Tag: international students

Spending the Christmas Holidays in Ireland

Spending Christmas away from home could come across as a challenge. While normally, the rigor and busy schedule of the MBA hardly gives you time to miss home , as an international  student  the start of the holidays can come across the same as the existential crisis you get when you finish binge watching a Netflix series.

Most of the students look forward to the Christmas holidays as they finish exams by the 3rd week of December. For an international student, it would certainly be advisable to have plans ready,  either to visit your home country or anywhere else around Europe. Ireland literally shuts down during Christmas with no public transportation or grocery stores open on Christmas day. And if you have no family or friends, its going to get monotonous.

Fortunately for me, my MBA peer John Keegan asked me to join him and his family for Christmas. However, due to unforeseen circumstances we had to drop the plan at the last minute. I mentioned this part as it shows how considerate your Irish MBA peers can be, and that they understand how tough it is for an international student to spend holidays alone. I didn’t make any plans to visit home or anywhere else as both my flatmates from India started working in Dublin in November 2017. Hence, I had plans of spending the holidays with them exploring Dublin. On Christmas day, my friends and I went for a walk around the city centre. It was both a haunting and a serene experience. The streets which are usually bustling with people were empty. It is in this moment that you take a deep breath and realise how beautiful Dublin is. Fortunately, we stumbled upon an Indian Kebab shop, which seemed like the only shop open in all of Dublin. After having the most amazing kebab for Christmas dinner there, we headed home on the lonely streets of the Dublin city centre.

As for New Year’s Eve, my American house mate Shannon Dean suggested that we drive down to Cork to celebrate. Again, it was a fabulous experience wherein we sat in a cosy Cork pub celebrating the new year with some new found Irish friends. This is the best thing about Ireland, you can talk to anyone and everyone, and make acquaintances if not friends very easily.

All in all, it was a successful Christmas even though I didn’t plan anything in advance. I would however recommend international students to make plans early on for Christmas and not to wait till the last minute. In addition to this, make friends – in your accommodation and your cohort – they are going to be your family away from home!

Bhavya Verma, Full – Time MBA 2017-2018

Celebrating Lunar New Year in Dublin

Vietnamese Student Body

On February 2nd 2017, our Vietnamese study body organised a warm celebration of Lunar New Year with international students, Irish families with adopted Vietnamese children and members of the Vietnamese community in Dublin.

Lunar New Year is a very meaningful occasion for many Asian countries such as China, Korea and Vietnam, etc. In Vietnam, Lunar New Year is called Tet, which means the ‘feast of the first morning of the first day’. Tet is an important occasion for family reunions, when we cherish the success of past year, let the troubles go and look forward to happiness, success and good fortune in the upcoming year.

Quiz contest about Vietnam’s facts
Quiz contest about Vietnam’s facts

As an organising member, I was glad to see many international students interested in the event. We welcomed over 300 guests despite the heavy rain over the whole day. All the efforts spent over the last 3 months seemed to be rewarding when we engaged with participants through traditional games, when international students enjoyed and took pictures in our traditional dresses or when they attentively watched the performances. Looking back, I was reluctant to take the role as Event Director due to a heavy schedule in the first semester and unfamiliar study environment. But now I felt all the experience I had was such a great one. There were moments of tension the ‘ brain-storming’ stage, yet we had gone a long way to learn how to be flexible in our plan, to be appreciative of each other’s ideas, to give more than to take and to put ourselves forward.

Myself in ‘ao dai’ - traditional dress
Myself in ‘ao dai’ – traditional dress

When I first landed in Dublin 4 months ago, I was impressed by a small little thing – signage. All are written in English and Gaelic. Although nowadays, Gaelic is becoming less popular among young people, the presence of Gaelic in almost all public areas is such a great reservation of culture and traditions. Recent years in my home country have seen debate over whether Lunar New Year should be combined with New Year holiday in the Gregorian calendar. Advocates would point to economic loss and overspending during such a long holiday. For me, I still hope that every year we will still celebrate Lunar New Year and that our people will never lose tradition because of a so-called cost-benefit analysis. Simply, globalization and revolution are not to be carried out at the expense of intrinsic values. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

 Khanh Nguyen ~ Full-Time MBA