University of Limerick (UL)

Traveling around Ireland is difficult, especially because you cannot really rent a car unless you're 23-25. The public transportation system is seriously lacking, which also makes it hard to catch planes from the main airport if you intend on travelling outside of Ireland. There is positives too though, like Ireland's inexpensive airline, Ryanair, which can get you to the mainland for under $150 return.

The only helpfull advice I could give is to remark the idea that U.L. is a total student life university, where you are goig to be all the time in contact with foreing students (30% are not Irish) but, in general, there is not a big social life with local people. The only necessary thing is beeing open minded.

use Ryan airlines out of Shannon airport for travel. Its very inexpensive.

Travel around Ireland, don´t drink too much beer and enjoy your irish experience!

Obviously, the every-day exposition to another language makes you improve with it and after some time, you, not only think in that language, but also dream in it and therefore you feel comfortable. Nevertheless, the fact that it was an Erasmus program made you be in contact with a considerable number of students of your own country, so you cannot say that it was a complete inmersion. With this I mean that the improoving could have been bigger.