work – Dublin Accent

I am a lucky person because of my work, without that, I could have never travelled so much. Sometimes I don’t realise it because of all this responsibility and planning and taking care of so many things and people. But despite that, it has brought me together with lots of nice people in different countries and let me see lots of great places. And this year I have decided that I start to like it more again because it keeps me focused, gives me something to look ahead and doesn’t let me think too much about my feelings and such kind of stuff that I am not able to change.

The first time I visited London in 1997 because of my job in tourism and we visited a big Tourism Fair and spent there a marvellous week. As I had attended an English biased school in the totally Soviet country and all my knowledge had come from my students’ books it was like a fairy tale come true and I felt like stepped into a student book all this week. But besides all these tourist attractions I got my first musical experience with “Cats” and that’s where it started.

The second time took very long and in 2014 I went back with my English class students, who were also my colleagues from our school and this time I got my second musical “We Will Rock You”, just some months before it stopped. Wow, that was something really great and I knew that I must go on and keep going.

And that’s what I did. I just worked myself into it, and as a coordinator of international relations at vocational school, it wasn’t so hard. I found a partner school in London and added London to our students’ exchange and now I have sent about 30 students to practice in different companies and it has given me a chance to visit London more often. Yes, it is work and yes, it was also because it’s quite easy to arrange a quick weekend visit to Dublin but it hasn’t worked out like that as much as I thought. But it has worked pretty well to see some more musicals. It’s good that they have got day-time shows when the students are working and it’s always possible to get a ticket to some of them. So, for now, I have also seen “Mamma Mia”, “Wicked”, “Matilda”, “The 42nd Street” and in this January “Dreamgirls”.

And walking back from the theatre I also took some photos of dark London full of lights. And of course, I wanted to pass again the theatre where they play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and just beside it found a house with a sign “The spice of life”. That’s exactly what the musicals are for me – the spice of life, and I need some spice in my life.

This time I mixed my work trip to France with a little extra and treated myself to the small gift that I missed because of that storm Doris which stuck me to Amsterdam airport in February. I had to attend a seminar in La Roche sur Yon and before planning my trip I just in case checked the possible flights from Nantes to Dublin. I was lucky to find that exactly on my departure day there were also straight flights to Dublin – wow that was a sign, so I booked a flight, took a week off and here I am – just on St Partick’s Day.

As I didn’t come so early to see the St Partick’s Day parade, I just left that for some other better time and didn’t think about it. Of course, one day I would like to be here at the right time to see the parade but I would prefer to get a sunny day for that. This year’s St Partick’s Day was rainy, grey and didn’t feel like a day that you would like to spend outdoors, so I was happy to get a bus and get straight to home where for my big surprise I found exactly the same St Valentine’s Days decorations waiting for me with 2 cards for both Days 🙂

What about France? France was really wonderful – sunny, warm, and full of nice friendly people, delicious dinners, picturesque sights and of course the seminar that was the main reason for my trip. We spent 3 days with nice colleagues from different countries of Europe and enjoyed the kindly welcome of our French partner school. Our 4 students started to work at their placement restaurants, our cooking teacher started her practice at the school restaurant and I signed the contract for future partnership with the other schools. But the best part was the feeling that my trip to Dublin was ahead and you were waiting for me there and we can celebrate our birthdays together.