working girl

Monday was our first full day with the program!

In the morning, the entire group went on a bus tour of the city in order to get our bearings and see what Dublin has to offer. There were spectacular views, but it was absolutely freezing with the wind blowing on the top deck of the double decker bus. 

Afterwards, we had a quick lunch then headed to our first day of work!

The Digital Hub building is located a stone's throw (and that's me throwing the stone, so really a hop, skip, and a jump) away from the Guinness factory. It is actually housed in the old Guinness store house, so it's an old, beautiful building. It's all brick walls (interior and exterior) as well as hard wood floors. You can even see the old train tracks that used to run through the Guinness factory in the old days. It's a very modern design besides the age, and it appears to be a growing company. 

Basically, our program is acting as a consulting agency for Digital Hub, an incubator corporation that helps beginning digital companies get on their feet in the fast-progressing digital world . We’re trying to find ways for them to improve their business, via technology, public relations, and green advances. We were split into four groups, each with a specific area to target: engineering technology, green energy technology, educational programs, and visualization. I was placed into the visualization group. Our goal is to advise Digital Hub on how to improve the use of technology (such as three-dimensional usage, website, and researching what else is on the market.) I was placed with three of the boys, so there are about four people in each group. 

After work we did some quick grocery shopping, ate a quick dinner, and the girls in our apartment bonded a little before heading to a pub up the road to meet up with the rest of the people in our program. The pub is called the Pale, named after an old nickname for Dublin and surrounding areas, dictating that those neighborhoods enjoyed prosperity via British association. The students from the program last year really enjoyed the pub and highly recommended it, and it was great. Reasonably priced and the bar tender loves the idea of Miami IN Ohio not Florida. We all stayed for a few pints and got to know one another better before heading home to prepare for another day of work.