Part of the trip was to work in different places like in coffee shops, restaurants and bars and furthermore to improve our English and it was successful. Many of our students lived in Thomastown, which is a small valley outside the city and worked in Thomastown but there were also students, who lived there and worked in Kilkenny, so those had a 20 minutes way to the city.

I had the chance to work in “Market Deli”, which is a small take away shop, where you can have different types of sandwiches with a big variety for breads for example ciabatta, panini, bagel, wraps and rolls. In addition, you can also buy salads there.

I started my work at 10 am and my day began with cutting tomatoes and onions. After two hours work I had my one-hour break which was at 12 o’clock. I could choose what I want to have for lunch. After my break I was quite busy and had a lot of work to do. Mostly I finished my work at 4 pm. I had very flexible working hours and enough free time. Because of the very varied job I could do everything in the shop like making sandwiches, smoothies, coffees and I also had to go to the store to buy ingredients at the “Dunnes store”. My favourite job was to charge the costumers because that’s was the best way to improve my English. Since it was a small shop and had only few places to sit, I was mostly busy at lunchtime from 1 to 3 pm and so sometimes I could go earlier.

On the last day most of us got a small present from their bosses for example souvenirs, a cup, money and so on.

All in all, we were all happy with our work placements and enjoyed them.

Sumita Singh