So it being a Tuesday now today and only two days of work time left, the time has gone by very fast. Friday myself and Faris went kayaking again, we left off on our own for an hour and a half. We travelled up from the beach up near the built up mountain area and in around the rocks, again it had great sights to see. We spent Saturday and Sunday mostly in a group meeting at the beach for a few hours and having a look in around the shops before getting something to eat. The places we go most often place to eat is the Italian, there are two of them both owned by the same owner. Lasagna and Spaghetti bolognese would be a top choice on my list when we eat there as its very nice. As we have seen over the passed few days, Ceuta's Dock is always very busy. A Russian navy ship was docked for a few days with its members seen around Ceuta, as well as three other cruise liners that docked for 24 hours. There is also the local two company's that do the crossing over to Ceuta. Yesterday we met up with Ashley our mentor from GTI for a catch up so she could see how things are going. Juan joined also to see how things where going also, we had a chat about how we felt the three weeks went as they were coming to an end and they wanted us to reflect on whether we had enough time to experience all the things we wanted to on the placement. I'd love to have more time out here in Ceuta, it would definitely ibe nice to learn even more and to have the chance to be given more tasks to learn from it. So far is been very enjoyable to learn about the kind of skills that are required to work here in the Town Hall. Plans for the final dinner were pretty much the main thing on peoples minds for Thursday evening before we go back on Friday are now being sorted. Juan has some Spanish food places in mind for us all to try as we have been eating in the same places all the time since we got here. -Cathal
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So I am typing this up as I may not have internet access tomorrow. As the week is nearly at the end so is my experience working and living here in Ceuta. With three weeks seeming short to people that think you need more time to experience it and settle in, I feel that it depends on your placement and how your getting on all around. I must say my experience here is definitely my best one yet and most enjoyable I can say that i've taken a lot from this experience and am very grateful to be giving the opportunity.
On first hearing of Ceuta, it was one of them places nobody seems to know about or has gone to, that was me when I was first told about the place but after being here for three weeks it has grown on me a lot. The people are friendly and the different mix of religions is good to see and there is just a lot more to offer then you would think. So on behalf of my college- GTI, Leargas, John McLoughlin and all the other mentors that took part in making this all happen thanks very much for giving me the chance to do this. Also Juan Manuel and Javiar- teachers in Ceuta, thanks for your help and also your help to get us placements and accommodation here in Ceuta we understand it was difficult, you were a pleasure to work with. Finally my placement here in the Town Hall, Rocio and her great team of politicians who work here for the City of Ceuta. It was a pleasure to get to experience working with you and learning a different language and working in a different environment so I wish you luck in your progressions. -Cathal Since my hours got moved to the evening, my day consists of Gym in the morning, chilling out /going to the beach/eating in the hours after the gym and then work from 5pm onwards. It would be a pretty regular day in Ireland but the weather here is great.
This is our sixteenth day here, work is going well. My tasks that I was giving at the start of work was to design a page for the company, then translate their old page from Spanish to English and also to design a new company logo. I have finished the translation and building of their page, which surprisingly didn't take very long and now the boss has asked me to finish the logo so it can be presented to his board. So far I have enjoyed my time here in Ceuta, the great weather, beautiful scenery and also the people are very nice, I will definitely be sad when this work placement comes to an end. We´re now approaching our final days in Ceuta and our placement is coming to an end. Currently at work I´m in the process of documenting all of the work conducted over the last three weeks. This work includes;
-Researching the Confederation where I am working -Addressing all Software & Hardware issues on the 35 PC´s in the building -Documenting all work conducted over the three weeks Over these three weeks, from the above, the repairment of the 35 PC´s has definitely been the most challenging and time consuming of all delegated tasks. It took a total of at least 6-7 working days to fully complete. It was definitely a learning curve, I found issues that I´ve never dealt with before, I found errors that I´ve never heard of and familiarized myself with them. I felt that when I corrected technical errors independently with my own research and trial and error I became a lot more accustomed to that particular issue and felt more fluid when dealing with other similar related issues. While I would have preferred a placement more focused on Programming / Different Programming languages / More pertinent to my course, I still found myself very happy with where I was placed. The staff were nothing but helpful, friendly and welcoming and the work I was involved in is parallel to the experience of the last three weeks. -Faris So with two weeks complete out here in Ceuta the time has flown by. My placement here in the town hall so far has been great and my co-workers are some of the nicest people to be working with, they really have made me feel like i've been working here longer then I have. With the records of 3 main groups from a folder entered into multiple Excel and word documents I have definitely improved my efficiency on inputting and laying out the graphics. It has taken me a while to get used to using a spanish keyboard layout. I picked it up fast, but really wouldn't like to be always using it as I find our own one at home so much better. I've been interacting with many different people that work in different sectors. Talking to them and asking questions about their work is really interesting. Many younger people working out here are also students so any of them that are studying english love to get to talk to me, its nice to be able to help them with mostly the way they structure their sentences.
Today again we are going to go kaiaking, its great fun and nice to do when the weather is the way it is. We want to go in around the Royal walls as it would be nice to see and maybe learn more on the history of them. Myself and Faris have attended two school meetings over the last two weeks each tuesday, with students studying Business and IT. Juan the teacher of the business class and head of the Erasmus + programme here in Ceuta and Javier the teacher of the IT class. The business class had little to no english when we where talking to them, but Juan would translate for us if they had few questions on what the jobs were like at home in Ireland and whether the courses were much different in Ireland to Spain. Javier's class of IT students had pretty good english and they had a lot more questions as they were able to ask and understand, Javiar had the class tell us of good activities to do while we are here in Ceuta. The school here do HTML mainly but want java to be brought in but as of now the school are unable to. We compared the course to our own course in GTI and we could see that it was still very alike. Plans are now to go see more of Ceuta this week with Ashley, our mentor from GTI coming over this weekend. Javiar has a few activities planned for us. -Cathal This Saturday we went for our first proper look around Ceuta since our arrival. Myself and Conor went to an old Castle near the coast. There were multiple viewpoints and old artefacts such as cannons, weapons and armour from soldiers that used to be stationed there.The castle acted as an outpost during the 1400´s.
We also visited the tourist office where we learned about sights to go see such as ´The Dead Woman’ which is a Mountain west of Ceuta that resembles a woman lying down and also learned of tours to Morocco which we plan on doing sometime next week. Tomorrow we plan on Kayaking off the beach with the group. I look forward to it as it´s something that I´ve never done before and neither has most of the group. -Faris Monday has rolled around again and today we had a busy day at work. I had to test over 25 computers, report any major errors and document them. I started at about 9:30 and didn't finish testing them all until 1:50. The errors ranged from speakers not operating to updates not being installed to hardware issues such as monitors not operating properly or other issues like Wi-Fi not operating correctly on the devices.
Once we finished work we decided to go to the beach to make the most of the good weather. Myself and Conor met up with the rest of the group there. Today was tiring especially after the Kayaking yesterday and also working on PCs for almost 5 hours can get mundane but I'd like to think i learned something from today. I definitely picked up some tips on how to effectively correct some software issues and refreshed my knowledge on many hardware/software issues. -Faris Sunday was the hottest day and it managed to get right up to 24 degrees. This Morning at 12pm Faris, Chigo and myself went kaiaking. We went for over an hour out in the ocean where the view looking back at Ceuta was amazing. We didn't go in around the canals today. I am looking forward to doing that but we will plan to do it again next week. After that we went for food then relaxed in the resort in the sun for 2 hours. In terms of work tomorrow, i'm looking forward to my the placement and interacting with the people. Ceuta has grown on me so much in just a week and i'm really looking forward to learning more and seeing more in the days to come.
-Cathal My work placement here is still going great. I have had no problems working with my co workers and we work together on language so its pretty easy to make out what they trying to say now that I know a few more words. I mainly have done Excel here but it's fines documents that over departs look for are on file of how many times a department looks for them in the town hall so it was a manual way they where doing it seems so I'm now having it done so that it's all in a excel file. After work the group normally meet up either for food for or a stroll around the place to explore the culture in Ceuta. Internet out here costs so much on my phone, there is nothing I can really do about it with my phone being locked to a network but as Faris is able to get a sim out here for the Internet he's a hotspot so as we wonder the mighty Ceuta once finish work I must stay near him as fear of losing connection and my life fall down around me!!
-Cathal- Conor and I began our first day at the Ceuta Confedarition of Entrepreneurs. We were introduced to our mentor Alejandro who luckily had good English and his assistant Sabrina who offered to assist us should we need.
Alejandro described what would be involved in our day to day work and also explained to us how his company operated daily. It operates as a regional business association dedicated to the defense and support of entrepreneurs of the city of Ceuta. On our first day Myself and Conor were tasked with preparing a word document that included research that we had gathered about the Ceuta Confedarition of Entrepreneurs. This was our task as Alejandro felt it would be best for us to familiarize ourselves with what the establishment was about. We were told we would be assigned various tasks throughout the week. I look forward to seeing what it involves. -Faris |
Information Technology 2016Cathal Butler Map of Ceuta |