Thursday 14 May 2015

retreat

yesterday all of Ty's went on a retreat in Maynooth university.  We left the school at about half nine. when we got there we pulled our chairs into a circle and the leaders introduced themselves. our first activity/task was a group game. we all had to sit in a circle linking arms. four girls were in the middle. The aim of the game was for the girls in the middle to pull girls from the circle into the middle, and who ever held on for the longest won.

When me and aoife smith got pulled we went around pulling out random girls together, one of the highlights from ty:))
After this we played another group game where we had to get into groups of whatever number was called out.

we then got to have our break and were aloud outside if we wanted too.

when we came back in we got into groups so we could have a group discussion on topics given to us. our groups topic was 'if a millionaire was to offer you 1 million euro to donate to what ever charity you wanted, only if you would walk down grafton street on a busy Saturday morning, naked. no one is aloud take pictures of you and you have someone with you so no one will come up to you.'

we we're all put off by the idea of having to do this, but then some of us were thinking if it was for a charity that effected you personally, you would think twice again about it.

all the group discussions were then opened up to everyone after
we then got lunch and me aoife sophie and beth went for a walk around the campus:))

we then went back and did a reflection on the day and had a quite time to think.

Thursday 7 May 2015

hockey coaching

For three weeks on Thursday mornings, me, and other girls from the school hockey team we're asked to teach 6th class girls in st.Bridget's how to play hockey.

This is to help encourage the incoming first years to pick up hockey in the school when they become students.

we've completed 2/3 of the Thursdays already now.

the first week was difficult because we had no idea what we we're doing or how we should even go about teaching these girls.

as time past though we got into the swing of it and it became that little bit easier, but it was frustrating when you were trying to show the girls how to correctly say hit the ball and they just continue to do it how they were. patience was key.

The second day was a lot easier, we knew what we were doing and the girls had a better understanding of the sport. we first went over what we did the previous week before moving onto something new, which was Indian dribble, i didn't think the girls would have picked it up as quick as they did, considering most only ever have played half an hour of hockey ever.

i'm excited to go back again next week and hopefully let them play a match.
i really think this was a good experience to get.

swim a mile

on the 6th of may we all went to swim a mile in the aquatic center.
when we got there they explained what the plan for the day was.

after the man finished explaining what we we're going to do, we all went to get changed. I've never seen us all look as awful as we did with our swimming hats on.

we got to choose our groups that we swam in. Meadhbh, Sarah, Raja, Sophie, and Chloe Quinn were in my group. in total we had to swim 64 lengths of the pool.

we we're the first group to finish, it didn't take as long as i expected it to do. when we we're finished our mile we continued to swim another 1 or so.

We then got out dried off and received a t-shirt. we all then were asked to put it on so we could take a group picture.

we then got changed and got to spend the rest of the day in blanch.



Thursday 30 April 2015

gaisce :):)

last Friday was our gaisce trip. We arrived there and got put into our houses. there was only 5 in our house, which i thought was better.

after we put everything away we set out to do the first part of our walk. the weather got nicer  as the walk went on. At the start it was hard because there was a lot of steep slopes but when we got into it, it got easier. What made it even easier again was playing music, i think amy jackson had mint donk tune the whole way up!!!

it took about 4ish hours to get to the top of the  mountain. when we got there you could see right all over Dublin city. We stayed here for a bit where we took photo and had lunch.

the walk back felt never ending because the ground was so uneven and mucky it was hard to walk. And we all found out orla has a weird love for sheep:)) 6 hours later we finally made it back to the houses.

when we got there we plugged the speaker in straight away and started making our dinner. we had pasta bake and oven pizza and chips. we stayed up till about five that night

in the morning Orla had to wake everyone up. We were meant to be out starting activities at 9.15 with our bags packed, but we only sat down for breakfast at 9. Me and orla made about 5 tins of beans and 10 slices of toast while shauna made scrambled eggs for everyone.

We werent even dressed when the teachers came looking for us to see why werent we ready. this was at like a quarter past. so for 7 minuets we all ran around like headless chickens trying to get everything packed away, cleaned and get ourselves dressed. we finally met up with everyone at half.

the activities we're harder than they looked. The first one was the high climb. you had to climb up pole and then walk across a  narrow horizontal  pole. when it was my turn i wasn't expecting it to be as high up as it was, so i went straight up to the highest one. Because the weather was so bad the poles were already slippery enough. and all you had for balance was the rope that was attached to your harness. so instantly i regretted my decision.

when we we're done activities we got to go back into the houses so we could put extra layers on and have a cup of tea to warm ourselves up, so we used this chance to put 4 packets of noodles into a big bowl for all of us to eat from.  Probably one of the best ideas we ever had.

we all then met up in a house where we split into groups according to our ability to walk, the slow group, medium group and the fast group. i was in the fast group so we left around 2 hours after everyone else.

as soon as we got out of the mini bus that dropped us to the end of the mountain, it started to snow. we all thought that it would just pass in a few minuets because it was 15 degrees only two days previous. The start was ten times steeper than the first day and the snow just continued to get heavier and heavier. I was only wearing strides so my ankles were on show and i honestly thought they were gunna fall off after they turned yellow/red.

the ground was so saturated it felt like we were just walking on a sponge. At one point when we we're all freezing, soaked and fed up i went to jump over a boggy patch and missed. my foot went straight in and the muck came over my ankles, but when i thought it couldnt get worse, when i went to move my shoe came off!!! so now was i not only shoe less i was balancing on one foot which was sinking deeper and deeper!!but strangely enough i found this hilarious

about an hour later we think the mountain got into amys head because she  was jumping into any boggy part she could find, for a while we agreed if she got any crazier we would just leave her behind.

a little bit later the weather just got so bad that we had to pull out a mini parachute/ tent thing so we could all sit under it and have an attempt to warm up. our guide also had a flask of coffee that we shared around. This was the weirdest experience ive ever had.

We all honestly thought we we're never getting off this mountain and back to civilization it was like we we're in something like the walking dead, you couldnt even see far ahead of you with the snow.

when we started to go back down the mountain me and jane got a sudden burst of energy out of nowhere and we ran from the back of our group and down the stony path. We kept running until we caught up with the middle group.

here we had now gotten well ahead of our guide, while others hesitated to move on me and shauna just didnt care and some how we managed to find the first group. it wasnt short after this when we got back to the resort, and i have to say when i got changed n to my pj's and was on the bus, it was the happiest moment ive ever had. but overall this was the one of the best trips ive ever been on.

Thursday 19 March 2015

selma

Our whole year was brought out on a trip to go view a screening of the movie 'selma'. My class was currently studying the American civil war in history class, so being able to see this movie was a great help to understand the cause of this war.

We traveled to our local cinema via bus, this was all fine until we reached a hill. Due to the fact all of TY 's are on this bus along with 3 teachers the driver and everyone on boards belongings, we struggled to make it up. The bus crawled along the  road at a worrying pace. But to our amazement we finally reached the top and were well on our way.

When we reached the cinema you could almost bet your life on none of us seeing food for weeks. Large pop corns and drinks were flying around the place. Only to be accompanied by nachos, crisps, chocolate , jellies, you name it, and not only did we have it we could feed an army with it. The last time i felt this unhealthy was our TY Trip to Carlingford Adventure Center.

The viewing was under special request from our school so we had the luxury of the whole screening room to ourselves. We thought because of this we might get lucky and skip past the ads and go straight to the movie, but we werent that lucky.

The movie was based on the true story of Martin Luther King leading the struggle of the african americans with their fight for the right to vote and more importantly equality.

sci fest

Since the start of the year in science we've been working in groups of 3. Our project was to come up with an experiment to prove anything we wanted and to showcase it in the hall as part of the sci fest competition.

My group decided to do an investigation into stress. We came up with surveys of what we believed were everyday stresses. We only wanted to survey girls in our school. The idea of our project was to show how small things such as school and pressure to look good can effect a person in the long run.

after our surveys were completed we drew up graphs representing the information we collected. We found out that school and teachers were the main cause of stress followed by friends and family.

As part of the competition we had to make a poster displaying a summary of what our project is. We then also had to have a booklet that went into great detail of every aspect of our research and experiment

unfortunately we did not make it through to the next rounds of the competition

Thursday 25 September 2014

Week three

Ty Week Three - Carlingford

This week in Ty all three classes went on'route to Carlingford Adventure Center in county Louth. 

We all set out early on Monday Morning. Although we were only staying for one night the amount of things we brought was crazy, Not even to mention the amount of sweets we all had. I say in total my room spent almost hundred euro on food. 

The first thing we did when we arrived was arrange the rooms that we were staying in and put our bags in. Then it was straight into activities. 

Our first activity was canoeing, but before we could get on the water we all had to put on cold, wet and smelly wetsuits followed by a life-vest and a helmet, as you can imagine first thing Monday morning we were not impressed. But as soon as we all got out there we really enjoyed it. The Instructors had 3 canoes tied together and we all had to paddle over to opposite shore. 

When we got back to the center we all got cleaned and went down for lunch, which wasn't the nicest thing I've ever eaten but when you're hungry almost anything will do. 

We were then aloud walk around the town for an hour. 

After we we're all back and ready for our next activity my group went up to do the challenges, most were boring and frustrating such as the one where we had to move a ping-pong ball around a course using half a pipe each. One of the activities that i enjoyed was a small rope obstacle course, which involved tightrope walking and climbing over hanging tires.I was meant to make sure that one of the girls, Megan, didn't fall while she was doing it but of course she ended up right on her back, lucky for me she forgave me after:))

 But my Favorite one  Was the 3D maze where all our team crawled into a tight tunnel and were told to find our way out by climbing up and down. It was already quite claustrophobic  when we first entered then the lights were turned off. So only could we not stand/sit properly we couldn't see either, And to just make it just that little bit harder we only had half an hour to do it, before we went in it sounded like way too much time, but time flew and none of us made it out.

That evening after dinner we all set out on a night-line up the mountain. For this we all had to be blindfolded and only use the person infront of us and a rope that was tie around trees. I dont think anyone didnt fall during that. Walking back, for me, was actually better than the activity itself. We took the long way home and had a great view of the bay at night. For some reason everyone was just really hyper and just made fools of ourselves.

The night could just be summed up by just saying food. The amount we had was actually sickening and never mind the Chinese. Before we went into our rooms for the night, there was a small disco up in one of the common rooms with the other schools, but only our school were the ones putting on songs and dancing, which wasnt a bad thing.    

The next morning we we're all up really early again and had to clean the room, 11 girls in one room for one night says it all. The room looked like we were there for 3 weeks. We got dressed and had breakfast before going out to do kayaking, same as before we all got into wetsuits again but this time even more reluctant as everyone was twice as tired than the day before. I really enjoyed this activity. We all paddled out to a big trampoline in the middle of the water where we got to jump on it then off into the water. 

Our final activity was by far my favorite. we all got changed into jumpsuits that had an army print on it and used paint to put black stripes on our faces. Sarah brought a speaker and we all sang while we walked back up the mountain, everyone was really excited. When we reached where we were meant to go, we all got handed a laser gun and head band. Being the biggest group of competitive people, it wasnt going to be a slow and boring game. we started off when each team just had to try kill everyone else on the opposite one, you had to get shot 30 times to be killed. We played a few games of this before we introduced 'the data box' This was a similar game to capture the flag except you had to download the data and upload it to your base. This got frustrating after a while so for the last few games we just played the original game again.

Everyone was in such a good mood on the way back to the center after lasertag,But no one released how drained they were untill we all got on the bus. Sophie and I had so much food left over and energy drinks so we were sorted for the journey home.

If I could i would love to do those two days again.