Gaisce Hike!!

Last weekend, 25th April, was our Hike for our Bronze Gaisce Awards!

Gaisce, also known as 'The Presidents Award' is a personal development programme that is a direct challenge from the President to all young people aged 15-25 to dream big and fulfill their potential. President Micheal D.Higgins is the proud patron of Gaisce.

We were extremely lucky to have been given this invaluable opportunity by the school, as many schools are not offered this opportunity. To complete the Bronze Gaisce Award, it was required that we took part in 13 hours of various activities: 

• 13 hours of community involvement
• 13 hours toward developing a personal skill
• 13 hours of physical recreation
• An extra 13 hours towards one of the mentioned activities
• And finally to take part in an adventure activity. For us, our adventure activity was our Hike!

My activities were...

• Choir (13 weeks)
• Speech and Drama (13 weeks)
• Athletics (26 weeks)

Our Hike was held in the Wicklow Mountains.... It was definitely an experience! We stayed at Kippure Lodge.

We left school at approx. 2pm on Friday evening and boarded our bus to Wicklow. The bus journey was surprisingly short, we arrived in Wicklow in no time! As soon as we arrived we were divided into houses, where we unloaded our bursting bags of food into the fridge. We were then summoned into the courtyard where we received a quick introductory speech from the leaders and then off we went!

The First hour of our Hike went smoothly enough... it was the other four that killed me! We were walking almost vertically from stone to stone to reach the top of the mountain. Through the blistering heat, we soldiered on! The mountain seemed almost never ending! We reached many "Fake Tops" before we reached the real top. At the top we found a huge Court Cairn, We investigated what was inside to realize it was just a narrow corridor in which you had to climb through to emerge at the other side of the stones. 

At the end of the Hike, we crawled back inside to our houses where we prepared our evening meal! Luckily Eve's mam had already made us a delicious Pasta Bake and all we had to do was pop it in the oven! We had the pasta bake and two pizzas for dinner, along with a yummy cake and sweets, we felt we needed to replenish our energy! We then watched TV and chatted for the night. 

Bright and Early we arose from our slumber! And headed off for high rope activities and Part 2 of our hike. The high rope activities were great craic besides the actual climbing the rope part! After the high rope we began our hike. We were dropped off by a van at the foot of a mountain in the pouring sleet in below freezing temperatures began our walk up the mountain. Within ten minutes the heavy sleet had turned to snow. We hiked up and down that steep mountain for five hours in the snow! agh! Words cannot describe how truly cold it was up there! My runners were turning to ice and my hands and feet were numb. We were even too cold to stop and eat in case we froze on the spot... we ended up eating our lunch in an illuminous parachute pod thing which covered our upper bodies but left our feet to freeze. Ah! It was an experience!

 I was never happier to be home in my life! Overall though it was a great trip! It was by far one of the hardest things i've ever had to do but it was definitely very rewarding! ;)

XX

Elf The Musical!

Hellooo!

Long time no see! Alot has happened since my last blog post, so I think we'll start at Elf The Broadway Musical.

Just before the start of our Christmas Holidays, we went to The Bord Gáis Energy Theater Dublin to see Elf. It was great because whilst everyone else in St Wolstans was struggling their way through exams, we were boarding the bus to Dublin! The Bus journey seemed short and in no time at all we were in the Keys in Town. We arrived a bit too early so we waited around the red pointy sticks and some of us went to Centra for snacks.

When it was time to go in, we were handed our tickets by Ms Leonard and we made our way inside. Our seats were at the very back so we had a birds eye view of the stage. There was lots of other schools there too along with loads of families. Most people were kitted out in their Elf Merchandise and Christmas Jumpers. The theater was packed. When the curtains lifted, you could have heard a pin drop!

The Musical was straight from Broadway! Which was very exciting to be honest! I had never seen a Broadway Musical before. The musical was fantastic! The whole production was brilliant. I really enjoyed it, It was one of the best things we have done in TY so far. I loved every minute of it!

Byeeeee
Love,
Caroline
xxx


url
The red pointy sticks ^^^^

url

More than words...

Hi! Here's my attempt at our blogger challenge this week...

                                                       More than words........

url

url

url

url

url

url

url

url

url

url

url

And! An added bonus of a qoute about words ;)

"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world." - Robin Williams

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Hi there!


In Religion we are doing projects on MDG's. The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that were established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000.
These eight Goals include

  1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

  2. Achieve universal Primary education.
  3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
  4. Reduce child mortality.
  5. Improve maternal health.
  6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
  7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
  8. Develop a Global partnership for development.

 Some interesting facts about the MDG Goals are.....

•  Roughly 2/3 of the population of sub-Saharan Africa has HIV. One goal is to cut the growth of HIV by 50%.

• The percent of underweight children in developing countries dropped from 28% in 1990 to 17% in 2011.

• Worldwide,1.2 billion earn less than $1.25 a day. The UN hopes to end poverty by cutting this number in half.

• 800 million people are undernourished and 153 million children are underweight. 

• Poverty disproportionately affects women, who represent 70 percent of the world’s poor and the current financial crisis is likely to affect women particularly severely. According to estimates, of the 771 million illiterate adults worldwide, 64 percent are women

•  Of the 680 million children of primary school age, 115 million are still not in school — 97% of them in developing countries

•  Every year, more than 10 million children die of preventable causes –  30, 000 per day.

These MDG's give children in some of the poorest and isolated communities in the world hope for a better future, we can make our generation be the generation that finally ends poverty.

Thank you for reading,

love Caroline x

Work Experience!

Hi!

If you didnt already know, Every Wednesday we TY's go on a Work Experience Placement. This is to help us gain an insight into our chosen profession, we each get three slots. For my first slot I am going to a Primary school in Milicent called Hewetson and for my second slot I am going to my old playschool 'La Petit Ecole', I havn't sorted my third slot yet.



So far, I have spent three Wednesdays in Hewetson. On the first Wednesday of my work experience I was quite nervous entering the school as I had never been in the school before and I didnt know what kind of duties I would be expected to preform. Luckily enough the biggest "duty" I was given was laminating. When I entered the school Ms Morgan the principle greeted me, she was extremly friendly and welcoming which calmed my nerves alot. Hewetson is an amazing school its numbers are small which means each class is split, for example there is a Junior and senior class, a first and second class, a third and fourth class and lastly a fifth class. There are fifteen students altogether in Juniors and Seniors, which I think is lovely as
each child recieves lots of individual attention.

I have been given the oppertunity to spend time in every class which gives me a great understanding of each class cirriculum. The teachers and students are as kind and friendly as ever, At luch time I usually go on 'Yard Duty' which gives me an excellent oppertunity to meet the students and get to know them better. In Hewetson I have been able to observe different class groups and I have also been able to actually teach a few students at the back of the classroom who find certain topics especially diffucult. Last Wednesday I helped two students from third class to diferentiate between which, witch, white and with also come, comb, cob and there, their, they're ect. I absolutly loved this oppertunity to be able to teach the students....I also loved being called 'teacher'

Each Wednesday so far has been brilliant! I really think I would love to be a primary school teacher when I am older. I cant wait for next Wedneday!

   < future me ;)

Carlingford!

Hello there!

Well, Last week was very eventful! We went to Carlingford Adventure Center!!

It all began at the unnecessarily early time of 7am Monday morning. After a fairly speedy two hours we arrived at Carlingford! The village of Carlingford was absolutely beautiful, so beautiful that Leah and I were convinced it was a fake village. We believed that this fake village was set up purely for The Adventure Center customers. (Ooops) 

When we arrived we were put into Groups, I was in Group B. We were then given the keys to our rooms, it was all very exciting. What made it more exciting was the fact that we weren't just given a room, we were given an apartment, complete with a TV and The Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets movie! We were pretty impressed to say the least!.........Our Apartment (Muhahaha)   ;)

We then headed downstairs kitted with towels and swimming togs for our first activity, which was kayaking. Needless to say, Leah and I found our undiscovered talent for kayaking! We kayaked to a stony beach where we played games and had fun. After, we headed in for a badly needed hot lunch!

Straight after lunch we put on our camonsies, and received our guns for Laser Tag! Which was without a doubt the best thing we did! We hiked up a never ending mountain until we reached the battlefield! Where we spent two and a half hours shooting, dying and capturing flags!

The following morning we were awoken with a fright to a booming, cheery voice over the intercom far too early for my liking! 

After breakfast we headed straight to the beach for canoeing, which was brilliant! We canoed to a floating trampoline in the sea where we jumped to stay warm! We then went to a little beach called 'Nun's Beach' where we took turns to climb though what seemed a big black pipe 'till we reached the 'Waterfall of Eternal Youth', where we each added a day to our lives!

Up next was the challenges! Where we competed in teams to gain Jewels. (To get off the mysterious Island....obviously) At 5ish we had our bags packed to hit the road for home.

Overall, it was an amazing trip! I loved every minute of it! It was worth every cough and sniffle!

Love, Caroline xx

JUNIOR CERT RESULTS!! O.o

Hello :)


Yesterday was the ever so stressful day of Junior certificate results. The three months of anticipation finally came to a close. After a night of waking up every hour on the hour, we got to see our results. We were due to be in school at ten to 12 Wednesday morning, although,unfortunately my dad wouldn't be my dad if he dropped me in before 12. My dad doesn't exactly believe in punctuality. So i arrived at an embarrassingly late 12;03, just before the handing out of the brown envelopes.

Luckily the results weren't too bad! I think its fair to say everyone did a lot better than they expected, and I am very happy :) Its so hard to believe we're now officially SENIORS, it feels as though we should only be going into second year.

Last night was pretty good too!! ;) It was an amazing night.

Caroline. X