My boss let me conduct two of these parent interviews over the phone, and I was really flattered that she trusted me to complete this task since it has some weight on the results of the intervention. However, some nerves went along with that initial excitement when I started thinking about everything that might go wrong… What if I couldn’t understand the parent? What if I said something inaccurate? What if I couldn’t record the responses quickly enough? What if I didn’t know how to answer a parent’s questions? All those thoughts were streaming through my head before I dialed the first number, but after I survived the interview I went into my second one with more confidence knowing that I could do it.
I told Siobhan that I really enjoyed the experience, and she’s letting me interview two more parents on Monday. I was also trained on how to use SPSS, which is a program that many researchers use to enter data and perform calculations. I entered in data from the child and parent interviews, including the two parent interviews I had just completed. It took me a while to get used to the process, but after about the tenth set of data the process became familiar and easy. I felt really accomplished after the two days because I believed that this time my work had directly impacted the results of the intervention in a positive way, versus my previous work that effected the intervention in a more indirect way (looking up statistics, writing summaries, etc). I loved having more responsibility at my internship and I was appreciative that my co-workers trusted me enough to complete these more important tasks. After Thursday and Friday, I’m now really glad that I have something to look forward to at work now besides just the good company.
After work on Friday, our initial plan was to go to a club in the temple bar area. We got on the bus and headed towards the club, but half of us got off before the stop because we had to use the restrooms. That was a complete mistake to split up… and from that decision on Friday evening became somewhat of a nightmare. We ended up losing one of the girls in our group, and I immediately thought of the movie “Taken” with Liam Nelson that was conveniently on TV right before I left for Dublin and which I naively decided to watch. For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, it’s about a teenage girl who travels abroad with her best friend and both of them are abducted and forced into the slave trade. Great idea to watch that right before I was leaving.
Anyways, all these thoughts took over and I became really worried for the safety of our friend. We retraced our steps to the last location we had seen her (a pub), but there was no sign of her there. We decided the best plan after that was for half of us to head home and see if she had made it back already, while the other half would venture to the club we were supposed to meet at. An hour and a half later we finally found her. It turns out she had been in the pub the entire time, and we just hadn’t been able to seek her out in the crowded environment. We were all so happy that she was okay, and the rest of the group headed home soon after. We didn’t let what happened spoil our night; even though we were too upset to go out like we had initially planned, we ended up back at my apartment and had a great and relaxing night hanging out, laughing, and talking about the experiences we’ve shared together so far. I went to sleep at 4 that night because we all couldn’t seem to leave each other. I’m really glad that I’ve met such great people here and that I am able to have a good time with them no matter what we are doing. Whether hanging out at a pub late at night, eating dinner together, or simply relaxing in someone’s apartment, I know that my time will be well spent.
Saturday morning I went to the Shanowen Sqaure (our apartment complex) Fourth of July barbeque. When I looked outside, all I could see were red white and blue balloons. They decked the area out with streamers, flags, a D.J., and tons of food. I thought it was really nice of the apartment complex to host us the barbeque because it made me feel at home since this is something I’d be doing in the States at this time of year. I could tell that they tried really hard to make it special for all of us, and it meant a lot to me. After the barbeque, all of the girls decided to hit up Grafton street to go shopping. We had wanted to do this since day one of Dublin but had been so busy with work and traveling that we didn’t seem to have the time. We took advantage of our free time by doing some retail therapy. Unfortunately, we missed some pig races at The Comet while we were away. The Comet (the local pub) is hosting us events every day this weekend, including the night of the 4th. I was shocked at how much attention the Fourth of July seems to get here, but then I realized that the pubs are probably catering to their audience since The Comet specifically attracts a lot of Americans that stay at Shanowen Square over the summer months.
After going to a few stores, we decided to stop into TopShop. We all tried on a bunch of clothes and at first the experience was just like any other shopping trip with friends. The normalcy of it quickly changed when we spotted some celebrities in the store. So they my not have been Bono… but, we ran into Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) and Lauren Zizes (Ashley Fink), two members of the cast on Glee who are in town now for the O2 Dublin concert. I’m not really a huge Glee fan; I’ve seen several episodes and have enjoyed all of them I’ve watched but I’ve never viewed the series religiously. My favorite episode is "Teenage Dream," I played it on repeat just to hear them sing it over and over again. However, it was really cool to see them nonetheless (I’m such a dork when it comes to seeing celebrities, I get star-struck). I remembered that on our bus tour in Galway, our driver told us that locals in Ireland like to give celebrities their space; they simply nod in acknowledgment of their presence but don’t make a big fuss over running into them. Definitely different than how most of us Americans act when we spot a celebrity. (“OMG CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH?!”)
Although most of us wouldn’t have hesitated to approach the cast members in America, we started to second-guess ourselves and didn’t want to make a production given our new surroundings and our attempt to follow the cultural norms of Dublin. However, even the staff of the store were whispering to each other about the two celebrities, so I knew that this was kind of a big deal for them. One of the girls in our group was really brave, and she went up to them and asked them if she could have a picture with all of us. Unfortunately, they said they didn’t want to take pictures with anybody in the store because it would cause too much of a scene, but they did invite us to come over and chat. A few of us got their autographs, but we felt a little bad after that because our first step at approaching them unconsciously invited other fans to come their way and do the same. Despite the unwanted attention, they were still very nice about it, and I’m sure they’re used to the hype by now. I guess privacy is something one sacrifices when in the public eye.
After our exciting celebrity spotting, we decided to grab coffee and walk around St. Stephen’s Green, a city centre public park adjacent to Grafton street. It was beautiful. We sat, chatted, and relaxed from our busy day of shopping and then found a great place for dinner. Our entire table split what is called a “Hot pot” at a Chinese/Korean restaurant. It was similar to “The Melting Pot,” where you cook your frozen meat (lamb, beef)/vegetables (potatoes, mushrooms)/fish (shrimp) in a cooking pot fueled by a portable butane gas stove. The food was delicious, and we were stuffed pretty quickly. We ordered what the restaurant suggested was enough for 5 people (and there were 6 of us), but we found ourselves with an enormous amount of uncooked food by the time we were all full. Someone in our group had the brilliant idea of cooking the remainder of the food on the table and packing it up to bring home as leftovers. The whole process was quite a production because of the immeasurable amount of food we had left. When they said the food was enough for 5 people I think they meant to say it was suitable for 5 sumo wrestlers. At the end of our dinner, we left with nine take away containers, which we’re all excited to devour tomorrow for lunch.
The day wore us all out so we headed home around 10 and decided to take it easy from there on. Tomorrow we have the Leinster Senior Hurling Final, Kilkenny vs. Dublin. I’m looking forward to seeing what the sport is all about; from what I hear it’s pretty gory. I’ll post about that when I’m back. I’m not ready for the weekend to end, but luckily I still have one more day left to enjoy before my work-week begins. I wish I could slow down time because at this point I never want to leave Dublin. I’ll have to tell my mom and dad “Good Luck” when they try to get me on that plane home in August, because I’m just not sure it’ll happen :).
No comments:
Post a Comment