Thank you

I have returned home in Finland and Salla is adventuring Ireland and England with her parents for the next week. Here is a collage i made of our visit in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Hope you enjoyed reading our blog!

Thank you for everyone we met in Derry! This trip truly changed our lives and we hope to see you all again someday. Hopefully I will be able to return in Derry next summer after i have finished my school.
Cheers!
Emma

Drawing Derry to our hearts

In Derry almost everyone seems to have a tattoo, so we decided to blend in a little more and get ones as well. We had thought about getting a tattoos before and Emma had a couple tattoos already. We also wanted to get them as a wonderful memory of our unforgettable trip in Derry that we both fell in love with.

We booked a time to tattoo place called Studio 76 in the riverside. Yesterday we finally went and got them!
Salla was first and damn was she exited! It was her first tattoo ever and she took it on her foot.

Next was Emmas turn and tattooer guy said the place she chose was difficult place to tattoo. Comments while being tattooed: "I can feel my whole collarbone shaking!" 

In the end, they didn't hurt really. Emmas tattoo bled some afterwards cause the skin was so soft and thin. Emma took her tattoo under her collarbone and it says "Go deo" which is Irish and means "Forever"

Sallas first experience of getting a tattoo was positive. Pain was bearable and the tattoo looks great! Salla got her dogs paw print when he was a baby.

Those damn yuppies.

We decided to invest some money last week, to get each other friendship rings in Irish style. They are called Claddagh rings. The ring has many meanings in it, for example how you wear it tells people of your current love life.

Heart resembles love, hands that are holding the heart resembles friendship and the crown means loyalty. You can read more about our rings from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claddagh_ring

Here are also some picnic pictures from yesterday. We went to a park near our home and bought some fruits and chocolate cookies and wine. Sun shined the whole evening and we just enjoyed the warmth and good company on the green grass. Though the park was filled with Irish teenagers and damn they were noisy. Some of them just came and asked "do you have any spare fags?" extremely rudely.

Here's also a pic of Salla after her hair was dyed. After seeing real red head people in here, our fake reddish hair colours seemed kinda fake and ugly. Emma also cut Sallas hair with kitchen scissors.. sounds bad but it actually turned out great!

The beginning of the end

Our weekend was full of stuff to do and people to see! First thing on Friday we went to celebrate our German friends birthday in build a burger place, where he wanted to try out the Big Lad! It included two huge beefs, cheese, salad and other toppings. 

He had 30 minutes time to try finish the burger. After 15 minutes, half of the burger was gone but he couldn't eat one bite anymore. Of course we we're happy to help him with the rest of the burger and everyone got a big slice of his "birthday cake".

 Next destination was Laser tag! Although it was kinda targeted towards children, we had such a blast shooting each other and running in tunnels. We went there with two German girls and three boys. You would have though that one hour wouldn't be enough, but we were all out of breath in the end. Best part was the last round where everyone was against each other. Last two survivors were Emma and Tim who fought till the death! Though Tim won...

For a happy surprise, Emmas mom had send us a package full of Finnish candy and chocolate! We made our friends taste salmiakki, only couple people said it was not so bad but most of them hated it. Though almost everyone loved our Finnish chocolate (except Declan who apparently doesn't like chocolate anyway).

We spent our Saturday evening with our German roommates and in a party where our bosses brother invited us to go and see his friend DJ playing. Great weekend!

Our last full week in Derry has started and we have tons of things to do in Kular! Gonna miss this place for sure.  People have been so welcoming and lovely for us at work. This week we're supposed to start making a promo video for Kular and finish it until Friday, our last day at work.

What have we done...

...At workAs we have previously mentioned, we work at a Derry- based clothing store named Kular. We posted some pictures we took modelling the clothes, but we've done much more than just that kind of photos. These few past weeks we've also been consulting on the set-up of the studio, done some graphic stuff, some Facebook- application coding and in general, just keeping up and setting up the social networks.

 

These cheerful colored bags were photographed yesterday, when our task was to take some exiting photos for Facebook, keeping the followers interested. Content creating is an important part of our job. The photoshoot for kids school bags was really fun and interesting for us because of all the cool colors we got to work with. We've been setting up the perfect studio for product photography the time we've been here and it needs just a few more finishing touches, such as a new studio light.

We've also been doing some handy and simple graphic design for signs and tags inside the shop. Their previous layout on these has been an oh-so-pretty black Times New Roman font on a white background. We tried to get the layout uniform with the shops graphic image.

We've also photoshopped some existing photos and we came up with the watermark- idea we've been using on all the pictures we've taken or shopped. As a part of our consulting we've also "made" the boss think about investing in their advertising by getting Photoshop. 

A part of our graphic design endeavors has been designing a logo for the new cafe they are opening in the same building as the clothing store. Notice that these are just some of the first designs and none of these are the final version. Even the name changed for the last and final logo. 

Graphic designing also included making new banners for the newsletter of Kulars new website. Also straps for images with a QR-code.

Pictures above were also used in the newsletter.

We made some new backgrounds for signs inside the shop. This background was for men section and we also made different backgrounds for kids and women sections. 

Here's also one of our works which is to design a t-shirt for an Irish music festival called Flead Cheoil.We are not sure what colors we are allowed to use in shirts, but the green and gold looked pretty good so we used them on when trying out different kind of designs for the shirt.

Road trip in Donegal

Our weekend in Donegal begun by renting two cars with Italians and loading them with our bags in Derry. We left early in the morning from the buss station and we were all really exited. One of our Italian friends had planned the trip for us and that was a great relief, because he really knew what he was doing.

First stop was at  Glenveagh National Park which is the second most largest National Park in Ireland.

We wondered around in the beautiful nature even though it was quite windy and even rainy every now and then. We enjoyed the nature even though it was kinda similar to the one we're used to back home in Finland.

The park had small gardens with foreign plants. One area had statues and foliage from Italy and one from Bali for example.

Emma got really exited of the epic scenery that reminded her of Lord of the Rings. Running around the fields got her quite tired by the end of the trip.

We even visited an old caste with long history and had a tour inside the castle. Tour was maybe a bit too long to keep us all interested but we saw some cool art inside the castle and old furniture from different times and different places. 

We took a scenery route so it was quite understandable that we stopped every now and then to take pictures of beautiful Donegal. Also the driver changed once in a while, when the boys wanted to try driving on the "wrong side". 

One stop that we did on our first day before heading to hostel was a famous pub owned by Irish singer Enyahs parents. Sadly she wasn't there, but we were told that she lives in the same street as the pub was.

The next day we visited a beautiful beach not so far away from our hostel. Also Emma had her fist sight of Atlantic Ocean. 

Everyone got so exited and started running around the beach and testing the water which was quite cold. We also went exploring and found some dead jellyfishes in the beach. Aldo the beach was full of sheep who were climbing up the cliffs. (Ninja sheep)

Last destination were the Slieve Legues cliffs. The scenery was absolutely breath taking. In the picture you can see two small rocks in the ocean. They're called the table and the chair. 

Climbing up the mountain we happen to see a red deer running right next to us and we felt that now we are really in the nature. Also the wind got stronger and stronger the higher we got and at one point we felt like you could actually lean against the wind. 

 All in all the trip was amazing and totally worth it. We got to experience true Irleand in a way which wouldn't have been possible in a school trip. Thank you for our Italian friends for great journey company and great memories. Good craic!

Food Food Food!

On Thursday we wanted some change for our usual lunch we eat at work. Which is normally sandwiches that we make ready at home before we go to work. So we ended up eating in a local burger place called Build a burger.

In Build a burger you can do as the name tells you, build your own burger. One of the weirdest options to put in your burger was gummy bears.. apparently someone likes it, but we didn't have the courage to try.

Hamburgers we're big and tasty! Only for 5 pounds you get to build the burger the way you like and eat it with delicious chips. Though the burgers were so big we didn't manage to finish them all the way. 

Today's lunch was also a bit different than usual. We went to visit some nice little lunch place where Salla tried out the traditional Irish stew. Kinda reminded us from casual Finnish food called lihaperunasoselaatikko. The taste wasn't anything special but not bad at all either.   

Talking about food, we've had the pleasure to enjoy our Italian friends cooking skills many times. Here's a picture of our own pasta made a bit Italian way. It wasn't as good as the pasta the Italians made but we tried our best and once even invited one of the Italians to try our cookings out. 

Also sometimes our lunch breaks ends up going to pound land and grabbing something good on our way back to work. Here's an example of Emmas lunch last week, energy drink and some buns with chocolate drops. Not so healthy, but we believe that sometimes you can treat yourself.