Coins and Banknotes

Money in Northern Ireland is funny. As it is part of the United Kingdom, it also uses the same currency - pounds. One pound equals to a hundred pences. This is the sign for a pound - £. I think that when I write the sign by hand, I am still doing it wrong. Really, try it. Try to write it just from your memory. It is so unnatural :D.
Actually in the United Kingdom there is more than one bank which produces its own banknotes. There is 12 different sets of banknotes including Isle of Man set and Gibraltar set. That causes kind of a mess. I just can't go to London and pay there with banknotes I use here. In London simply nobody knows how Bank of Ireland banknotes look like so they don't accept them. On the other hand, banknotes produced by Bank of England are accepted everywhere but these banknotes are the least creative. You can recognize them thanks to the Queen on every one of them. Thank God, coins are the same everywhere.

Front and back side of Bank of England banknotes

Bank of Ireland banknotes I mostly use. See? No Queen.

Using coins was a bit confusing for me at the beginning because the shapes and colours change a lot, but for me there is no obvious sequence in the shape or size. The biggest coin is 50 pence, then 2 pence, or 2 pounds, then 1 pound, then the small ones but in a strange order. I don't know. It's messy :D. 50 pence and 20 pence are polygon shaped, the rest of coins is round. The colour also changes but the only 2 colour coin is 2 pounds. There are different pictures on the coins, but of course on each there is the Queen. You can try to find coins with special pictures, one from each kind of coin, which together form the Royal Shield. That's pretty cool. So far I collected only one thanks to a nice guy in kebab stand, who was examining the coins in a cashier with me to find tha last missing 50 pence.

Imagine the Queen on the other side

The Royal Shield

Because I spend my time with Erasmus students, it is also not uncommon to meet foreign coins or currencies. One of the first evenings I was in Belfast we were sitting in 3 people in a pub, drinking our first Guiness and we put together not only pounds, euros and czech crowns, but also mexican, indonesian, chinese, hungarian, serbian, swiss and maybe some other coins and banknotes. I even don't remember. But I have to say, it is sometimes interesting to see, how much money can be diverse in colours, shapes, writtings or materials.

Motto of the day: The Queen in your wallet opens you door to everywhere.

Few pictures of money we gathered

Even tough mexican banknote paper can't overcome everything

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

St. Patrick's day. What a phenomena. Sometimes also called St. Paddy's day with all the love irish people have. Lectures and work were cancelled for this day so that everybody could just enjoy the celebration of irish nature. St. Patrick is a catholic celebration, so it is really IRISH. And as one person well notted: "To go outside on St. Patrick's day with a british flag is a suicide." Remember this for later.

I feel now St. Patrick is celebrated worldwide. In the Czech Republic too. I've never seen much sense in celebrating St. Patrick's in the Czech Republic. To me it appears like mixture of pleasure from green beer and from idea of getting drunk in clothes you normally try to hide you have... Hm... Actually it sounds quite czech.

In Belfast, we gathered as Erasmus students, dressed with at least some green accessories and went to the city. We had meeting at 11 am, some of the people were already really drunk in the time I was trying to wake up. When I saw our group going through the city, it seemed a bit funny. We went kind of crazy about the dresses. With guiness beer hats on heads, hairbands in shape of leprechaun hat, big green hats, green braces, trousers, jackets... Locals we met on our way to the city center had green sweater if anything. So it seemed that the only crazy people excesively buying all the green and giant stuff in souvenir shops are tourists and kids.

Ready for action

The city was truly living during St. Patrick's day. There was a parade starting at the city hall and then concert near the Lagan river. Both of these were really lovely, filled with irish dance, music and culture overall. There was live music in every pub through whole day. Mostly it was one of the best bands I've heard in Belfast so far. Obviously irish people have few favourite songs which every band plays at least once in 2 hours. So we heard them 4 times a day at least.The atmosphere in the city was just amazing. BBC news shot a nice video from the official celebrations. You can see it here and listen to amazing Belfast accent of Ms. Mayor. Interesting was also a lot of bagpipes in the parade, which I always considered scottish. Scottish influences infiltrated the celebrations even more. At least in form of a spanish student wearing a scottish traditional hat with tag "Ireland" and ginger wig atteched to it. Typical Catalan. It was amusing to look at him - always made my day.

Wild Rover - irish classic song of classic songs :)

The Belle of Belfast City - you can probably guess why this one is so popular in Belfast

Do you remember how I told you the connection between british flag and suicide? When we went back from the concert, there was a small camp with cca 50 british flags in front of the city hall. The camp was there few times before, but St. Paddy is St. Paddy. So suddenly all the streets around the City Hall were crowded with mostly kids, 13 to 18 years of age I would guess, with Irish flag on their shoulders, making mess and bad stuff like pouring lemonade on the ground and stepping into puddles of icecream (I am not exaggerating, they were really doing it like a bad stuff). And between this crowd and little british camp there were 3 rows of tough policemen in the black hard suits. Overall in the city there was few little "troubles" and arresting people who were delinquent or on drugs or both. I think this is only a sign of the vivid atmosphere in the city.

As the time was passing, people were getting more and more crazy. Around 3 pm we went back from the city center to spend some short time at the university area to get back into the city for evening fun, dance and music everywhere. But university accommodation is probably the wildest environment for the St. Paddy's day. There were policemen going through streets every few meters to watch the law and order. Probably really only to watch it and not intervene much with hundreds of drunk students. Gathering points were ATM, shop and frontgardens. The frontgardens of houses were crowded, naked people were dancing on walls, furniture was dragged outside, everybody was really drunk and doing the most stupid things they could think off. During this day I saw the most of bleeding people and fighting couples in my life, most of them in the univeristy area. Last but not least, the only SOS bus we saw in the city this day was in the university area. SOS buses are another opportunity for you to volunteer and make communal life smooth. So SOS buses are in the streets on Friday nights and other drinking days to offer you free coffee, tea, water, even bread. And if you feel sick, they will take you inside and give you time and space to recover. I find this public service a bit scary.

We spent some time in the crazy university area and it resulted in a decision to go to party to the city again and my friends being in very lovely mood. So we went to the Cuckoo's for another round of live music. To make it short, one of my friends was gently removed from the bar by bodyguards, because he was sleeping on the stairs. Then he decided to go home on his own. He didn't have keys, only his housemate had them, he went to wrong direction and got lost, we found his wallet in the bar and his passport was lost for good (luckily the other day it was found back in the bar again). Thank God some genius compassionate person put him into taxi and sent back to the center (all of this before 10pm). Even though this could seem like a sad story, the saddest thing about St. Patrick's day for me was that I was sick a bit, so I had one hot whiskey in the afternoon. That meant I just observed other people being in their creative mood dancing naked on the walls and loosing passports. Not that I would like to join them.

Motto of the day: Allways know where do you have your keys, passport, and friends.

My favourite St. Patrick on a big yellow bike

Studying Psychology at Queen's

Soooo... I am still struggling with writting about school. I normally like to say what is better and what is worse. I like to distinguish these two possibilities based on some criteria. But with school here, I can't. And also I was probably expecting that I am going to study to place, where most of the thing is better. But I feel, that maximum level of studying here is on par with my faculty.
Now, I finaly have some schoolwork to do and spend my time with. I have so much free time here, that it is great pain to finaly start work. So today I was whole day trying to start working. But I only listened to a lot of amazing music, ate and checked in for a flight to Berlin. Instead of studying psychology here in Belfast I was studying portuguese and french a bit, going to the choir, listening to live music, just walking outside, I started to run again, I learned a bit how to play irish flute. And now I am not able to work. This education system destroyed my motivation to study. And now after whole day of torturing my soul with trying to do something, I write blog post. I will burn in hell of laziness :D. But firstly you can read about my comparison of studying psychology at Faculty of Social Science, Masaryk's University, Brno and School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast.

Less Time in School vs. A Lot of Time in School 

Obviously I have serious problem here, because I am just not in school. I go to school 2 days in a week. And the only effect is that during the other 5 days I do lots of things I like and none of the things I should do. I would just love to go to school every day, even for 2 hours or so. Only to have some schedule. And I love to go to lectures and listen to somebody who understands the topic. I just crave for more lectures here. Obviously they have so many interesting research projects from very different fields. So they could give us much more of the knowledge university is producing. And honestly, it is so much more interesting to hear about things then to read about them for me.
Even here, technical fields of study and other sciences are with much more work and time in school then social studies. And when you look at more technical people, they are used to working hard and with high effectivity, spend lots of time with work and still have hobbies and fun. I would like to have this routine too. But 5 days of free time... not good. Maximum I did for my psychological development is that I borrowed few psychological books in library. They have there some cool titles. I have Vygotski's book with old and very dirty cover now and it feels sooo good :).

Theory vs. Empirical Driven Approach

I am a bit concerned with absolute lack of theory here. It seems that talking about theory is taboo. We have 3 modules per semester and to each of them we have few articles to read every week. But probably it is the same articles which are then presented to us at lectures. So I choose not to read them but go to lectures. There is actually not much added value in lectures to articles or vice versa. Which is really a pitty. I think we got books recommended only in statistics class.
It is actually strange to me, that they never talk about some theoretical approach or background. What matters is previous research results, design, usage of results, ethical approval, economic sustainability and practical effectivity. They are much ahead in neuropsychological literacy. Not only in reading much more articles with neurological background but also about knowledge and even taking it more into account. On the other hand I feel they see many things much more unavoidable or fatal because of it. Which especially in psychology and psychotherapy can be very limitting point of view. And in a way it makes me think when the time will come that psychological treatment will mean reconnecting the wires in your brain.
In a way in Belfast it is much more sober and practical approach, which I really like. But it feels like something is missing. My teachers would call the missing part "psychological thinking". Talking with usage of concepts and knowledge we gained during our studies. I feel that talking only about specific study results or practical thoughts is creating much less consistent picture, because we talk a lot about the numbers and means, less about connecting these studies in some coherent picture. So far I saw only one teacher which did really good job in this connecting. But it seems very little to me. Also it was the only teacher who dare to give some negative feedback to class so far. He was external by the way.
Interesting is that the Master's degree is a lot about writting your thesis, so it should be more scientifical let say. And it is pretty amazing because all of the people here have their supervisor, who is tutor of their thesis. With the supervisor students consult most of their essays and they write the essays on kind of similar topic. And I have to say I am doing this too now, that I am fitting the topics more to my bachelor's thesis topic and it is much more enjoyable to write anything. Also you are still broadening literature you read in your own field of research and it is always handy. The supervisor is your guide through Masters. And teachers here are very nice and helpful. So this part of their studies is just amazing. If we should be inspired by something at my home university, it is this.

Wide vs. Narrow Spectrum

One of the main differences I see so far is that in Belfast no emphasis is put on history of psychology as a science or field and only accepted approach is very empirical and evolutionist. On the other hand at my faculty we pay a lot of attention to history of different paradigms in psychology. And psychology is a multi-paradigmal science. There is still no "right" perspective. So it makes a lot of sense to me to study all of them. The history, even sometimes very boring and not idealy taught, is important to understand what stands behind nowadays research, to evaluate how much something can be taken as "reality". It gives you more perspectives to see one problem. That's starting point for criticism and evaluation. If there is no alternative, there is no questionning. So even though students here are encouraged to criticaly evaluate the literature, the approach itself is not object of the critics.
So I am wondering if the studies here are going more to depth, if the critics seems kind of week. In a way people in my class in the Czech Republic are much more diverse with even look at psychology as science and you can find much more alternative views. I am not much of a fan for alternative directions, but in a way it amazingly serves for broadening of your own view, if you have the opportunity to listen to different attitudes then yours.

Activity vs. Pasivity

In psychology, diversity of people and thoughts is one of the most important ways how to even learn something psychological. And I am really interested in thoughts and ideologies of people around me. It seems that in UK the discussion is not so rich during lectures. There are some questions and discussions, but mostly result is of stating something obvious from the lectures. Technicaly these are things the teacher just wants to hear. Questions which are not of the same opinion or mood with the teacher's are handeled as not so valid to the discussion. Also when we discuss something, the people does not share their opinions or ideas. Mostly it is talking about observable or kind of "obvious"things. I kind of miss ideological or more abstract point of view. So in this way it seems to me people here are more passive.
On the other hand, there is a lot of free time, so they all have most of the week to work in some organization. Also volunteering is supported a lot and it seems everybody is doing something. So at least at practical experience students here are much ahead. Or it seems like it to me.

Theoretical vs. Practical Educating

Talking about practical issues, university is also offering some placements into practice, but it is only for the best students. Which I think is not so good, because university should take care about their students having such experience in my opinion. At my university we have compulsory placements in educational, clinical, organisational psychology and councelling. Again. It is much wider experience and at least it gives you the opportunity to really try more fields and find out what suits you the best.
I like how in Belfast, everything is much more focused on policy implications, possibilities of intervention and practical issues in general. Also when I see their material and technical support and possibilities... It is really crazy. There are guys whose thesis was based on 3 month intervention in Congo, I was participating in thesis research with eyetracking, another friend is measuring babies's brain activity in connection with language development. There is whole floor for animal experiments. Nobody is doing such projects at my university. Somehow I feel this is partly about money, but partly because psychological research is seen here as very important part of science. And because of the more evolutionist/biologist approach.
Also during lectures we work quite a lot with measurement tools. We can see some of them at my university during lectures too, but here we really had fun testing ourselves during seminars. So now I know that I am lost case with more than 2SD over mean on attention deficit scale of measurement tool for adults' ADHD. And more than 1SD lower than mean on hyperactivity scale. So I guess that's the reason why I can handle just sitting and listening during lectures. And live my life day dreaming. But I have some suggestions why I wouldn't trust this scale.
By the way, we can borrow many measurement methods from office for how long we want. That's amazing. Also because there are very well standardised methods and tests. They have sometimes even special norms for Northern Ireland. When I see how many methods are just not standardised in czech, with missing norms and missing latest version, I just see how much easier some issues are in english speaking countries.
Another amazing thing is that at my university, we still write essays and some academic or scientific stuff. Here we do much more funny stuff as writting policy briefs (short document for not academic audience about latest research and it's policy implications in some specific issue) or doing posters for parents about children atypical development. (I like the word "stuff". It explains so much.) I feel too old for being assessed for beauty of my poster, but it is kind of refreshing, that we write something with not so strict form and it feels much more "real" and useful.

Western countries experience

I was actually going to Belfast because it is one of the best universities in UK and in the world. Also UK looks good in CV. I was really looking forward to going to "the west", to study a lot at this amazing place. I love United Kingdom history and architecture and Irish culture. The best place to go study is simply Belfast.
Well, in a way nothing like epic world rank education is hapenning. But still I see a lot of western stuff. Like much more money or just the fact we are in UK. That means great international connections. English is spoken here and everywhere, so they can basicaly go anywhere and they don't have to study another language to study abroad and they won't struggle with it.
Measurement tools are developed in English, with norms for anything you can imagine. One of the repeating suggestions of classmates on following research of some study is that the research should be replicated in Northern Ireland. In a way for me it is kind of funny. I was imagining how a czech expensive study would be replicated in Slovakia just to try if it works the same. It can hapen but normaly we are just happy with results from any other country. No money, no people, no interest...
I also think that because for them it is not so important to be able to evaluate imported methods or care about bad translations or missing norms and so on, there is lesser emphasis put on statistics education and learning about constructing methods. But the shortcomings I see in system here are probably same for every module I am attending here.

So what about the quality?

I heard and saw here few very crazy and unbelievable things for me. And in a way I would be interested with what students from Belfast would be shocked in the Czech Republic.

• "Cognitive behavioral therapy wouldn't probably work with this poverty based problem, because the problem is on neural level." I am sorry, I don't remember what exactly it was about, but it was a lot behaviorally based. In my opinion, every psychological problem is somehow neural too. And if CBT can't "cure" it, because it is too much based on physical level, why CBT can't be effective as a facilitator of behavior and cognition? So what can we do? Are psychological problems possible to solve only with medical treatment?
• "So Piaget sth sth... Have you heard about Piaget?... Nobody?... Ah... OK. So he is very important." This was very crazy for me. We talked about Piaget even on high school. And I definately couldn't go through Bachelor's without knowing him. In UK people studying Master's from Childhood Adversity and Childhood Atypical Development never heard about him. Sometimes at home I really don't understand why we care so much about names and not about principles and processes itself. But this is not only about a name. It is more about the theory itself. And Piaget's theories are quite crutial for early development.
• First seminar in Assessment and Intervention module we did little test in groups about interpreting percentiles. It was very simple. Something without which we couldn't make it through first semester of statistics in my home faculty. So my group had 10 out of 10. But other groups had 7, 5 and 3 points. This was also scary. The statistics module focused on analysis in SPSS ended already. We wrote a test. I had one mistake because I couldn't understand few words in one question. 3 other people also had one mistake and remaining 50 people were behind us, having sometimes half points from a test based on one reading of all 5 presentations from lectures. I was really surprised by this. I wonder how this statistics level matches the great possibilities for research here. And also the proclaimed level of university. How is this measured? That a university is among 200 best in the world?
• Another thing is that we are provided here by exact examples how to do our essays and other works. When I went to consult a case study we will write, I basicaly got served everything I needed to know for preparation. In statistics we were writting a portfolio with few analysis. Nobody expected us to have some other knowledge then to repeat what we already did during lectures with teacher. I don't feel here I am expected to study more then is content of lectures. And it seems nobody does it. Also when you ask a question at a lecture, teacher's often don't understand it not only because my English is not perfect, but it seems they are replying to some less complex question because they just don't expect you to ask something beyond what they want to tell you. That made me stop asking questions because it gives me nothing. And other people seem not to ask much. But often when they start to speak, they have interesting ideas, practical,.... Maybe they are not used to sharing them. I don't know. But this sharing between students often teaches you the most.

So what is about these students after school so much better then about students from the Czech Republic? Studying at my faculty is much harder, much more critical thinking and independent study is needed to study in Brno then in Belfast. So what is the advantage? Lot of free time to work on your CV with more internships and so on? Or being native English speaking person? Or just the fact that everybody knows UK and half of the world think the Czech Republic is still Czechoslovakia (in case they know there is something like the Czech Republic)? Or the fact that UK is more economicaly and politicaly important, so they have more connections and probably put more money into research and so on?
I was thinking what could possibly be the cause of these strange things I wouldn't expect to meet in one of the best universities in UK. And I think there is very little feedback. I have modules, where we don't have exams, only work during semester. But the topics and content of work is kind of unrelated to what is content of the module. And there is no feedback on what we learned during the semester. There is no feedback telling me if I even understood what the readings were about. Or if I even read the articles itself or some notes. Teachers from my faculty often complain that students read so little. Honestly, I think teachers at my faculty are a bit underestimating the amount of work we do during semester and what everything we read for this work and also the quality of our work. At home I can get my essay back with thousands of notes on what is horrible about it and that I should make it better. And it is very very useful. Here if students know nothing in assessment module about interpreting percentiles on Master's, teacher will be surprised that somebody actually knows something. I have to say, last semester at home I screwed up in epic style. But if I would be here, I would be sweet.
I am finishing this horribly long post, happy that I finally wrote all of it down. I have very ambiguous feelings about studying here. Some things are totaly amazing about style in Belfast, some things make me question what is purpose of studying at all. Is it preparation for working and practical problems? Or is it building up the continuity of science and knowledge and being able to apply it? I think one without another doesn't make much sense. And in combining those two, I feel my faculty is doing much better job. So I hope we will still receive feedback, we will be still expected to work, expected to deliver good results and most importantly being helped, but expected to move forward and be independent. I think so far this is quite working. And maybe one day education from the Czech Republic will be considered on the same level as anywhere else from EU at least.

Motto of the day: Thank God for feedback! It's needed.

Friday 13th in Jail

Honestly, I don't know why is Friday 13th considered a bad luck day. And especially in land of clovers, rainbows and leprichauns it seems strange to me, that there even can be something like unlucky day. I am a person which is easily frightened, so I am not much into going to scary places. But I have to admit, when I saw that university offers participation at a night paranormal tour in Crumlin Road Jail on Friday 13th, it was too big temptation to resist. So I lost another 10 pounds (if it would be so easy with our weight too, right?) and waited for the D-Day to come.
Finaly, nearly 20 people from international students went for the jail tour. The tour is just amazing. The staff from the Crumlin road Jail created very cool tour with telling stories from history of the jail, mostly with some ghosty or deadly background. We went through many different locations and also got to know some interesting facts about the jail, not only about mysteries. It was dark and night, not much light anywhere in the buildings, the staff wore really cool costumes, sounds were just amazing. And the tour wasn't too scary, but still scary enough so that if you wanted to enjoy it, you could.

Entering the jail

Center of Cramlin Road Jail

Corridors of the jail

The central room

Because the atmosphere was based a lot on light and sound conditions, we weren't aloud to use cameras and mobiles, especially not with a flash. But my observations suggest that Indonesians are unstoppable and it is not possible to separate them from their cameras. Never ever. Six group selfies from the tour and our Indonesian friend at least at 3 photos of complete strangers proves it.
I don't want to tell more about the tour because it can hapen somebody of you will one day visit it. But I can tell you few more things which were really good. The logistics of the event was amazing. They had so precise timing. The visitor's groups were taking turns and switching places in very precise intervals and surprisingly it worked very well. Every staff member had his place and his job and whole planning of details of the tour was very nice. The costumes, the timing, the stories, the overall atmosphere, the guides and additional characters at the tour... I really appreciate this as a psychology student. I think there was bright mind behind planning the event. Also the guides were really good speakers and they made the stories sound interesting, even they could be seen quite "dry" told by somebody who wouldn't work with speach tempo, pauses, intonation and so on.
Even though thanks to all of this I really enjoyed the tour, I reminded to myself one big truth, why as a group we were probably not making the staff so happy with us. As always, international groups are just funny to watch. We never know where to go even though we were told many times. We don't laugh when we are expected to and we are also not shocked or scared when we are expected to. We just don't understand much. The more if the guide is speaking in some beautiful irish accent. Which is just beautiful, but impossible to decypher.
Overall I really loved the tour. It was nice Friday 13th evening even for me, an easily frightened girl. So I encourage you, go for it if you have the opportunity. In a way it is just a play, a theatre. And if you look at it like a piece of art, you can see even beauty in a paranormal tour.

Motto of the day: There is no true living abroad without going to jail. Even if you would have to pay for it.

One of the cool guides

How to tie up new coming tourists without any effort

Studying at Queen's

Today I had my first test here so I decided the time to finaly write about my studies came. I have to admit I was trying to avoid writting about studies at Queen's because so far I have very ambivalent attitude towards it. In a way, I have the best opportunity to enjoy my Erasmus stay. I am subscribed in 4 studying modules. I go to lectures only on Tuesday and Wednesday and I even don't have to be there. The rest of the week I have for so called independent study. That means I don't study. It is the worst way of motivation to do anything. Technically they gave me 5 days of week free. So as an Erasmus student, I will use them better. Like going outside, trying new kinds of cuisine, reading books I always wanted to read, learning new languages, I have the irish flute...

The level of education here is also not much motivating. I chose to go to Belfast because it's claimed to be one of the best univeristies in UK and in the world. I was also going to THE WEST. It probably made my expectations too high. But now I am only questioning myself, what are the criterias about "the best universites". One of official criterias is often openess to abroad workers and students. Check, they are opened. But does it show anything about the quality? Another criteria is amount of publications. Queen's is probably quite good at publishing papers. I don't know how it is at Bachelor's, but at Master's lot of things during whole studies is aimed at your field of study, your field of interest, your thesis. That's very useful. But is this really a criterium of a good university? Isn't it more about money which the university has to invest into research? Or isn't it at the expense of broader education? Especially when I don't percieve the knowledge of statistics and methodology is much deep here. I will cover this thoughts in more details in next post which I want to dedicate to approach to studying psychology at Queen's.

Another interesting thing is that higher education is really expensive in UK. And it is so obvious when you look around you. The people at lectures look so unified. They are nice, elegant, girls with make up, taking a lot of care about looks not only with face, clothes, but with figure too. I am used to very different, diverse and much more crazy people at university at home not only with their looks but also with their background, and with their thoughts and ideologies. Here I even don't know if people have some more deep thoughts because we never discuss it in the lectures, which is very important in psychology. When there is a discussion at lectures, we stay mostly at obvious things. The result doesn't go beyond, doesn't question anything which would make you think and discover the topic not only in literature, but in yourself. The approach to education is just very different here.

Another thing I've already mentioned before is that people here are living their routine, their every day lives at university. And if you are the only Erasmus student and the only one which is not native speaker, it is not much helpful to get into conversation or discussion and especially to get into some more closed group to go to cinema or even to discuss the studies. Because so far I am really not sure how to profit from local style or what is normal for them, how do they study and so on. It would help me so much just to hang out. So far I only managed to stop a converstaion on my classmate's facebook group :D. Still Irish people are really nice, smilling, when you ask them about something, they will gladly reply to you, but they doesn't seem to be much into really letting you in. I was hopping that czech people are different. But probably not so much. I imagined how group of my classmates changed when I switched to the Master's study program. There is a lot of new classmates who weren't with us at Bachelor's, but we logically stick to the groups we have already created in a way. And maybe I just can't see that, but it doesn't feel to me that we really took the new people in.

So the system here is different, some things are unbelievable for me, some others would be unbelievable for UK/Irish people if they would see czech lectures. Also there are really useful and good things in the approach here even though I am not much talking about them so far. Well, see in the next post. It takes some time to adjust to something different than you are used to from your home university. I miss lots of things from my education home, which I think is really great. And I still hope there is something which can really enrich me here. From some reason it is very hard to discover these things. But it is really getting better with time. I can see much more positive and useful things at Queen's with few weeks of education already passed. So lets just wait what I will discover.

Motto of the day: It can hapen the education style won't suit you at your new university. Be patient and find something you can still profit from. Different is often just different, not better or worse.  

Love and Distance

Often people talk about Erasmus like one big party and rich sexual experience. That doesn't sound much romantic. Actually a lot of people is coming to Erasmus and they have girlfriend or boyfriend back home or elsewhere. So the goal of going for Erasmus is not primarily in finding your "irish friend". Here you have lots of fun, lots of things are hapenning, you are surrounded by many exotic, interesting, new and amazing people. And every heart is meant to love. So it is easy to fall in love here or just enjoy the fact others desire some tenderness in their life too. Relationships are a big topic here. It is obvious because long distance is always something a bit different than living somewhat together. And here everybody in relationship is long distence except the ones who found their counter-part here. So I wanted to write some post about this topic too. Last week I was thinking about the long distance relationships a lot. Also I repeatedly received article claiming more than a million babies came to life thanks to Erasmus. So I decided now is the time to write all of it down.
I have some experience with long distance realtionships. And now my boyfriend is in Berlin, so I still have plenty of experience. But the distance is relative. Today I read in an article nice quote, that even when people are next to each other, they can be further away than other 2 people separated by half of the world. Even though it can be true, you have to admit that when you're chinese studying in UK and your boyfriend is in China, it is not much helping. The distance is connected with other practical stuff which can be complicating like different time zones (+8 hours is for me kind of unimaginable) and possibility to see each other (one-way flight to see your darling for 500 euros? Why not...). So even though for french people it can be hard too, to see each other once in a month, my Malaysian friend will see her boyfriend in September. And that's kind of difference. And it makes me feel good because Berlin suddenly seems like a piece of cake :). I know I'm a mean person, but seeing your misery is much easier than anyone else's is so sweet :-D.
I don't know how others are influenced by not seeing their boyfriend or girlfriend for a long time. So I will talk about things I can see on myself. For example when you are not with your partner, you miss him. And you are not able to experience everything which belongs to the "normal" relationship. Like only physical presence. Because having a partner is not only about doing things or talking. Sometimes just knowing he's here is enough to be happy. And sometimes without any contact the distance make the gaps and differences between you more visible. Sometimes I am even more fatalistic when I see some imperfection, partialy because when you are further away it is more complicated to work on them or just accept the fact that the differences are normal and healthy.
Thank god we're living in the era of internet. I wouldn't like to send a romance letters through pigeons. Anyway, it is hard to meet a pigeon here, moreover to catch it. But we have now emails, facebook, what's app or skype available.  So it is not hard to find a way how to talk to each other, even see each other or have diner together. On the other hand internet can cause troubles too because it creates a lot of space for misinterpretation. And as my wise friend notted: "When I'm in the mood I just interpret everything as I want." This people do in normal lives, via internet it's even easier.
Internet enables us to talk. We need to talk about serious stuff, about how we feel about this distance, how we feel in everyday life, we need to talk about fun stuff, we need to talk without any purpose, just because we like to talk together, we need to talk. It helps and it makes the feelings alive and vivid. And sometimes you need to be in silence too. Somewhat I find myself with more difficulties to truly listen when I talk online. Because practicaly you are talking towards a machine where things beep and sometimes it freezes, and sometimes the feeling of talk is just totaly different than in person... But internet is amazing and we should use it fully to get through the distance. It reminds you of these nice things like how you like his smile, or his face when he is thinking, or how he dance singing sailor's songs. Whatever. Internet is a powerful tool. And even though some people like to say it keeps people further away or socialy isolated, it has a great power to connect people too.
Believe it or not, the distance can have positive effects too. It is a matter of trust. You must be able to trust your partner, he must trust you and you should accept he's trusting you. That's actually something different. But if you see it is working, you can feel much more comfortable. Trust is giving you solid ground, trust is contradiction of fear. If you don't trust each other, it only causes troubles. And if you have partner who worth it, it's easy to give him your trust. As always, we have our up and downs. But the trust is also way out of the down part. And imagine how it will strenghten you if you will get through this :). Going study or work abroad or just to another part of country is a step to unknown space. And the trust (or faith if you want) is what helps you to do the step in the first place.
As I was writting in the "To Live or to Party" post, sometimes I am too driven by the noise and action around me. And relationship can offer the time and space to slow down, calm down, settle a bit. For me it also comes with a question of what identifies me and what brings me joy, what I miss and what I need. So sometimes I need fun and action outside the dorms, sometimes I need them just with my computer and a person in the sky(pe).
It is interesting how at home it is sometimes surprising and considered so hard to have your boyfriend just in a capital city Prague, or in some other part of the Czech Republic. But as you can see. There are much more crazy long distance relationships, like from UK to China. And they can work :).

Motto of the day: Love moves mountains. (Láska hory přenáší.) czech proverb

Preparations and nervosity

There is lots of rumors about the crazy amount of paperwork before leaving to study abroad, specifically Erasmus. I would like to write now a bit about my experience and the general stuff you can meet during preparations. I feel kind of strange to write about these feelings now because everything hapenned so long time ago. And maybe this is the post which should have been the first one on my blog. So let's start and firstly deal with not so funny stuff.

Paperwork
Before going to study abroad, you need to do some paperwork. It is good to start early. (Booooooring, I know). Make sure about the dates you need to fulfill. At my university in the Czech Republic we have really good website of student's mobility office where they will give you detailed step by step guide. I guess every university has something like this. But watch out, there can be special documents required only by the other university. At Queen's I didn't have any problem. Sometimes it just take them long time to send you something back, but if you adress them again, they are very helpfull and they admit when something is their fault, which was nice. I think I took care just about 3 or 4 documents, 6 mails. It costed me 2 visits to mobility center and 1 to my faculty. So no big deal. Don't worry. If you do everything like you should, there will be no obstacles between you and your studies in foreign country.

Studies
Unfortunately you firstly need to do well with your studies, so that you are able to leave your university and study elsewhere. For me this was pain. Last semester I had quite some problems with finishing few of my courses so I had one exam even in the afternoon before night leaving to the airport. I got the exam only because of mercy of the teacher. Otherwise I would never be able to finish the course thanks to the crazy requirements. So this part of your life can get very tricky and it only causes stress in time when you would rather be peacefully preparing for your trip. Try to plan the exams ahead if you have the possibility. And prepare for them really well.

Other preparations
You will need to settle other things before leaving like visa, health insurance, making a bank account or finding an accommodation. Also it is good to find some free time when you will search for the minor things like different outlets or daily usage objects you could need but they are not obvious in the place you are going to. On the other hand, if you won't be prepared, sometimes it is challenging, sometimes it is funny, sometime the preparation is not needed and sometimes the surprise can be just really really bad. But some people enjoy all of these possibilities and it belongs to the experience of moving abroad even for a short time.

Feelings
I have to admit it wasn't so easy to leave. I was leaving to very new environment for quite a long time. I also put a lot of effort to find an accommodation, I was hoping everything will be fine, but in lots of things there is still high level of uncertainty. And the accommodation in my case didn't went well. I was leaving my family, also the long distance is not much profitable for relationships. So I was a bit nervous. I was also nervous from preparations, the exams weren't going well, that made me nervous and this nervousity was influencing my preparations and learning for other exams and my behavior and so on. I saw exams home are not going in the best way and I was nervous how it can go abroad. I was nervous if I will understand the people, if I did everything alright in advance, if I packed everything important. Lot of things to worry about obviously. But I have to say. Even though first days here were kind of crazy, when you adjust a bit and solve the rush and chaos in the beginning, everything is fine. Even when I sat in the right airplane, my nervosity was much better. And then I gradually found my way to have comfortable and nice life here. And it is hapenning :). So if you are freaking out during such moments like me, take in mind that the nervosity is normal. There is a lot of things which you don't know how they will end. But when they start hapenning, they will also pass and mostly with only good outcomes :). The best really is if you have some place where you can safely return in any time and you feel there kind of home. Then you have really the best circumstances to survive your studies abroad.

Motto of the day: Try to prepare for maximum of issues in advance. In the era of internet there's only few things which you can't solve from home.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Northern Ireland - the worst town in NI

I never hitchhiked. Friend came up with an idea to go hitchhiking. First people who would stop some car were supposed to ask where is it going and they would send others a message saying what is our final destination this day. My friend put the question like: "You guys seem crazy enough, so what if we could go hitchhiking and..." So even though I am not a hitchhiking fan, this was challenge only to try how much crazy I am.
I had to wake up at 8 a.m. for the first time since lectures started in Belfast. So in the morning it was really painful, but finally I managed to get up and go to the meeting. What a surprise - we were only 2 people, me and my serbian friend who came up with the idea. In a way hitchhiking in 2 is the best possibility. So I wasn't sad it was not a massive event. What I considered bad idea is hitchhiking at the entrance to highway where noone should stop to you. Also it is really not safe in my opinion. But I decided to trust the more experienced hitchhiker in the group. And surprisingly a lady stopped for us. She was really lovely, on her way to work. Firstly we thought we will change a car and continue to Giant's Causeway but then we got information from the lady's husband that it will be heavy rain nearly everywhere during afternoon. So the lady offered us she can take us to town where she works, but she was saying things like: "There is nothing interesting." "It is officially rated as the worst town in Northern Ireland." "There is even not a place to hike." The name of the town was Antrim.
I found only this page and lots of others which say Antrim is actually the worst place to live in Northern Ireland. The idea behind our trip was to get somewhere where we wouldn't go normally this day. So the worst town in Northern Ireland seemed like an epic opportunity. The lady had to be in work just for an hour so we  agreed that in hour and half she will pick us up and take us back to Belfast before the rain.
I have to say, Antrim is just lovely small town on the shore of the biggest lake in Northern Ireland - Lough Neagh. It has interesting history, the battle of Antrim took it's place here. There are old walls and ruins of old castle, beautiful castle gardens and other old buildings, bridges and old market place with the Old Courthouse. In the gardens, there was also a strange, 9m high hill which was called The Motte. Actually there was from 12th century a centre of an Anglo-Norman manor. And later in 18th century it was a strategic place to have a canon. So even though it looks like a hill without much sense, it was actually quite an important place. As a bonus we bought local beers in Antrim. One of them was called O Hara's, the other one The Goat's Butt... really smelled and tasted like a goat. Scary. We left Antrim right in the time when it was starting to rain.

Old walls with a gate

The Old Courtehouse

Tower in the Castle Gardens

Ancient Motte - the strange hill

View on the Castle Gardens from Ancient Motte

Romantic path

Clotworthy House - old stables

After coming back to Belfast, we went to see St. George's Market. Beautiful traditional market place with a nice atmosphere. There was playing beautiful life music, so the shopping was pleasant even though the place was crowded. There is anything from fresh fish, mushrooms and other food, over home made clothes to jewellery and books. At the stand with bakery we met lady from Croatia so my serbian friend was speaking in serbian to her. I was watching them and stupid smiling. But I could understand most of the things they were saying. As a bonus we cooked delicious soup with mushrooms from the market. It was really beautiful day. Next time I hope we will really reach the Giant's Causeway on our hitchhiking trip.

St. George's Market from outside

St. George's Market from the inside

I saw fresh fish in a market for the first time. Sea is close!

Wanna taste The Goat's Butt?

Motto of the day: Even though locals say something is ugly, you can still find some touristic beauty in it. After all, who can say that he was in the worst place to live in Northern Ireland?