Life Update: Moving, Changing Jobs, Traveling

Hi guys,

So you may have noticed that I've been M.I.A (missing in action) and neglecting my blog for quite some time. To be honest with you I have not been happy with the layout and the presentation of my blog for a few months now and I find blogger to be limiting in terms of customisation and personalisation. It can be very frustrating when I put in so much effort to write a post that I am genuinely proud of and for it then to be presented in a way that I find unappealing.

-Paris

Imagine writing an A+ quality essay for your English class and then accidentally spilling tea on it the morning it is due to be handed in. Although your essay is great you fear that the awful tea stain will bring down the quality of your piece of work in the eyes of your teacher. So I've been working on revamping the look of my blog. I attempted to learn how to use Photoshop which by the way is how I created my header. I played around with different colour schemes and fonts until I found a style that best suited my personality and best represented me. I'm happy with how it turned out, however, it's far from finished. The layout of posts still gets on my nerves but the overall design is how I'd hoped it would be. It was about time I got this show back on the road.


So without further ado, let's get onto the actual topic of this post - my life updates.

If you've been following me over on Instagram ( @theproudoutsider ) you will probably know that I had applied to go on ERASMUS exchange in the University of Glasgow to study Immunology. There's another life update in itself. I did better than I had expected to do in my summer exams and so I received my first preference for specialisation in my sophister years.I was so ready to leave for Glasgow, I had spent nights on end in search for conveniently located student accommodation that was within my budget and I had finally found something. My grant application had been accepted and I had gathered up enough savings to get me through the year. I was ready for the move. Unfortunately it didn't work out. I found out in mid-August that despite receiving an official letter of acceptance,the course had been overbooked (from 16 students to 39 students) and that they no longer could provide the supports that would be needed to accommodate an Erasmus student. 
I was very disappointed. I didn't care too much about Glasgow in itself but I was hyped for the experience of living abroad it's always been a dream of mine to live in a different country and to learn to adjust to a new way of life. To me it's like a cleanse. You are separating yourself from your ego. You're breaking down your self constructed boundaries and destroying the deceptive zones of comfort that hold us back from new and insane experiences, that limit us from making the most out of our lives. I don't want to go too deep into my thoughts on that or I could ramble on all day, we will have to leave that for the topic of a future post.

So anyways with that new opportunity gone I was determined to create a new experience of independence for myself here in Ireland. What I didn't anticipate was the difficulty that comes along with dismantling your life in one place and rebuilding it in another. I was incredibly lucky in that the first apartment I viewed accepted my offer. I was delighted because it was perfectly located, a 10 minute walk from my classes at Trinity and 5 minutes away from O'Connell Street.  So I had my accommodation sorted practically straight away. Finding a job on the other hand has been proving itself to be quite the challenge. I've been trying to transfer from my current store to another close to my new place and it is not going as planned.
Instead of letting the frustration and the stress get the better of me I have decided to pack my bags and take this free time to go and visit my sweetheart and see how he's getting on in his new home. Ronald, my boyfriend, has moved to Darmstadt for his ERASMUS+ exchange. He is in his 3rd year of Computer Science and German. He is going to be away for 12 months and I am going to miss him like crazy!

- Paris

I feel like I haven't traveled a lot this summer compared to how much I usually do. I spent the majority of the summer working full-time so I can afford to live away from home this academic year. But I still managed to go on 4 small trips throughout the 3 months I had off.

1.  Firstly in May when my exams were finally over with I visited the city of Paris with Ronald and it was honestly such a magical trip. Paris has found itself a special place in my heart.
2.  A week later, myself and Amina took a short trip to Brussels it was a laughable disaster of a trip. We used couchsurfing for the first time and God was it a fail, not only that but the only free day we had happened to be the one day everything closes even the public parks.
3. I went on an Erasmus exchange programme in a small town in the South of Poland called Porinin. It was a jam packed week of activites. I met amazing people, danced all night and sweated myself to skinny. 
4. Then in late July I went on my last trip of the summer. I went to a place called Murcia, it is apparently one of the driest regions in Spain. Our accommodation was in the middle of nowhere. Temperatures reached up to 39 degrees Celsius while I was there AND let me add that there was no air-conditioning in our accommodation. Also to make things that little bit more intense I happened to be there for a dance programme so I was dancing outdoors enveloped in the Spanish heat. The programme was 10 days an it was definitely not what I expected. I'm used to dancing hip-hop or choreographed piece. This programme was a little out of my comfort zone. It was a type of dance called Contact Improvisation. It was very hippy and a kind of meditative movement. It was definitely an adventure in itself.

- Brussels

Tatra Mountains - Poland

Spain 

I don't want to go into too much detail of my trips away because I'm planning to write a little travel series reviewing places and telling you the stories of my expeditions.

My first day back as a Junior Sophister is the 25th of September. I'm both super excited and slightly nervous. I want this to be a great year for me. My first two years of university I hadn't been entirely focused on my studies. I was traveling ALOT and I wanted to try push myself to do as much things as was physically and mentally possible. I was super involved in extra curricular activities to the point where I spent more time doing them than paying attention to my actual course material. I was giving speeches, writing up applications, playing sport, attending conferences on an almost daily basis. I think I became so overly involved that I began to lose sight of why I was doing those things. I was committing myself to some things that I actually had no interest in or wasn't really enjoying just for the sake of keeping busy. This summer I really put my business life on hold. I didn't go on any business trips. I realised that I needed to learn what is it that I love and concentrate on that instead of dedicating my life to every and any opportunity that presents itself no matter how insanely incredible it may seem. 

The past two years have been fantastic and eventful and I am honestly looking forward to the surprises that are ahead. If you'd like to stay tuned with what's going on in my life and are as excited as me for my upcoming blogposts please give that subscribe button a click!

How was your summer, did you get up to anything crazy?
let me know in the comments below