Building bridges. What does that mean to you? To me, building bridges is one of the most important life skill everyone needs to have. Building bridges in this form doesn’t mean to build an actual bridge, it means to connect with whomever, or whatever is on the other side of you. This kind of sounds like a service project, but it’s different because you aren’t servicing others. You are putting in your skills with their skills. Working together to connect in the community as well as personally. While in Ireland, we were required to do this for our semester.

While in Ireland this semester, a few of my classmates and myself built our bridge with the daycare. This daycare is just a short 20 minute walk up from the Park Lodge Hotel. When we first walked there, it was strange, we were able to walk right up to the daycare as well as just walk inside. We all paused and questioned if we should be doing that because in America, you would have already talked to someone about being in the building. After walking in, we were able to sit and talk with Ashley and Jane Marie about who we were, what we were there for, and all about the study abroad program. They also both talked about the daycare and what kind of kids they watch over. The age group was quite the range, from 5 years of age to 10 years of age.

We worked with the kids March 28^th and 29^th during one of their camps. During the camp, we got to do a few projects, connect with the kids, as well as bond with some of the staff members. The projects we did revolved around Easter and even St. Patty’s Day. For the most part, they all liked the project. A few of the older kids didn’t like them as much because of the fact they were almost too old for that type of project. That is something I would make note to change if I could go back and change it. I didn’t realize that the project would be so boring for the older kids.