Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday...

Miserable today.

That's not even a strong enough word. Like try unimaginably miserable.

It's becoming clear to me that my internship is not what I want.

I don't think I can even call it social work. They want me to essentially (and eventually) take on the teacher role, which is heavily based on being a speech therapist (in my opinion at least). I want to be more involved in policy change and service coordination and helping families find places like The Jonah Project to help their children. I'm not getting a degree in education for a reason. (And can I just say, I understand the idea of reinforcement but giving a child a 'crisp' continually after they do something right and praising them as 'Good boy' constantly is DRIVING ME MAD!)

Homesickness has definitely set in as well.

I was definitely that girl sitting by herself at the end of the day on the city bus trying to nonchalantly wipe away tears. Also when woken up in the middle of the night by ragging drunk loud assholes in the building, I cried then missing my room and my silent suburbia.

What really broke me today was the bus situation.

Yes, I am the only student who has to take the bus to their internship. The morning bus was supposed to arrive at 8:45; it got there at 9:05 and subsequently made me late by five minutes. The afternoon bus to come home was supposed to arrive at 4; it arrived at 4:45. The morning bus cost me 1.50euros and the afternoon bus cost 1.70euros. This is not something I budgeted for, nor do I find it fair, and I definitely do not enjoy it.

Basically, I have cried more in the last 24 hours than in the last 24 months. Whether it's from being too tired or frustrated or unhappy or longing for back home, I don't know.

I think it's a mixture of it all just being TOO much.

I should have seen this breakdown coming. I thought I knew myself better than this.

It doesn't help how supportive and wonderful my mother is being either (she sent me an email last night telling me to get sleep because things look better then and to have Elizabeth hug me for her). She told me to take till the end of the week to decide on staying at TJP or asking for something different (which works well because Joe is meeting with me & my supervisors there on Monday to discuss such things).

I just don't know what I was thinking by (almost)blindly packing up and leaving home for four months.

I'm happy when I'm with my friends and when we're traveling about, but this is only at night and on the weekends.

I don't want to spend five days a week, some seven hours a day, being unhappy or just getting by.

I want to enjoy this experience and learn something relevant. I want to go out and see Europe and not just do it to escape being in Waterford. I want to smile more and cry less, and laugh more and sniffle less. I want this to be the best decision I ever made and not the biggest regret I'll ever have.

I want these four months to be everything I said they would be when I got accepted last summer.

Writing this all out definitely helped.

Now it's off to the Garda and Immigration to be officially registered. Not sure if we're going shopping for food after; I hope so because I need stuff to bring for lunch. And also, I'm really hungry right now.

Love,
Dana