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| Juuso and Allu at Helsinki-Vantaa airport |
We left on Sunday morning accompanied by a really sunny and hot day in Finland. As it was the second day of Midsummer weekend, we had a bit of a problem finding a place where to eat on our way to the airport. Luckily there were some fast food joints offering their services to starving travelers, and we headed to the airplane with our stomachs full.
The flight to Dublin went well, but was a little delayed. Fortunately we had reserved enough time to get to the train station from the airport. Our journey there was very easy by airport coach. The weather in Dublin was cooler, cloudy and a little bit rainy. On our way we saw a lot of people watching the euro football game that was on, and many houses were decorated with the flags of Ireland. Sadly Ireland lost the match to France.
After hopping on the train it was an easy and relaxing journey to Thurles that took us one and a half hours. We were able to just enjoy the Irish landscape, where green is definitely the keyword. The scenery was very beautiful even with the clouds hanging low in the sky. The sun came out once in a while when we were passing the small villages and meadows where horses and sheep were grazing.
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| The scenery on our way to Thurles |
Laura picked us up from Thurles railway station and we headed straight to the apartments where our volunteers would stay for a month. It was a nice area with student villas, but because all of the students had moved out for the summer it felt a bit abandoned and spooky at first. Laura told us that there will be some spanish exchange students coming to live there soon. For us, Thurles seemed like a nice little town with some 8000 inhabitants.
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| Old tower |
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| The river view in Thurles |
The next day we met some of the staff members at the TRYS office and took a quick tour at the youth project community center. After that we jumped on a bus accompanied by a crowd of local children aged 13-16 years, and started our afternoon trip to Limerick. The ride there offered us some more sightseeing of beautiful landscape, small towns and villages and Tipperary city streets. We also saw some great looking old castles on our way.
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| Juuso, Vesa and Allu in front of the youth project center |
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| Inside the center |
In Limerick we all got to race with go karts. We had a lot of fun on the race track trying to get as fast laps as we could!
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| Allu, Susanna and Juuso getting ready for karting |
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| Some serious racing going on |
After an exhausting afternoon we had a quick visit in the nearby fast food restaurant that helped us to grab some lost calories. After that we started our journey back to Thurles.
In the evening we had a chance to discuss about the practicalities of the coming month with Laura and our volunteers, and after that we had a lovely dinner at the next door Indian restaurant.
Then it was time to give farewell to Juuso and Allu and wish them a good and rewarding month with a lot of new experiences in Ireland. We had a strong feeling that everything is going to work out just fine. With minds at ease we headed to our hotel to get some rest before strating our journey back to Finland.
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