Sailing away

This post is the last thing I’ll write in my home before I move for summer. Between yesterday and today, my three housemates have packed up their things and left and yes. . . .there was a lot of tears. I’m to follow tomorrow, after a whole day of strenuous packing. Who knew my whole college life “only” fitted into eight bin bags, two suitcases and three backpacks. It’s a sad goodbye this time, because we’ll never live together again, because of the structure of our courses. Erasumus, placement, project and final year all don’t really cross paths too much. But it’s more of a bitter sweet goodbye. I’m incredibly happy to see not only my housemates, but the majority of my friends follow their passions and increase their work drive. However, here I am. And here I’m going to be when September comes.

I’m not sad that I didn’t opt for another year, that was 100% my decision and I know it.
I’m not sad that my friends are leaving because I know I’ll keep in touch with every single one of them with group chats, Skype calls and journeys to each other.
I’m not sad that I’m leaving my home with so many good memories because I’ll always have them, and there’s no point sticking around on my own.
I’m not sad I’m moving back with my parents this summer as I have a really good relationship with them and don’t feel trapped because I have so many incredible friends and family to catch up with and keep me entertained.

No, I’m not sad.
I’m scared.
I’m scared because I have to do it all over again.

The friendships I’ve formed and solidified over the past two years are not going to be here when I return. I’m being dropped into a year group who have come back from abroad, along with some from my original year who I never knew. I have to make friends again, just like those terrifying few months at the beginning of first year. I had brilliant friends at home, but it was hard finding some who even slightly lived up to them. But I did it, and I have to do it all over again which is incredibly hard. I won’t have my comfort blanket of people whose habits I’ve gotten used to on nights out and days in. I’ll have all these relationships within typing distance, but I’m on my own again. I know I do have friends left here, but they’re on entirely different schedules to me so I don’t know exactly how much I’ll see of them. There’s only a handful in my subjects that I’d chat to, with an even lesser amount of people who I love to spend time with, or rather who would want to spend time with me.

But I know I’ve done it before. I have my incredible friends from first year. I have made friends from my first week in first year with people I still keep in touch with, but that was in an atmosphere where first years wanted to meet new friends and had the time to do it. I’m stepping into my final year with serious students who already have their friends.

Not to mention it takes a while for me to open up. That’s a huge flaw on my behalf, which I acknowledge. It doesn’t stop me from freezing up from embarrassing stories, or the terror I feel if anyone mentions this blog or why I do certain things or why I don’t like hugs or watching movies. My progress of this has ceased and I have to start that again. My one step forward took two steps back and now I don’t know where I even stand.

So yes. I’m happy for my friends moving away, I’m happy for my friends who are staying, I’m happy for my future and I’m happy for summer to begin and I know once September begins I’ll have the fresh excitement of the endless possibilities of meeting new friends and catching up with the beloved ones I already knew and stayed in my house and experienced me.
For now I’m sad and scared and I don’t feel like cheering myself up today. But I will leave these doors with happy tears instead of sad from memories of birthdays, not birthdays, craft sessions, pre drinks, pancakes, and absolutely everything and everyone who ever stepped foot in the house has given me good memories, even if they didn’t live here (all the time).
I’m okay being sad, because I know the incredible people I shared this year with are reading this, and to answer your message you’ll more than likely send me;
“Thank you for your concern, but of course this is just a blog post.”
Despite my real answer wanting to be;
“Thank you for always supporting me, and these words don’t do my heart justice for just how amazing this year has been with each and every one of you. I’m not scared of losing you, because of the simple reason that you’re even reading my blog post and I feel comfortable with that.”

Here is me and all my emotions,
Love from EimzPink of The High Seas.

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Halloween in The High Seas

instagram.com/EimzPink

Happy Halloween Everyone!
This year, I’m living in a house with three of my most favourite people ever. Our house is up stairs and along with a private joke, we called it The High Seas. Although we are a student house, there’s no reason why we can’t decorate the house… right?
Last week, two of my housemates were gone out. So being the cool college kids, us two left behind had the brilliant idea to go buy pumpkins!

Why?
Well, we’re not too sure why.
But we did it anyway!

Throwing all responsibilities and duties aside, we set out pumpkin hunting.

The first shop we went to had some very sad looking pumpkins, so we decided against them. (Even though I did feel bad for leaving them behind). Instead, we bought some window decorations and were SO excited to get them that everyone else in the purchase queue let us pass them by as they saw how excited we were.

I’m really not kidding.

The second shop we went to had a lot more variety in pumpkins, so naturally we were even more excited, and received many judge-y looks when we squealed. I fell in love with a perfectly orange but weirdly shaped small pumpkin. We also opted for a medium sized one too. After paying for our pumpkins in copper coins, we headed home.

We decided to not tell our other housemates, so here is a picture of us being mysterious outside the shop.

We got down to carving straight away. Using all the blunt student knifes and weird spoons we could find whilst wearing disney ears and listening to the halloween playlist on spotify, we spent almost two hours drawing, carving, removing pumpkin gunk and styling our masterpieces. 

Although my original plan of a cat design failed, I opted for a bat and it wasn’t the worst thing in the world! My roomie went for a pretty terrifying face and they both actually turned out quite well!

We played the Jaws theme song with the lights off when the other half of our housemates arrived home and we’re still not too sure if they were impressed or not!

However, after this experience, we learned quite a few things;

1. The two of us shouldn’t be left without supervision.

2. Candle flames burn the top of the pumpkin when the top is left on.

3. In ancient Ireland, pumpkins didn’t exist and they carved turnips, according to my mother. So we bought a turnip for 85 cent and carved him too. He fits in quite well and we named it Grainne.

  

4. Our other two housemates still haven’t realised we left the pumpkin guts in a bucket outside.

5. People in shops are really nice and supportive to two teenagers buying halloween decorations at ten o clock at night.

I hope everyone has had as much fun decorating as we did!

Piggy in the Middle

I know I should be biased
But treat everyone as fair
I know I should be on their side
But their view I just don’t share

Two wrongs can’t make a right
And there’s definitely more than two
But who am I to tell them that
There’s not much I can do

I’m proud, I swear I am
Even if I can’t say it out loud
Hell, I’d shout it to the heavens
If I was ever allowed

I just can’t see their view
Or why they think they’re right
It seems so simple to me
But who’s controlling this fight?

I’ll never be able to express how I feel
Because all I feel is conflicted
I agree with them, but I don’t
Because these people are wrongly convicted

My opinion is not one many people share
Because most see black and white
I see why they’re wrong and why they’re not
I don’t think either side is right

Home(sick)

I was never really a city girl. Sure, I had all the fantasies of living in a luxurious apartment overlooking street lights and artificial nature. I mean, who didn’t? The dream life was waking up, grabbing a coffee from an overpriced shop and zipping to my fantasy job.

I don’t even like coffee.

I currently live in a city. It’s handy. It’s close to loads of shops. It’s accessible and near any building I could ever want. I have giant yellow beams guiding my way home every dark night. It’s all very new and modern. It feels like christmas lights are always following me. All my friends live less than fifteen minutes away. I get to walk by the river each bright morning and each neon night. There’s always someplace interesting to be, or someone interesting to see. It’s impossible to be bored here

Yet. . .

Yet. . . I miss calm. Wow, I sound like the coolest college kid ever.

But I do. I miss the stars. I miss not crossing a billion traffic lights to get to one shop. I miss the sounds crickets. I miss the sky not having a constant orange hue due to light pollution. I miss no cars on the road or no lines to guide them. I miss having animals around me.

I’m happy, in a sense, that I’m in Galway instead of an actual big city. Galway is filled with lights and parades and excitement. However, it does have it’s own secret nooks and crannies which would only be there for those who look for them. They bring the peace back, even just for a little while. It doesn’t beat waking up to the sounds of a million birds, or counting the beams given off by a nearby light house to make me sleepy.

Galway is a pretty place. I just miss my own pretty place.

The Liebster Award!

I’m ashamed to say that I have been nominated for this before, and just never got around to it… whoops..
This is the Liebster Award. It’s basically like those chain letters that circulated as preteens. Lol, remember them?
ANYWAY, the word “liebster” has several definitions: dearest, sweetest, kindest, nicest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, welcome, sweetheart yeah you get the point.

Here are the official rules.

1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.

2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)

3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.

4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.

5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)

6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.

7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!) 

So here we go!

1. I’d like to thank imjustadreamer.wordpress.com for this lovely nomination! From having a little nosey around her blog, it seems very interesting and entertaining and you should check it out! ❤ Much love m’dearest!

2. Meh, I’ll do this later.

3. My questions:

1. Do you have a middle name? State it. Marie given at birth, Claire chosen at confirmation.
2. Favourite drink and why. Tea. There is no why about it. 😉
3. Coke or pepsi. I’m going to be a boring toad here and say neither. But if I had to choose- coke, duh.
4. If you could change your name what would it be? Something that people outside of Ireland could pronouce! Otherwise than that, I’m quite fond of my name.
5. Favourite social media site. Can I not say all of them? No? Hah! YouTube or Tumblr I’d say.
6. Least favourite day of the week. Tuesdays were never that fun for me to be honest.
7. Favourite tv show right now. Currently watching the simpsons daily with my new flatmates. Does that count? I don’t really watch tv anymore, to be honest.
8. Favourite person in the world. It’s way too hard to only choose one. My parents, my friends, my family.
9. When you were a child did you leave Santa milk and cookies? Hell yeah! And a carrot for Rudolph!
10. Religious? I don’t know whether ‘religious’ is the right word, but I definitely have faith.
11. Honest opinion on dandelions. This is a subject which is close to my heart. I feel like dandelions have always been apart of my way of living. I can’t bear to think of my life without them. *pause for dramatics*. The depletion of dandelions is an outrage on the eaths behalf.
    Nah I’m just kidding. We called them ‘pissey beds’ because legend has it if you touched the yellow flower, you’d wet your bed.

4.

1. I’m seventeen and in university because I skipped fourth year in secondary school.
2. I had ’emergency glitter’ in my pencil case for all of my secondary school experience.
3. I love snapchat. Like so much. I could snap people all day it’s so fun.
4. I have a lot of love for Sweden.
5. I have the same birthday as the Queen.
6. I’ve been in my pyjamas since I finished college today at 3.
7. I’m probably having pot noodle for dinner.
8. I love sandwiches. I would prefer sandwiches to like a dinner.
9. I have a great love for the sea and stars!
10. I love my dog so much like ugh she’s my life.

5. I nominate: In no particular order whatsoever because I love you all!:

1.perksofbeingaprocrastinator.wordpress.com Because there are many perks about being a procrastinator!
2.IPreferDeepBluesAndSeaFoamGreens.wordpress.com A very relatable blogger!
3.r34litycheck.wordpress.com  I’ve always loved your blog!
4.valourborn.wordpress.com My personal bestie on wordpress ;D
5.disneyandpizza.wordpress.com Uhm, how awesome is that name?
6.sarahmarjoriee.wordpress.com My love! ❤
7.midwestamericangirl.wordpress.com Love love love!
8.charspillane.com  Basically my honorary big sister on wordpress!
9.attemptingreality.wordpress.com One of my newest blogging friends 🙂
10.athinkingtransformer.wordpress.com One of my oldest blogging friends 😉
11.everytrueworddotme.wordpress.com Well worth a read 😀

6. Your questions! 

1. What’s your favourite thing about Ireland? 😉 
2. On a scale of one to twelve, how much do you love glitter? 
3. Who made your last smile happen? 
4. What is an experience you’d love to live again, and recommend for anyone to do? 
5. Weirdest thing you’ve ever bought? 
6. Favourite childhood movie? 
7. A weird tradition you/your country has?
8. Would you kiss your first crush today? 
9. Your ‘go-to’ meal when you’re making/cooking dinner?
10. What’s your goal in life? 
11. Why did you start blogging?

7. Woo rules.

8. Done and dusted!

To those who choose to except, I hope you have fun! 😀

NUI Galway- Come at me bro!

My summer has been so hectic this year, I haven’t even had time to process the fact that it’s almost over. 
Results day has come and gone, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t get my first choice of University. However, as much as I had convinced myself that I was heading East to Dublin, it never actually seemed real. I wasn’t the type of student who had their heart set on a certain course, I just chose it simply because I didn’t dislike it. I didn’t fall in love with the course, or the campus, or the area. Nevertheless, I was slightly disappointed when results day came, because I knew I didn’t get Dublin. However, I was soon on a plane and flying to Spain so I didn’t really get time to think about not getting it. By disappointed, I mean I realised that I wasn’t disappointed at myself for not getting the course. I was disappointed to admit that the course I’ve been reciting off to people since Easter just wasn’t going to happen. I was disappointed for others reactions. . . not my own. I was disappointed that I would have to change my story. 

“So what course did you get?”
“I’m going to Galway!”
“I thought you wanted Dublin?”
“Yeahh…” 

This was the conversation I was dreading. And I was so wrapped up in my thoughts of how to explain to other people that I didn’t get Dublin that I forgot to explain to myself that in literally a week I was going to university. It was always a phrase that was tossed in the air- “This time next year we’ll be in college!” But I never thought the day would actually come where I only return home for holidays. Three of my cousins and my sister all repeated their last year in Secondary school because they didn’t get their desired choice. So in my mind, this was what I was going to end up doing. But, I got my points needed, so there was no need to repeat. This is a good thing by the way, to anyone who is not familiar with the Irish education system. 

I’m scared. There’s no doubt about that. I’m officially leaving my home- and officially leaving my comfort zone. All my plans had been thrown out the window and rearranged in the short space of a week. But as of today, I am a registered Arts student in the National University of Ireland, Galway. 

So c’mon Uni, do your worst!