How long is a week?

Its been a while since I have wrote on my blog because I have been on holiday for the past week in the lovely city of Budapest. It was the first time I was there and the most East in Europe I have been so far. It was just fantastic great beauty and also amazing food what more could a person want. The thing I found most intriguing was the mix of people and strangeness all round that was its nightlife.

I'll give you an example of a night I had. It started off with the typical one hour walk (Maybe this was just me) trying to find somewhere that wasn't a restaurant. We eventually found a cellar with some bottles of spirit in it, it was real underground. The people ranged from about 20 years of age to about 70.

It was quite surreal with a lot of hungarian music being played by the cigar smoking DJ, who must have winked at every lady in the place, he was about 60 years of age. After about 2 hours of listening to this music I could not have been prepared for waht happened next. The dance floor just suddenly emptied while a guy with a PVC jacket, leather trousers, fake tan, moustache and quite a bit of chest hair took centre stage. He preceeded to sing Tom Jones to a crowd who didn't look impressed at all, this went on for an hour. You just did't know what to expect in this place.

Being away for a week leaves the usual work of looking through a full inbox of emails and texts. Holidays are great but they just build up all the work for when you come home.

My Day!

Its now been a whole week since I last wrote and I haven't even mentioned the day that shares the same name as me why? Well this is down to a few reasons firstly I had to unfortunately work on the day. I think I am cursed, as the last 4 Paddy's Days I have spent in work. I think that they sit sown and go hmmm... St Paddy's Day who can we pick hmmm... Paddy's Day who on earth could it be. This day in work is a really boring event.

The day in work also collided with me having a bug and spending most of the day running to and from the toilet. It was not a pretty sight and I think I could have broken the land speed record.

The last thing that also stopped me from enjoying this day was that I spent a long time in the police station, giving a statement, on my stolen passport. The night before I was at a concert which was absolutely brilliant but it ended really badly with me being mugged at knifepoint. What makes it worse is that I'm going to Budapest on Monday.

I think trouble just has a habit of finding me and clinging to me for dear life.

Paedophiles!

This weekend paedophiles have been on my mind because of two reasons:
Firstly at the end of last week in an area very close to where I live, a 14 yr old boy was raped by a group of men. This boy is the brother of my sisters friend and it was quite startling to have such a savage act happen so close to home.

The second reason is because this weekend I went to see The Woodsman . This film tells the story of a convicted paedophile who is released from prison after 12 yrs. The film humanises his story and it has caused quite a stir. People are outraged that a film could sympathise with a paedophile. I really enjoyed this film and thought it hit upon a topic nobody likes to speak about.

This film caused a tremendous amount of debate between me and a friend of mine. My friend thinks that a paedophile is born a paedophile while I disagree with this. I think that people are inherently good but some event, or a series of events cause them to do bad things. I'm not condoning what they do but I think that there needs to be more study of these people, instead they are just locked away and are just pawned off as bad people. Would it not be beneficial to understand why people do this and try to help solve the problem.

This has being a big problem in Ireland for a long time now and only in the ten years have people even started to be convicted of it. We're condemning something before even understanding it. Its down to peoples attachment to children and how they feel for them. Its a big taboo subject and one we need to learn more about.

Gotta Learn This Language

In school, from about the age of 6, is when any Irish kids journey begins on the road to learning their native language. This continues for about another 12 years, at least, in every kids life and how much do I know? Well I can say my name in Irish.

It has been a widely disputed subject, that of mandatory education of Irish in our schools and one that is hard to comment on. On one side it's our heritage, our native language, its part of our culture and who we are but then when we finish school their is the sudden realisation that its meaningless, as no job, apart from a handful, requires it and no area, apart from a handful, speaks it.

I'm actually not writing on the debate of this but to show my past history when starting this weekend to learn Russian. I had been warned about how hard it was and had native speakers rolling around in fits of laughter at me rolling my R's. To my surprise I have started to pick up the language quite quickly and proficiently so I have been told. I have three months in which to get up to a good level of the language and I hope I can learn it or I will be sent back on the first plane to Dublin. Well life is about those little challenges and this is one that I am going to give my best efforts to achieve.

Putin Hold The Reins!

So as I promised I will talk about Mr Putin because he seems to get forgotten about quite a bit. It has been another busy week for the Russian president meeting with Mr Bush and both talked about their commoon grounds. Now this is where I'm confused they agreed on Iran not having nuclear weapons, then the very next day an agreement with Iran was signed by Russia to give them nuclear power. I'm not saying that this is to provide nuclear weapons but its like giving a child a bar of chocolate to mind and not eat and hand back.

People seem to have mixed feelings about Putin on the one hand he's the guy who has supposedly done nothing to stop the disappearances and tortures in Chechnya, he's the guy who attempts to impede democratic reform in Georgia and Ukraine and has yet to deliver any real wealth to the Russian people.

Then there is the other side the guy who has been gaining more control of Russian energy. Through this deal now with Iran he is expanding furthe and further. He has also set up an alliance with Russia, China, India and Brazil. This is very strong team and one that I don't think that can be matched. With the EU and US starting to wake up to Putin, do they have the power to tell a stubborn man what to do?

Why Moscow? Why Not?

So why would a student from Ireland choose to spend their summer working voluntarily in Moscow? There are many good reasons and also some lame reasons but let me try make it clear. Growing up as a kid, I always had my head in the clouds but never had an opportunity to go travelling outside my country. I joined AIESEC with the promise that I could travel the world and so far it has been true.

I think me, as most AIESEC people, never like to visit the normal places and want to see the most extraordianary things this world can offer. When I decided that I wanted to do a traineeship my preference had been Africa because that gave me a chance to work with HIV/AIDS. After running through it properly, it was not financially possible for me. Where could I afford? Well nothing outside the european boundaries and I became dismayed at this. I wanted something totally different and magical to what I'm used to and was afraid Europe would not deliver this.

Western Europe, I had seen quite a bit of last summer and wanted to go beyond the EU. Eastern Europe was my choice and the Baltic States is where I wanted to go. Well this is what I thought, I had wanted to go there for the reasons of its association with Russia. Russia has to be the most impressive country in the world, its size by itself is breathtaking. I started to look up possible traineeships around Russia and was so happy when I saw the possibility of a HIV/AIDS related one, but more bad news it had been matched.

I was getting really demotivated and could not find a development traineeship I could do, so I decided to changed to a management one, although I didn't particularly want to. Then I'd say someone had planned this, about 40 mins after I had changed my form, I received an email saying that a traineeship had been raised and it turned out to be the one that I accepted.

This is how it happened but why Russia, well with its amiable people, its unmatchable history, the beautiful cities and countryside and my undying affection for Mr Putin. I'm like his stalker and read up on him quite regularly. I'm not going to write much about him as this is already very long and I will be writing about his meeting with Bush during the week.

Moscow Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

Ok I might not be able to speak Russian and I might not have any prior social work experience but today I found out that I have been accepted for a traineeship in Moscow, its one that I have wanted so much. I might not have had all the criteria that they wanted but what I do have is a lot of motivation and enthusiasm, that I don't feel can be matched.

The traineeship lets me work with a topic that I have being really interested and maybe sometimes addicted to for a while now, HIV/AIDS. What HIV/AIDS in Russia? Surely there is no problem there, well thats were people are wrong, although Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst infected, Ukraine and Russia have the two fastest increases of cases in the world. The rest of the Baltic area is also very badly struck with drug use being the main cause of it.

This has made my day much brighter and no amount of snow is going to bring me down. Ye it is actually snowing in Ireland at the end of February, I don't know where they get the idea of global warming from.