Irish Diaries, part 2: That famous accent, pubs on campus and Kazakhs in Ireland

My third week in Ireland is just about to end, and in this post I decided to tell you a little about the Irish accent, the huge university campus and how I got to know the local Kazakhs.

The post was originally written in Russian on February 17 2020. Mostly translated with deepl.com (Free version).

Irish accent

During the three weeks I lived in Ireland I've had more than enough of Irish accent. First of all, as in many countries around the world, it varies from region to region. According to various videos on YouTube, even in Dublin they have two different accents. Secondly, it's not all bad. I had no trouble at all in most of the lectures, but in one lesson I did struggle to understand what was being said.

Saoirse Ronan teaching Stephen an Irish Accent

A huge campus

After Hong Kong, the most unusual thing is that the campus is huge, and every time I can't help imagining how many buildings Hong Kong universities could have built on it (CUHK doesn't count). Most unexpectedly, there are two pubs on campus where you can have a pint of Irish beer in between classes and hang out in the evening (one of them has a DJ - a 60-something grandpa who's been playing mostly the same tracks for a few years).

Campus map. Red buildings are student hostels, yellow ones - study blocks

I think I've counted about 3-4 fountains on campus

Glucksman Library, a size of about 3 blocks of HKBU

Department of Physical Education

Because of the weather conditions between some blocks there is an analogue of SkyWalk analogue from Nazarbayev University (more a pathetic parody, of course).

Academics

For this semester I've enrolled on 6 courses (or modules, as they are called here), which is a lot by local standards (the average exchange student takes 4-5). The most interesting thing is that I was able to fit all 6 courses into three days (Monday to Wednesday), as some modules have only two hours of lectures per week.

IT Portals

Let's start with the fact that there are too many of them. There is a separate general student portal where I can see my study progress, enter bank details for tuition fees and etc. There is also a separate timetable portal where I can see the timetable for the individual modules (with a decent amount of mistakes), a personalised timetable and information about classes and exams. In order to find out information about a module, you need to go to a separate website book of modules, and do a shitload of operations to get information about the course, among which there is nothing about the assessment method. There is also a separate portal "sulis", which is a platform for interaction between lecturers and students. The Computer Science department probably decided not to bother with this system, so many professors there use good old moodle (which HKU, EduHK, LingnanU, HKBU and even NU use).

This is how "sulis" looks (in case you're interested)

Kazakhs in Ireland

On the third day in Ireland, thanks to @madlennqu, I found out that a graduate student Aigerim had also come to the University of Limerick and immediately arranged a meeting with her. I thought that would be the end of my contact with Kazakhs in Ireland, but it wasn't. Last week I got on facebook and found the group "Kazakh Society in Ireland", and I wrote there that I came to Limerick for a semester, an exchange student, etc. As it turns out, there are about 100 Kazakhs in Ireland (according to a WhatsApp group), among them there are students and expats working in the local offices of big corporations, as well as women who married Irish men and moved here. One of them is Miss Anel, who immediately wrote me that she has lived in Limerick for fifteen years and invited Aigerim and me to her house for Sunday manti (traditional Kazakh dumplings). She also invited some Kazakh friends from other cities and in three hours we enjoyed vegetarian manti and baursak, told our stories and discussed a myriad of topics ranging from the problems of Kazakhstani tourism to Ireland's education system. As it turned out, students and local Kazakhs organise a Nauryz gathering in Dublin every year, and it seems this year will be no exception.

I completely forgot to take a picture together, so here's a picture of the vegetarian manti

On that note, I'll probably end part two of the #IrishDiaries. If you notice any mistakes in the text, please email me (@yeskenov). Huge respect if you read this post to the end.