TY Night and Bowling

The Three Princesses
Ariel, Aurora and Belle

Well Monday was our TY Graduation Night. It was a night jam packed of amazing speeches about the different things we've been up to during the year as well as some songs and dancing!! It was a really fun night.

It all started on Monday morning when we went down to the hall to practice our song and dance as a year group before the big night. We ran through both and then it was time for lunch. After lunch we went through all the speeches for the night and then it was time for the end of year service. After big lunch then we went down to set up the hall with all of our art work and different projects we've been up to. It tool a while and a bit of hard work to get the hall all ready for the night.

Everyone's parents rolled into the school at about 7 and we started off with our song at 7:30. We sang a mix of Wavin' Flag and Never Forget. Then we got into the speeches, which were pretty funny. It was also fun to think back on everything we've done this year, which was actually a lot thinking about it. To finish off the night we did our dance. The first group did a dance to Break Free by Ariana Grande. The next group then went into Beyoncé Who Run the World followed by my group, the last group doing UpTown Funk! It was good fun just kinda messing around.

The Class Ariel, with a few extra girlos

The next day we had to tidy up everything, not too fun but then we went to Base for Bowling and Food. Bowling was a good way to start the summer off it was fun to be with friends messing around. After the bowling a few of us went to cinema and saw Pitch Perfect 2. That movie is hilarious, I'd recommend it!

Now that TY is over, thinking back on the year it was one of the best years of my life! I would do it all again if I could.

The Year Group Photo

An Xtreme Adventure

Free Fallin'

On Wednesday all the TY's headed to Swords for Xtreme.ie Adventure Centre. It was an amazing day of fun adventure activities. We split up into groups of about 10, put on the safety gear and off we went. First thing we did was a Free Fall Bungee Jump kind of thing. I'd say it was about 30 foot in the air and all we had to do was step off this podium and fall. Sounds easy but it was shit scary!! My heart literally dropped as soon as I stepped off this thing. It was so much fun though. Most people landed on their behinds but it looked really cool landing on your feet, like in a spy movie or something haha.

Climbing to the
Top of the World 

Next we went climbing. There were four walls which we were climbing on, each of us got to climb on the three walls if we wanted to. Once at the top we got to abseil back down so that was like two activities in one.








We then got to be like Katniss Everdeen The Girl on Fire with our bow and arrows while doing

Warriors in the Field 

archery. We each got two practice shots and Lucy was like a natural, plus with a braid like Katniss. I think we've found her!! We were like warriors in two groups fighting against each other to get the highest score in the little competition we had. Unfortunately my group lost, 145 to 138 or something like that.



There were obstacles courses on three different levels that we did too, only we did the top two levels. Starting with the top level we went around one by one over the obstacles. The last obstacle was a leap-of-faith. Next we went onto the second level which was a little more difficult, the obstacles I mean. However some of us little rebels here went upstairs and joined the line for the Zip Line! I was one of those "rebels" who went on the Zip Line, it was really fun one of the best things we did all day, a great way to end the adventures.

Looking down the line

After all of our adventures in Xtreme we went to Liffey Valley on our last shopping adventure of the TY Year. We got food and even had time to look around the shops. All in all it was a brill day out with our friends and a great trip to end the year.

Busy Week This Week

To start off our busy week we had sports day on Monday!!

We all came into school in our tracksuits all ready for the day of sports ahead of us. Just before lunch before we went outside it started raining but stopped soon after. After lunch we all went outside to part take in sports activities. There were loads of sports, relays, high jump, long jump, spot put, plus some other fun races such as the three legged race, and the wheel barrow race.

I did the relay with Chloe K, Chloe M and Sadhbh. We came 5th out of the about 10 teams. There was also a game of soccer between some students and the teachers, and the annual game of rounders between the sixth years and teachers. That was pretty funny. That day was good fun.




Next on Tuesday about half of the year had SciFest in IT Tallaght. The bus left really early at 8:40, it was suppose to leave at 8:20 but it was late. Since I needed my laptop for some things for our project, myself and Roisin watched a movie on the way to IT Tallaght.

The whole day was pretty boring, we set up our posters, got judged a few times, ate lunch, talked to friends, went to talks, took down posters and set back home on the bus. Surprisingly the judging was quite tiring and we needed a well deserved break after talking so much. On the bus home, myself and Roisin continued the movie. We were watching The Fault In Our Stars which Roisin hadn't seen before!

  

Last big thing we did this week was our retreat on Wednesday. We left from school to go to Maynooth for our big retreat. When we arrived we went into a room in the College where we sat down in seats. We then had to sit in a big circle and pushed the chairs back. We played a game, where there were four people in the middle of the circle and then everyone around in the circle linked arms. We had to hold on tight because the people in the middle had to pulled us apart. The way the retreat people described it was that we in the circle were teeth and that the people in the middle of the circle were the dentists that had to pull us out. That was actually fun to play and then we played a game where we pretended to be people drowning after the Titanic was sinking. When the captain said groups of four we had to get into groups of four of a "lifeboat" and anyone left over died. That was okay too, after then we had break.

When we came back after our break and split into groups of about ten and got a question. We had to discuss our questions in our groups and then we got back into one big group. Once in the big group we discussed each question as a group. Once we got to my groups question, Who has it easier in our society, girls or boys, we spent ages and ages discussing it. We even had to stop in the middle for our other break. We then picked up where we left off after break and spent the rest of the day discussing the other questions. We finished up about 3 o'clock and headed back to school.

All in all the busy week we had was actually fun. I hoped next week is as jam-packed as this week.  

Is This Amazing or What?........Agree or Disagree?

How amazing does this look? It's the Underwater Waterfall of Mauritius Island. Mauritius Island is located in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. This is an island wonderland that has one of the most astonishing sights in the world, The Underwater Waterfall. Unfortunately this waterfall is an optical illusion created by sand washed up into patterns which make it appear as an underwater waterfall. I think that it is amazing how the earth has all these wonderful natural beauties.

Swimming a Mile

Ian Daly Swim a Mile

On Wednesday all the TY Students and LCVP Students set off on the bus to the National Aquatic Center to do the Ian Daly Swim a Mile With a Smile.

We arrived at the aquatic center, got changed and make our way out onto the pool bank. We had 5 swimming lanes, each 25m long. We split up into our groups. People doing the mile by themselves got a lane, next people in groups of 2 or 3 got the second lane, people with 4 or 5 in a group got the third lane. And then the next two lanes were for people with more than 5 in a group.

I planned to do the full mile so I got into the first lane with about 9 others. We each had to do 64 lengths to complete the mile. There were people counting our lengths for us so we didn't have to worry about that. Before we got started I think that everyone was a little nervous, I know I was. Since I had finished endurance 2 a few weeks ago in life saving I was a little prepared for the mile.

Once everyone got started it was fine. We kinda flew through the lengths, I didn't really notice the time going by. It didn't take too long for us to complete the mile. I had actually forgotten how much I love to swim and when we finished we got a t-shirt!

When we left the aquatic center after our mile, we headed to Blanchardstown for about 2 hours before going home to relax after all our exercise for the day.

Hiking to Infinity

Like I told you last week we were going on the Gaisce Hike, well it was not what people were expecting. We left school on the bus and went up to Kippure. We split up into our houses, got our hiking on and then left for the 5 hour hike!!

Kippure Estate 

We started off and it was okay, nice steady pace and not too steep or anything. We just followed the road for a while and then walked through trees and on the road again. We stopped for some food before heading up a steep mountain, not fun!! The mountain was really high up and the walk was really long. After loads of going up steep rocky "paths" we finally reached the top of the mountain. On the top we had more food and there was also an ancient tomb. Some of us went inside the tomb. We went in one way and then there was an opening at the other end where we went out again. Anyway we continued walking up another mountain. This mountain had loads of false horizons so it seemed to be really high. Once we reached the top there it was all downhill from there so that was good. The only bad thing about downhill was that there were a few streams and boggy parts so people's feet got wet. It wasn't very nice but after all the boggy bit we followed a river along it's bank and then we made it back to Kippure and back to the houses. We all scrubbed up and had dinner before going to bed.

We had a very early rise Saturday morning, well very early for a Saturday morning. We all had breakfast and tidied up before leaving for activities at 9. We did high ropes activities like the leap of faith, a balance beam, a climbing wall, abseiling and a vertical challenge. We had the activities for about 2 hours before heading off again on the hike. During the activities it started raining which was a very bad thing!! It didn't last too long though. After the activities we got our hiking gear back on to head off for the other 10km. We split into 3 groups this time for the hike. A slower group went first, they got dropped off somewhere and then the bus came back for the rest. I went in the middle group, while on the bus getting dropped to a point it started to rain again but when we got off the bus we realized that it wasn't rain it was in fact snow!! It snowed for the whole 4 hours while hiking, it was horrible. And the mountain wasn't any better than the day before, it was quite steep too. When we got to the top though we had caught up with the first group. The instructors took out shelters which everyone huddled together to get under and eat. None of us really wanted to get out of the shelters but we had to so it was back out into the horrible wind and snow. The walk was also horrible, all the way along there were loads of bogs and huge puddles so everyone got soaked. Everyone was so happy when we got back to the house, dry, warm clothes and hot food. We got changed and some people had hot food and then we hit the road home. Typical when we got home it was lovely and sunny, but snow up the mountains. 

The Climbing Wall

Looking down from the Leap of Faith 

All in all it was a great weekend, pitty the weather wasn't good, even after all the sunny days we had before. I still had fun though. 

Gaisce

Today is the day that we go on our Gaisce Hike. Since the start of the year we have been working towards our Gaisce Bronze Award. 

There are 4 different things you do to complete the Bronze Award. You do 3 different activities for 13 weeks and then an overnight journey. For the activities there are categories, you need to each a Community Involvement where you help your community in some way, a Personal Skill where you learn something new and a Physical Activity where you play a sport or that. For mine I did a Scout Leader for my community involvement, I did Life Safety for my personal skill and I did Camogie for my physical activity.


Then the overnight journey is where you have to complete a 25km hike over 2 days. So today some of us are off to Kippure in the Wicklow Mountains to complete our 25km hike. Tomorrow we will also be doing some activities that Kippure offer like High Ropes, Leap of Faith and Archery. It should be so fun, I can't wait.