May Day

Oh look there's Mira right behind me!

Today was yet another normal day, expect for us who had come to this land of leprechauns all the way from Finland.  We Finns were going to celebrate May day, Vappu.

I and Miras May day consisted of explaining what Vappu means, what we do in Finland to celebrate it and missing our graduation hats because this would have been the first year when we could have used them. Of course because we both had to work on Friday (I would have to wake up earlier than usual) we didn’t go out to celebrate or anything like that. We bought a cake and died our hair.

Hurray, what a May Day! On that day I finally became a fake ginger head!

Business card

(CCA logo source)

As I previously wrote I like to tell about different things I do at work. Today I was asked to make business cards to my boss and one of the coworker. I had heard about them talking about me doing their cards but I really wasn’t sure if I’d do them or not. Simply put I felt like I could finally do them and get it over with, I was a bit terrified. They had the design of the old cards and using Photoshop I designed some different backs for the cards and hunted another font that would go together with the official one. In the end they were pleased with my work and so was I.

Reason why I was nervous was because I knew I had to use Photoshop. I still don’t feel very comfortable using it but after modifying so many pictures of books I think I should be more secure about working with Photoshop.

Needle in a haystack

I usually like to write about different things I did at CCA. Of course while doing these little things, like cleaning, painting walls, going to the shop and things like that I was always also doing my “photos of books”-project. On Tuesday I did it all day, except the last half an hour of which I and my coworker did something really frustrating: We went to the infamous storage room and we had to look for one little screw, which apparently belonged to an exhibition that had been in the CCA half a year ago. So for the last 30 minutes we looked for the screw and talked about how awesome it would be is the whole storage room could be organized, it was kind of our mutual, annoying dream.

More pictures of that dreadful storage room.

 In the end we didn’t even find it. But the good news where that on Tuesday I and Mira bought tickets to the Belfast Comicon!

Popcorn

Task of the day: Make popcorn, both sweet and salty. I burned the first ones, but then I got the hang of it and rest of them were actually quite perfect. I wonder if I can write it to my CV: “Can manage to make popcorn for great masses.”

At three o’clock adults, children and dogs were all set to watch a movie called “Ernest & Celestine” a movie about friendship of a bear and a mouse. My boss had already fixed the projector so movie watching went smoothly. I took some pictures of the event, watch a bit of the movie and ate some sweet popcorn.

Movie day went well, I cleaned up a bit (children + popcorn= popcorn everywhere) and got the rest of my Saturday off. It was really nice of CCA to throw such an event, just so people could enjoy a free movie and a bowl of popcorn. I have to say that the sweet popcorn was so weird (I never had sweet ones before) that I decided to buy a package to take with me to Finland. 
I searched picture from the movies cover from Google and because unfortunately I don't have pictures from the main event here's a link for CCA's Facebook site where there are lots of great photos from different exhibitions and events.

White wall and home alone

CCA always tends to surprise me.

On Friday I had a simple task which was that I had to paint a white wall in the library area, white. I putty little holes in the wall and painted the dirty and grayish spots with white paint. Once again I really liked what I was doing, whichever it was because of the feeling of painting for the longest time or just because I was wearing this gorgeous orange overalls.

Anyways I did this odd little job because on Saturday there was going to be a free screening for children and pets (and anybody who wanted to watch a free movie). I had bought popcorn and I and my boss had dug out a video projector and a DVD player from the storage room. So everything was kind of set for tomorrow, expect that the projector wasn’t working, but still my boss decided that I could leave earlier.

At evening I ate dinner with my host family, without Mira, because she was at Dublin with her boss doing some work things. I was constantly asked if I miss Mira or feel lonely without her. I didn’t miss her, of course I didn’t she left this morning and would be back on the around 9pm. But at the same time I couldn’t help picturing how weird it would be if it was just me and my two host fathers…

Rest of the evening I was completely alone, fathers had once again gone somewhere (birthday, party, restaurant etc.) Alone, all by myself I felt great. It was weird but at the same time refreshing. I made some tea and sat down in the dining room, whit my sketchbook. And I did what I sometimes do when I’m home alone in Finland in my family’s dining room: I drew, sang, talked to the cats when they passed by and enjoyed the fact that I was just by myself.

This must have been the only time on my exchange period when I was home alone. When Mira arrived I told her about my great day and asked her about Dublin. I told her that I didn’t miss her (although our host fathers would tell otherwise) but in the end I was glad she was back home.

Lunch

Tuesday started as like any other normal nice workday. Usually I bring my own lunch to work or go to the store at lunch break or even eat with Mira (Subway). Sometimes my coworkers have a habit of eating together. One of them goes to store and buys (it seems like it) anything that could go in to a salad or with salad for example cheese, lettuce, bell pepper, tomatoes, beans, ready-made-salad with rice that you can eat with your homemade salad and of course weird and delicious bread like pumpkin seed bread. Today I was asked to join this fun for the first time, maybe it was because I was about to have lunch at the same time as them (usually I eat it later than others and I thing it somehow strange.) I was really taken when my boss said I could eat with them, not because of the food but because she said that I'm part of the team. It was nice, I listened them talking about work, politics and such and it was really interesting. Of course it was nice and fun because what wouldn't be in Ireland? Well everything can't be perfect and after lunch I got the worst headache I've ever had. I started to feel nauseous but I kept on working. It wasn't nice at all because my coworkers would have wanted to go somewhere together with me in the evening. When it was time to head home I apologized that I should have to stay home today because I felt simply terrible. They were worried but at least I was able to explain what was wrong with me. I even got some medicine from one of my coworker, which didn't really have any effect because they were mostly caffeine.
I went straight to home and called Mira and told her I wasn't feeling very great.
At home I explained the situation to my host father and he said I should use hot water bottle. Apparently hot water bottle cures everything from stress to cancer.
I rested the rest of the evening and couldn't even go to work on Wednesday.

And if you're wondering what was wrong with me I can just say: "God, do I like being a woman!"

Ewing Street

Today I and Mira finally fulfilled our trip to the Ewing street!

Why was it so important to visit there?

 1. It’s sounds kind of funny, ‘cause we say it emphasizing the “Ewwwww”-part. It’s an inside joke.

2.  Before we were sure of having a host family, we thought about having a place in Ewing street.

Me~

Beginnig of the books

My work area.

For a few days I did listed up some of the important stuff in the storage room and making excel sheets out of it. But after the inventory was finished something great happened.

CCA gave me my own project which I could do whenever there isn’t anything more important to do. They wanted me to photo every one of their books in their library (Library being one bookshelf) so they could use those pictures in their website. I was little unsure because I don’t care much of taking photos but when I started this project it just sucked me in. It sounds dull but I liked it. I got to work with books and a system camera, I even got to use Mac computer to Photoshop my pictures. It was about ten to twenty different pictures of one book, there was no time limit and I got to work all alone. It felt great.

"Blankets" I'd like to read it again

 On that day I also discussed about graphic novels with my co-worker. She told me how she doesn’t really like to read them but at the same time she really wanted to hear my opinion about them, because comics and graphic novels are really close to my heart. She even lent me two books, “Blankets” and “Saga, part one.” This is just a one example how nice they really were and how I was able to discuss with them as they treated me as one of their own. I always remember my boss saying that I’m part of the team now, I remember feeling really flustered and most of all happy.

Back to work

...to this.

From this...

My first full workweek started on Tuesday. It was nice to be back and my boss was asking if I had done anything exciting on Monday. I told her about our PC world adventure, because for me walking and getting lost in new places in a foreign country, that’s exciting.

Tuesday wasn’t about cleaning, it was about sorting. I got three boxes full of wires and was told to Velcro tape them so they would stay rolled, you know, so they’d stop being a big pile of tangled up wires.

Just a little corner of the horror.

 Once again I enjoyed these little tasks that might seem somehow futile. But what I learned was that no work is futile, especially when it comes to cleaning and keeping things in order. Besides it’s nice change of pace when you have different things to do.

I even got to hear plans about cleaning up the storage room. It’s a really small space backed up with everything from wineglasses to Nokias cellphones. I’m certain that that room is going to give me nightmares, because I knew that I would have to work with it, maybe even clean it and the whole thought just gave me chills. It was like this: “I wanted it to be cleaned and I wouldn’t mind cleaning it, but it’s such a huge job to do that even the thought of it is overwhelming.”

But for now I simply started out with inventory.

Waterside

On Monday I and Mira took a little trip to the other side of the bridge called: Waterside. Reason why, was because my laptops charger had stopped all of a sudden and I had to go to place called PC world to get a new one. We had a map and after asking our fathers and Foyles opinion about where we should go, we had a destination called Crescent link and that PC world would be there.

Despite everyones suggestion of taking a buss, me and Mira decided to walk all the way, mostly because we thought it would be more fun that way, more of an adventure and because we still didn’t really get that in Britain everybody uses either a buss or taxi most of the time. Also walking = cheaper and healthy. It was about 3,2miles from our house to PC world, expect it was even more because we got a little lost.

We got lost even though we had our little tourist map which didn’t even have all the roads in it so can you really blame us for being lost? We asked help from a nice man who worked in a pet/gardening shop. He drew us a map which was way better than ours, even if it was really quickly drawn.

Honestly this was way better than the map we had before.

We continued our journey walking besides a motorway. We even saw some kid wearing their school uniforms, they were strangely fancy and cute at the same time.

Moving on we finally reached our destination: “PC World” I was very proud of us and tired and hungry. But as if an reward of our long trip, I got free charger for my laptop. Don’t ask me how, nice fellow just handed me a one from their storage room and said it was free.

Before heading back home we ate in a Subway (Subways in Ireland were so much cheaper than in Finland so they quickly became one of our haunts.) We went to the nearest bus station and waited a while. After all that walking it was really nice to take a bus back home (enough exercise for one day).

At home I was finally able to open my laptop and start writing my blog about Ireland, except I wasn’t. 

My laptop didn’t work. Was I pissed? Yeah...

Trip to the beach

I’m so excited!

My boss invited me to the beach with her and her adorable son (I don’t usually even care for children but this one: adorable!). She even said that I should take Mira with me. So after driving a while we had crossed Northern-Ireland's border and were officially in Ireland and more importantly at the beach.
 

Me wanting to try how cold the water was.

It was pretty warm and also very windy, but I really enjoyed watching the waves and the sea, exploring my surroundings, collecting seashells and making our ”video-blog” with Mira. So as you may see trip to the beach wasn’t about swimming or stuff like that (Too cold for swimming). There even was a playground next to the beach and of course me and Mira had to try out its cable swing/track.

After the beach we went to other one where there was this interesting old barricade/stonewall place...
Here are some pictures that might help you understand what I'm trying to say:

 

Very artsy

There was people singing and playing music in the inside, tea and coffee on the outside and some of my bosses friends. It was all for raising money and purely about people doing together something, well nice. Because we were officially in Ireland we donated two euros that we found from Miras wallet (I only had pounds with me.)  

I was truly thankful for my boss to have taken us to such fun places. It was a great day.

Let's try working again

Today was Miras first workday and mine first actually working day. Once again I was excited and a bit nervous. My first task was to mop the whole gallery. I was kind of expecting that my work tasks would include cleaning. I didn’t mind cleaning up the place especially when I got to hear praises of how well I had mopped the floor.

Honestly the working environment at CCA was really motivating, it felt really nice when they expressed how thankful they were for even the little things I did, even though I was just doing my job. Along with mopping the floor I got really interesting task. I got to pack actual artwork. They asked me if I’m comfortable with handling artwork and I thought that I trust myself enough that I won’t brake anything (at least something that important). So I cleaned them with little brushes and vacuum cleaner (they were kind of big plasterish, round works or smt. like that… Hard to explain)

But for a moment I felt like a real professional cleaning them, making boxes and wrapping them in bubble wrap. Working with works of art was surprisingly interesting and maybe something I would like to do again in the future.

After work I was supposed to meet Mira in front of Foyle, we crisscrossed and it took a while for us to find each other. We really should get those prepaid phones.
 

Pile of spinning lamb wool.

At the time I was working in the CCA there was BOM exhibition by 
Bea McMahon. So I wanted to show some pictures about the exhibition. It also two televisions on the walls which showed a video and there was also a song included. I still remember how I heard it everyday at work. "I want to touch, I want to touch you" was the chorus. Later on heard that the song was actually about dogs.

First day at wok

My first day at work at CCA

Was I nervous? You bet.

Outside

Inside

Most of the time I spent worrying how I would get there. Gladly Mira walked to the Foyle with me, explained where I should go and then went to finish our “Feargals photos-project.”

With the help of a printed map I got from Feargal I found my workplace. It took about 20-25minutes for me to walk from my house to CCA. So there I was a little before twelve o'clock and all the doors were closed. I knocked and walked back and fort. I sat at the stonewall and stared at the gallery hoping that someone would show up.

After waiting a while the main door finally opened and I rushed inside the gallery. I was still nervous and on top of that worried that I was late. I met my “boss” a very nice looking and brisk woman. She showed me the whole gallery explaining what they do, how they work and some things I should know. Including the main space where the exhibition was held, there was an office room with four worktops, one toilet, storage room and a library/workshop/lunch room, where I would be spending most of my time.  

Stonewall where I was sitting and sometimes eating my lunch.

She even said that she didn’t have work that day but was there so she could meet me. Somehow I was really taken and as I watched her talking and smiling I couldn’t help thinking to myself: “She is so short (compared to me most people are, me being 179.5cm) but she has this huge aura of authority. She must be a great boss.”

I was still nervous as heck.

My first job assignment:

I got a bunch of leaflets (advertising CCA’s current exhibition) and was told to hand them out. So my first workday included me visiting different places in Derry: coffee houses, galleries, shops, cinemas. I was surprised how nice people were to me when I asked them if I could leave some leaflets to them, usually they even had a little spot for things like that.

I finished quite quickly and got rest of the day off, so I went back to the Foyle and went to help Mira finish up our Feargal project.

Honestly speaking I’m glad my work started before Mira’s because she did a great job modifying all those pictures and I just wasn’t confident enough with my photoshop-skills. And I know it’s not very complicated to change picture to be black and white and to color one little spot but still, I still consider myself lucky that I had a workday before Mira.
(Here's a couple of photos of Mr. Federer and Best. )

Feargal-project

On Wednesday morning we were off to Foyle Internatioal-school to discuss about our internships.

http://www.foyle.eu/

 

The atmosphere at the Foyle was very welcoming. We had a quick briefing about Foyle, being an exchange student, what to do in Derry and so on. They highlighted that whole Foyle staff was here to help us and we shouldn’t hesitate to ask help if we would have any problems.

A tall man named Feargal was in charge of our work placements. He explained us that I would start working on Thursday at a gallery called Centre for Contemporary Art and Mira would begin her work at Friday at gallery called Void. And because we didn’t have anything planned for that day Feargal gave us our own project.

He took us to his car and opened the trunk. I have to say I was slightly shocked when I saw what was laying inside. There was a bunch of framed pictures of celebrities and athletes which were simply put, horrible and even Feargal knew it. He wanted some nice pictures for his [barbershop] and asked us to make pictures that weren’t as blurry and weird shaded as the old ones. He wanted photos that were black and white with a hint of red. His pictures were mostly blueish.

Cheeringly Feargal said to us:”You can do anything you want because you can’t do worse than these.” Feargal trusted our artistic skills and I trusted Miras Photoshop skills. He gave us a list of pictures of people he wanted to be framed and so we started our little project before the real work would start.

After spending some time looking pictures from Google and eating lots of crisps (Damn Foyle’s vending machines, they’re cheap and addicting). They said we should leave and enjoy discovering Derry. And so we went, to a place which for me was one of the fanciest places I’ve ever eaten lunch: Austin’s. Lunch wasn’t that expensive but it was good and somehow very British feeling and the absolutely best thing was the view

(and cake.)

This is the cake, btw.

 

Are we Derry yet?

Finally it was time to head to Derry. We had a nutritious hotel breakfast: free cookie and a cup of tea. After that we went to a store near our hotel and bought something to eat on the bus trip: water, juice and such not forgetting cookies.

So cookies aside, the bus trip was quite awful. It took three and a half hours and the bus was packed with people and with no air conditioner. But at least the scenery was nice, when I was awake to look at it.

These photos are taken from my camcorder when I was filming with Mira.

After a long and dull trip (including one stop at the toilet, because the bus itself didn’t have one) we were at our destination: Derry.

The most nervous part of the trip was definitely meeting our host family. We met first of our host fathers at the bus station. We took a taxi to a house that would be our home for the next two months and there we met the second one.

One of the cats sitting in my room

They seemed to be nice people and at the house the most pleasant surprise was that they had two cats.

The house itself was kind of typical British house you see in television, like BBC programs etc. Not very far from city Centre.

I and Mira got our own rooms, I was staying in the larger room on the top floor (fifth floor) and Mira was at the lower floor in a smaller room. I had a nice desktop, big closet and the best of all I got to sleep two months in a double bed.

After putting down my heavy luggage I really felt that I had arrived to my own room.