Living at Halls

As a year-long visiting student, I was given two options for living in Dublin: live in IES sponsored housing with other programme participants, or live in Trinity housing, where ever they decided to stick me. I decided to live at Trinity. As you may know from my pre-departure post, I didn’t know where I was going to be living until the day before I left and up until then I had somewhat assumed that I’d be living in Goldsmith Hall, as that’s apparently where previous IES students living at Trinity were put up. Instead, I was given a room in a flat in Trinity Hall (known colloquially as “Halls”), a student complex which mostly houses freshers and some international and graduate students.

There are pros and cons to living in Halls. Pros: excellent security, single ensuite room (not all rooms in Halls are singles [some are ensuite doubles], but the ones in my flat are), full kitchen, efficient maintenance (seriously, I put in a work request yesterday before running out to do some errands and when I got back it had already been fixed),  and it’s located close to shops for pretty much anything one might need. Cons: located a forty minute walk away from campus which necessitates the use of the bus or the Luas (basically, you have to pay to go to class — it’s  €45 for a monthly student pass to and from the Milltown Luas stop [a ten minute walk from halls] to the St. Stephen’s Green stop), and most of the residents are freshers and therefore 17-18 and enjoying their newly-found legal right to drink themselves stupid all week and then make as much noise as is humanly possible at ungodly hours..

Obnoxious teenagers aside, Trinity Hall is actually a really great place to live for year long visiting students since you won’t be abandoned by your flatmates half way through the year when they go home for good in December. (I’ve also heard from other IES participants that living in IES-found flats can be kind of hit-or-miss depending on factors outside of IES’ control e.g. neighbours and landlords.) I live with five other international students and all of us are over the age of 20. Oh, and did I mention the SINGLE, ENSUITE room? Because, yeah. There’s that. In the interest of giving potential future, year-long IES students an idea of what their accommodations might look like should they select to take advantage of college housing, here are some pictures of my flat.

The bed has two big, sliding drawers under it and there are two shelves in the headboard. A desk lamp comes with the desk and is physically attached to the wall so you can’t unplug it.

Looking from the windows to the door; the wardrobe on the right has shelves above and below the hanging bar. The mirror is built-in.

The bathroom is just inside the door; there’s not a shower so much as the tiled floor is slightly sloped toward the drain in the corner and there’s a curtain which sections the shower area off.

Kitchen/Living Room from the door.

Kitchen.

The wee fridge, cleverly hidden amongst the cabinetry, somehow supports the eating habits of six adults.