One month of Ireland

So, I made my way to Derry, Northern Ireland, a bit over a month ago to do my internship at the local university. I am working in game development, obviously on the more visual side, and so far it's been incredibly neat! I still have two months to go, and have not felt homesick at all.
And quite honestly, I like this place and the people here. The social culture is very different, as in Finland you hardly look one another in the eye when you talk with them, but here even the cashiers engage in "small" talk, which to me is very "long talk". There honestly is no small talk culture in Finland, you say "Hi, thanks, bye" when you socialize with a cashier.

And in fact, I love talking with the locals! My team mates are awesome too, although as they are French, they are bound to speak their language (I swear that at this rate I will speak fluent baguette at the end of the summer ;o). They have also corrupted me into this weird "air-cheek-kiss" greeting that they do. Again, in Finland you shake a new friend's hand once, firmly, glance them in the eye and say your name. After that you might never touch them again.
So, this is new, but it's quite wonderful!

My days at the uni are long as you'd expect, and since I am bit of a social hermit and shy about going out to meet new people to hang out with, I usually take the couple of hours after school/work to go to the store, make some food and then engage in some WoW RP x) This however is painful because I am stuck with my 6 years old office laptop, with CPU running at 100% and performing WoW on lowest possible graphics with 17fps at absolute, rare best. The average is below ten, heh.

My social isolation will come to an end for a while though (as will my WoW rp), as my parents will travel here for a week during the national holiday thingy here. I never thought I'd say it, but thank goodness my parents are coming over! :'D Going out on my own is a bit boring, and it's been years since we travelled together. Dad will likely rent a car so we can get around Northern Ireland as well. I am hoping to see some of the locations of Game of Thrones, as well as the Giant's Causeway. It'll be epic!
(And yes, I only started to watch the series once I got here, because at first I felt like I had too little stuff to do on my free time, heh. No distractions! And now I am hooked.)
On top of it all, my parents will gift me their old laptop, that is however waaaaay better than this laptop ever was. It's more than enough, considering I will travel in the future and I need to have a proper, reliable computer for making art  and other projects. They decided to buy themselves a proper desktop PC, so it's a win-win situation <3

I am also expecting some WoW friends of mine to pay me a visit here ;O They had best make it, it's a good opportunity, and even if I can't really accommodate them here properly (student accommodation rules, yadayada), I'm really hoping to meet people. As well as have some more people to hang out with x)
Guild meeting in Derry, amirite?

Oh, and talking about guilds, me and two other guildies decided to start a HUGE 35+ members portrait of Hand of Agony. I should probably see if I can finish and clean up the sketches today so I can just pass it on to another artist to do the lineart for! I am so exciteeeheheheed!

Anyhow, I am still alive and in general my time to draw is very limited. My working days are long and afterwards I try to keep up with our guild campaigns. Thus I can mostly doodle on weekends, so I am not open for commissions yet either. People keep asking me, and I am ridiculously flattered and grateful that my stuff is liked. I will try to get started on thinking how much I'd charge for commissions so I can put up a commission info once I regain some control of my crazy life here.

Until then, love, peace and hash browns <3