Week One
I travelled to the airport with my friend. We met with our tutor Marie and the rest of our classmates after checking in. Thankfully, the airport went smoothly and we arrived in Malaga on time. We were brought to our accommodation by bus and after a short ride we arrived at Livensa Living. After signing us in and giving us bus cards we were free to go for the rest of the day. We learnt very quickly that few shops stay open on Sundays and decided the 20-minute walk to the nearest one that was open would be a good chance to explore the surrounding area. The next day European Era met with us and we were given all the info about our placements and commute, after the meeting we were taken to our workplace, shown how to get there and given a tour by our employers. Our first few days of work went well, we were taught the basics of what we would be doing at the ceramics workshop for the next three weeks and got to know the people who worked there. There was a significant language barrier, but we made it work with google translate. The flamenco show on Thursday evening was one of the highlights of my trip and something I really hope to see again. On Sunday we went to Nerja and Frigiliana, both were gorgeous towns and we thoroughly enjoyed exploring them.

Week Two
By the second week we were settled in our work placement but not enjoying it very much, the commute was an hour both ways and we were working 2 hours more than our friends, thankfully after raising our concerns we got out work schedule changed to much more manageable hours. Although our work was a little monotonous, I personally enjoyed it as it was a placement directly in the field I hoped to work in when I am through college. I liked learning the different processes for each product we made and tried my best to make them up to a quality that could be sold. I ended up with quite a bad cold during the second week, so I missed the visit to the fortress in the city but felt well enough to join everyone on the boat tour on Friday which was really enjoyable.

Week Three
The last week really felt as if it flew by, we had our routine at the workshop completely down; everyone had settled into the jobs they preferred, and we had a good and structured system for the various items we handled making. We were sad to leave them on our last day, and I am very grateful for my time there. On our last day checkout was at 12 but our bus to the airport wasn’t till 9pm so we took advantage of the day despite the heat and went to visit the Picasso Museum.
 
  
My favorite thing about the trip is the pace of life in Spain, I often find myself quite stressed about timeframes, constantly needing to keep working and always know what was happening next, while in Malaga I was able to pace myself and enjoy what was happening as it did instead of checking the time and planning my next move.
My least favorite thing about the trip was the few days of bad weather, it rained the first few days and towards the end, it was hard to hear that the weather was nicer at home when we were in the Costa Del Sol!
I feel as though I improved in a lot of ways during my placement, I started out with no Spanish and now know basic phrases and grammar (thanks to Duolingo), I learnt a lot relating to my career path of sculpture at the ceramics workshop such as the entire process of mold making, and I learnt valuable interpersonal skills during the three weeks of getting to know my classmates on a closer level
My tip would be to stay open-minded and flexible, not everything will go to plan and being abroad can be challenging at times but it's so important to make the most of your experience!
 
 

1st week

We started our journey on 21st May. We had an early morning flight from Dublin to Malaga, so I took the 3 am bus to the capital airport, where all of us met with the teacher - Marie Hume from Art course. The flight company was Aer Lingus, on both ways to Malaga and back to Dublin. For me the flight was quite comfortable, and we arrived at our destination faster than expected. Therefore, after transfer from the airport by bus, we were already in our apartments by the lunch time.
As for the apartments, they were really good. We lived in Livensa Living Studios Málaga Feria, and everyone had their own studio room. In the building there were laundry and cafeteria, and it’s located not far away from the city centre and ocean.
I spent the rest of the day resting and at some point, went outside to buy some food. The problem was that all big shops like Lidl, Aldi etc. were closed on Sundays, and we had to find some small grocery stores. Luckily, we found some near us and they weren’t bad at all, although a little expensive.
The next day we had our first meeting in the working place. I was paired with Eoghan, as we were the only 2 IT-students in the group – others were from Art course. We worked in the online martial arts store called “Roninwear”: https://www.roninwear.com/?language=en. We met a boss - a Pablo, with whom we talked a little about our knowledge and IT skills, as well as wishes or proposals for work. Right after, we received our first task – master the Kali Linux operating system at the basic level. But first, we had to install it on a flash drive and run the operating system from it on our work laptops. It took us around 2 days as we both started from “zero”, which means we haven’t done this before. Thanks to the Internet and ChatGPT, we managed to do it. As for help, we didn’t have any just because their IT-staff was absent as they were on holidays, that’s why the boss gave us this very task. Therefore, we found some kind of an official guide for this OS, as well as a free start course. Last 3 days we went through as much information as possible and learnt basic commands and tools. As it turned out, it helped a lot.
In the evening we all had a dinner at Morrisey’s Irish pub and spent some time in the city. And on Wednesday we had our first cultural activity – Malaga city tour. It was really nice, guide told us a lot of interesting information about the city, as well as showed some nice places to visit and gave some useful tips on where to eat, shop etc. On the next day it was a Flamenco Show at some nice restaurant. It was an hour long and fascinating to watch, although I wouldn’t recommend it to the people who are claustrophobic or scared of loud noises. Finally, on Sunday we had our first out-of-city trip to Frigiliana & Nerja. First town is located in mountain area with beautiful land and ocean views, as well as mesmerizing city streets and architecture. Second town is the coastal one where we had a nice swim in the warm sea of Alboran. Water was transparent blue and had some big rocks and boulders near the coast.
 

2nd week
Our second week started from the kind of lazy workday, as we were waiting for the meeting with the IT-staff on our work placement, but they couldn't arrive that day, so we did some more study on our previous task and left early. Next day we finally met them, there was 2 people – Alfonso (Team-lead) and Juan (Senior developer). They prepared an actual task and developed a controlled test environment for us. The task was to try to find vulnerabilities and exploit them using SQL injection method. We had 6 URLs for this, 3 of which used GET method and 3 used POST method. Trough each of this links we had to try to gain access to the relevant database and steal some data, all using methods mentioned above and tools that we wanted to. This task was really hard and not trivial at all for us, as both of us had only basic understanding of cybersecurity as whole and no practice, but that’s what IT sphere about – constantly learn new stuff and technologies, as well as improve previous skills and knowledge. Therefore, we accepted this “challenge” and tried to do our best. I won’t go into the further details, as it’s not only hard to understand, but to explain as well. So, at the end of the week we managed to gain access and steal some data (not really useful, but still) and did a report on our results as we were asked at the beginning.
As for cultural activities, we had some more planned. The first one was a visit to Gibralfaro and Alcazaba visit. These are big castles built a long ago from which you can see the best views of the Malaga from the city itself. Then on Friday we had a boat trip, so we could see a city from the sea. The next day we had another out-of-the-city trip - this time to Granada. It was a guided trip, but then we had some free time to explore the city ourselves.
As a bonus, me and Eoghan went to the Malaga Mountains National Park the following day. It was a one-day-hike, and as a result we climbed 774 metres high – higher than Croagh Patrick. It was my best day there as I really like to be near the nature, and we saw the most beautiful views of Malaga that we could get, I think. This place is definitely worth visiting, as we planned to take only a short path, but as a result went on a 17 km walk because everything about it was fascinating.
 
3rd week
I personally had the best time in the last week of our trip compared to the first two. At that time, I had already got used to this pace of life and felt quite comfortable with it. At work on Monday, we received the first feedback from the IT team and a modification of the previous task. We were sent an additional 9 URL links and the settings of the previous 6 were changed, so we had to try again to complete the task. It turned out to be more complex, and the previous methods did not work, so we had to find new ones. As a result, I tried to find and use new tools, and one of them worked - I found vulnerabilities in the system. Therefore, I tested all of the URLs and generated a report that I sent back to them. Over the next few days, they analyzed it and asked us to try to exploit these vulnerabilities in the system. We tried, but we didn't have enough knowledge and time to achieve a result, so on Friday we thanked them for the practice and received good feedback from the team, as well as from the supervisor. We also gave them an electric kettle as a gift, and I received their personalized T-shirt.
In the last week we had only one planned cultural activity – a cycling tour. We had the opportunity to rent a bicycle for 4 hours and explore both the city and the countryside. I remember this activity the most, along with a hike in the mountains, because I saw many different landscapes, had a great time and even climbed some rocks. I was driving along the sea outside the city, so I saw beautiful beaches, the sea and the outskirts of the city. In total, I cycled around 22 km.
Saturday was our last day there, so in the morning I cleaned up the room, packed my things and checked out at 12 pm. Then we all had 9 hours left before our bus to the airport, so most of us went to the museums. I visited 3 of them: Malaga, Picasso and Carmen. In each of them you can be stuck for quite a long time, but because I don’t know much about art, I just looked and read information if I was interested in something.
We had a night flight and bus as well, so at 6 am we were already in Galway. The flight and the journey back were not bad. In the end, I said a warm goodbye to everyone and hope to see them again in the future.

We took the bus early on Sunday the 21st of May. Our flight to Spain was very comfortable and we travelled without any issues. Huge thanks to our teacher Marie for getting us through Terminal 1 smoothly.
 
Unfortunately it was raining very heavily in Spain on arrival but it was fine as we were tired and after acquiring shopping for the week we took a rest day.
 
Monday we received orientation from the excellent European Era gang and a member of their team Sara accompanied us on our first trip to our work placement, the martial arts store Roninwear. It is primarily an online business a little bit like Sportdirect and online sales drive the company. We would be doing a web audit and testing our cybersecurity knowledge specifically and programming generally.
 
On Monday night the entire group met in an Irish bar and restaurant for dinner and it was a great opportunity to get to know one another. We were very lucky to have such a lovely group.
 
On Tuesday of the first week myself and Serhii made our own way to our work placement and would spend the rest of the week getting familiar with Linux before we were assigned our first task. This was a good experience as neither of us were very familiar with Linux but it is used extensively in the Information Technology field.
 
On Wednesday 24th of May we were treated to a city tour by the lovely Esther in the middle of Malaga. It was very interesting and as a former history graduate I really enjoyed it. We were given plenty of tips on how to make the most of our time in Malaga.
 
On Thursday our work placement continued to be informative as we got up to speed with Kali Linux and tools for testing cybersecurity. That evening we got to watch a Flamenco dancing show and it was excellent.
 
On Friday of our first week we were informed we would begin our work in earnest on Monday; we were glad we got time to prepare and read the documentation as well as install everything we needed for the task of a web audit.
 
Saturday was a nice break day after our first week of work and getting settled in which was important as on Sunday we went on a bus trip to Nerja and Frigiliana. They were absolutely stunning, especially Nerja, known for being the Balcony of Europe. A perfect way to cap off our first week in Spain.

Week 2 began with us benign assigned our task; a protected environment was set up on the Roninwear servers and it would be up to me and Serheii to gather as much information as possible using whatever tools we wished and would be give more tasks as the week went on, up to and including ethically hacking the test sites. So an absolutely fascinating way to spend our time, we learned a lot.
 
Tuesday the 30th of May we had the opportunity to climb Gibralfaro, a great hill and castle that dominated Malaga city centre. The views of the bay and the city were absolutely spectacular and again as a history student I appreciated the museum located atop the hill inside the castle walls and I think the large Art student contingent in our group appreciated the architecture and natural beauty of the location.
 
On Wednesday the 31st of May I had a major breakthrough with the Chromebook Penguin terminal and the ‘Postman’ website in relation to our work so I was delighted with that. We were sending daily reports to our superiors and were set up with an email to accomplish this as they worked offsite. They were very helpful and answered all our questions while the onsite staff were very friendly and gracious in allowing us time and space within their workplace.
 
The rest of week 2 was spent working on trying to get a solution to our web audit but was difficult as we were only starting out but again our work placements were very patient and helpful.
 
Capping off another great week we were taken by bus to Granada, which has huge significance in Spanish history as the final major city to fall in the Reconquista in 1492. Around that time Christopher Columbus approached Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for support for his expedition to ‘India’ only to find America instead. As such, we had an incredible tour of the UNESCO World Heritage site the Alhambra and it was the perfect way to end our second week.

​We started off our final week of our stay in Malaga with a huge hike arranged by Serhii. Was an incredible experience and one I’ll never forget, maybe around 15 - 20 km of walking amidst the various natural parks and hills around Malaga. The views were stunning and the weather was incredible, with plenty of forest cover so we were not affected too much by the sun.
 
Our task at work was updated so we spent the final week trying to solve it. Serhii managed to generate a report which our IT supervisors were very interested in. We were on the right track in trying to test the security of the servers. This would occupy much of our time until the end of our placement.
 
We did not manage to compromise the security of the urls but received commendations form the Roninwear team for our efforts. It was an amazing learning experience and I will take what I learned forward into my future courses in ATU and University of Galway - I am considering a Postgraduate Diploma in Cyber Security with the latter in 2024-2025 and this may have pushed me more firmly to pursue that.
 
At the end of our final week we met for one last group dinner and night out, a perfect way to say goodbye to Malaga and thanks for the incredible memories. On our last full day, Saturday the 10th of June, myself and Serhii spent the day in town enjoying Spanish cuisine and visited three different museums, the Malaga Museum, Picasso and Carmen museums. If you are in Malaga, there is no better way to spend a day than marvelling at all the incredible art amassed there.
 
We had a late bus and flight back to Ireland but thankfully nothing was delayed and everything went smoothly. We all said our goodbyes at various points including one final one in the Galway Bus Station. I was truly blessed to have met such an incredible group of people and wish them all the best in their future work and educational pursuits.
 
I learnt a lot about myself and had an incredible time. I had done Erasmus before for a full academic year in 2011-2012 in Finland for my BA International in NUI Galway and I think I preferred these 21 days in Spain! I don’t think there was a single moment, not 1 day out of 21 that I wasn’t happy with how things turned out. What an incredible opportunity and I’d like to thank GTI for picking me to go on this, European Era for their support, Roninwear for taking us in for work placement and of course the incredible group I was very lucky to share this trip with. So for me to get to do something like this at 31 after doing it before at 19-20 is just incredible luck. I will take everything I learned from the work placement and trip in general and take it forward with me as I continue my studies in Programming and Software Development in ATU Galway.