my relationship with her has gotten better, we’ve stopped fighting about the silly, trivial things that siblings usually fight about, we sit around listening to music, she pretends that she isn’t interested in the stories I have about college but she’ll ask me anyway.

I’m sitting down writing this right now and I know that this time tomorrow I will be packed and ready to go back to Limerick. I love going back to college but it’s still strange to me that I spend more time away from home than at home in one week. I love going back, but I also hate the bus journey back up during the night, when all the street lights blur together in your vision and your legs are stiff from sitting in one position. Music is my companion for those two and a half hours.

This is my life now and I’ve come to appreciate the little things about home a whole lot more.

The University of Limerick is now a home away from home. Honestly.
I never ever thought I’d think of UL like that going into it. Not in a million years. I thought it’d be counting down the days feverishly until Friday came. It turned out to be the complete opposite. If you read my previous blog posts you’ll know that I was eighty percent dreading going to college because I thought that I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone. I was so wrong!

Right now as I type I miss college. I’m so relieved I’m heading back tomorrow. I miss my new friends, the three girls I’ve met are so so lovely and if I didn’t have them I’d be lost.  I know my way around the college now , another aspect of going to college I thought I wouldn’t grasp. I can get to wherever I want to go so easily, in the beginning I gave myself an hour to find where I was going for my labs and tutorials. Now I’m fine.

My housemates are all lovely. The fact that I can say that truthfully is amazing. Every single one of them are friendly, I’ve had no trouble with any of them. We all get on and I’m really happy with the way things turned out. I’m guessing I’ll be really sad when we all leave each other at the end of the year. I’m so grateful for them for being so welcoming. My shyness with them has completely vanished.

Something I’ve noticed about college is that the people are completely different to secondary school students. College students are a lot more friendly, they are more open. I like that because I feel comfortable enough that I can approach these people. I’m still really shy with people I don’t know though and I want to combat that because I feel like it’s getting in the way of friendships and other relationships. So step by step I’m going to try be little more adventurous, a little braver and to step even more out of my comfort zone. I say that now with butterflies in my stomach.
But I feel that if I don’t I’ll regret it.

I want to explore Limerick city more. I’ve been there three times now and each time has been different. More than once I have been in the city while it was raining. I hope to get a few photos and post them here so you can see the city too. My friend Pamela introduced us to these amazing milkshakes called Moody Cow and they are heaven. Every time we go to the city we go and get them. If you’re in Limerick city I recommend popping in there. It takes all of two to three minutes for the workers there to whip up these unreal milkshakes. Try the Oreo one, the Wispa one or the Twirl. There are SO many options. Do it, it’s worth it.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with freckles. Freckles of all things?! Nothing annoys me more when I see a girl covering her face up with foundation when she’s got beautiful freckles. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with freckles on guys too. There’s this person I’ve been seeing around lately and they've got the most beautiful freckles. They make a person's face really come to life.

Thanks for still reading even though I’m not very active, I checked my stats and was pleasantly surprised!

Have any of you started college this year, or a new school?
People have been so great to me, coming forward with so much support and advice. I'm so happy with my choice of college, course and my attitude to college is so positive. I'm really really happy.

What a world wind the past two weeks have been. Just over a week ago I received my Leaving Cert results (state exams in Ireland that get you into college), and a week since I was accepted to my first choice of college! Some details: I’m going to be studying New Media and English in the University of Limerick. This is exciting as this particular college is one of the most modern in Ireland. There are lots of of cool societies to join. For me it’ll be the badminton one, the drama one and I want to try and set up a filmmaking one since there isn’t one. Getting very ambitious aren’t I?
I guess it’s something I really want to do and since I haven’t had many opportunities to do it at home I am going to try introduce it to the college. Fingers crossed it’ll work out.

This college has over 70 clubs and societies to join. It is one of the biggest campuses in Ireland. It’s scary! I went up there on August 24th to get a tour of my accommodation in Dromroe. Dromroe is a good place to live because we are situated near the main building, we have a Spar (food shop) next door to our apartment block. We got a tour of the Sports facilities, the main Foundation building. There is a 50m swimming pool, and indoor running track, indoor football pitches and at least two stadiums. It’s incredible! The main feeling I got from the whole college was that it was so massive and that everything was so modern. When I heard that there are on average 12,000 students involved with the college in any year I felt butterflies in my stomach. That’s a hell of a lot of people for someone coming from a primary school of about 100 to a secondary of about 400 people.

I will be living with five other people, two other girls and three boys and it is likely I will never have met these people before. That’s getting me a little bit nervous as I’m not usually great with talking to strangers, let alone living with them for the whole year! Of course I’m sure that I’ll get to know them after a couple of weeks, but before I meet them and when I’m left alone at the place when my parents go I know I’m going to be nervous. ARGH. I know I’m going to be terrified.
I’m scared that I won’t find my way around, that I’ll be late to my first lecture, that I’ll be too shy to talk to anyone. Fears. Fears. Fears.

Just the thought of leaving home scares me. The longest I’ve spent away from home was two weeks and that was four years ago. This is like moving away from my house, from my county to a completely different place two and half hours away. I’m worried that I’ll lose people I’ve been friendly with in Greenhill for the past six years because we’re dispersed all over the country. Obviously we’ll meet up but I’m scared we’ll lose touch and I don’t want that to happen. I’ll miss secondary school, god I’ll miss sitting in maths class among my friends in my comfort zone. I'll miss little banters at lunch time in the GPA. I hate the fact that we'll never be together as a proper group ever again after the Debs. Unless we organize something.

College is going to be a great experience, I know that and I am probably over thinking the whole thing. Positives are there are a few people from my year doing the same course as me which is great, going to college will make me a more independent and hopefully a more confident person. I’ll make new friends, learn new things, explore new places. I got a massive package from UL talking about fees, invoices, the consequences if I or any of my house mates break stuff in the house. Apparently if you break a plastic basin there’s a cost of €7.50? If one person goes over the heating quota, every single person in the house has to pay for it. So many rules to remember, so many things to bring with me, passport, PPS number. Am I suddenly turning into a proper adult over night?!?

I'm sorry if this post is a little depressing. Haha I'm just writing this in the hopes that someone out there can help calm me down!

I hope to write about my first week in college so please stayed tuned for that!

Have you any tips for surviving the first week of college?

Hello!

Yup, I'm one of those thousands of blogs on the Internet. No, make that millions, I'd say.

I'm Eilís. If you're not Irish like myself you'll probably be wondering what the strange little dash on top of the second "I" is. Well that my friends is what us Irish speakers like to call a "fada". In most cases it causes a difference in the sound of that particular letter. But enough of that.