I have been back in the United States for a few weeks now, and the first few days were definitely an adjustment. I didn't have any of the reverse culture shock. I mostly struggled with getting my sleeping schedule back on Illinois time. The first few days back, I was waking up at 4am, which is 10 am Dublin time. It was funny to me that I had a harder time with jet lag coming home, when I wasn't worried about it at all, than I did going to Ireland. Other than my sleep schedule, the only other thing I noticed when coming home was that I have a sense of wanting to go back and experience even more! I think that I really did get the travel bug from this experience studying abroad. I have no doubt that I will see Ireland again. I also want to take this final blog post to thank everyone who helped me make this dream a reality, especially my family, NIU, and the NIU Study Abroad Office. Without your support, I don't know if I would have been able to study abroad. Sláint...
Sadly the program is coming to an end. It's amazing how fast two weeks have gone by. On Friday, we had our last site visit. We visited Phoenix Care Center (PCC); a public sector mental health facility. With seeing this facility, we really had come full circle because at the beginning of the trip we saw a private sector center and now we had the chance to see a public sector center. It was interesting to see the differences in a public and a private facility. There were many things that were very similar and things that were different. They are similar in the fact that it is patients first, but they differ in their set ups. In St. Pats hospital, they had wings with all the beds together with only a few private rooms, but in PCC, all of the rooms we saw were private. They are similar in the fact that they have grounds that the service users can help maintain. They differ in the fact that St. Pats doesn’t use restraints at all, while PCC uses them only emergencies. Another way they di...