Carlingford: Don't be afraid of the dark!

DAY 1
Wow, what can I say? Carlingford is definitely one of the best trips I've had in a long time. It was just amazing! We were up bright and early on Monday morning and arrived at Esso absolutely buzzing with the excitement. The funny thing is everyone came with these hugeee suitcases, you'd swear we we're going for a month! The bus journey went fairly quickly due to the fact that we were all singing songs and chatting about the day ahead. We arrived in Carlingford and the first thing that caught my eye was the gorgeous scenery. We were looking out at the sea, and I could see ruins of a castle in the distance. We went through this quaint little village that had an old sweet shop and the likes, not forgetting the Chinese and the chipper. We went into the centre which is right in the middle of the little village. We all went into the main room upstairs and we were divided into 2 big groups.
My group's first activity was laser shooting. the weather wasn't great but that didn't stop us form having a good time! It was a great start to the day, I really enjoyed it! (Although the walk up to it was hell but that's just because I'm extremely unfit)  but anyway, our team obviously won :)
We went back to the centre after about 45 minutes or an hour to the centre for our lunch which was rather tashty, chips and sausage rolls After that we went back out and walked a good 15 minutes to a field down the road where there were group activities and challenges. We were split into groups with 10 people in each. There were loads of challenging games that required teamwork so it was a bit of bonding time for us all! Again the weather was bad, well just a little drizzly but we didn't mind.
When we got back to the centre we were given our rooms. We got to choose who was in each room. We took the room of 8 in the apartments that were separate from the centre, you had to walk a tiny bit through the village to get to our rooms. Melissa, Aideen, Lauren O'R, Karen, Holly and I were in one room while our other friends were in the other 2 rooms. Our teacher Ms O'C was in another room, so shoutout to her for putting up with us!
We had dinner ( meatballs and pasta, yum yum!) after we got settled in, and afterwards we we went out for our third and last activity of the day which was a forest walk in the dark...it wasn't really dark, it was at about 7:30 in the evening. It was a long but refreshing walk to the forest, ( we had to take a detour because of  cows on the road, but we didn't mind because we avoided a steep hill....which is always a plus! ;) ) We arrived in the forest and we were given blindfolds. First we decided Melissa would be the leader and then we put on our blindfolds. We were guided by a rope along the side of the forest which we kept a tight hold of. Our guides were making sounds and spraying water in our faces, which made us all scream. It was so much fun. By now it was pretty dark so we played a few hiding games so it was great. We heard the other group who were doing their blindfolded walk and we absolutely roared in their ears. They were PETRIFIED. Especially Hannah C who fell down like a bowling pin from such fear...sorry Hannah :) After this we played another game and then our guides decided to bring us for a walk down the road to a underground tunnel. I didn't know what was going on, but when we arrived it was small tunnel that you had to crouch down in but it was PITCH DARK and when I say pitch dark I mean pitch pitch dark. Hope ye aren't afraid of the dark boys and girls. All I could hear was "Umm, I can't tell if my eyes are open or not..." It was really scary because it was really small and I was afraid a rat or something would maul my face off but we all made it out alive. Afterwards we walked back to the centre, while me and Niamh O'H exchanged a few ghost stories :) To my excitement we were allowed to go to the Chinese or the chipper, I went to the chipper for a few chicken nuggets and they were fabulous with a capital F. We ate them back in the centre and then went back to our rooms to settle down for the night at about 10.30. We were chatting away and then went to sleep later. And that's it folks, that's the end of the first day. I'll continue on in my next blogpost!

The Brown Envelope

Cad é an scéal? (Howiya Anna!) Not much has happened since I last posted, apart from the JC results! Everyone did fabulous so congrats everybody! Ye all deserve those good results :) I was soo scared and I was so impatient. I had felt really excited all morning but those feelings soon changed in nervousness (is that a word? who knows?) but when I got into school and saw all my friends I calmed down a bit. We were put into our 3rd year classes so it was a Pegasus reunion!! Woo! Our names were called out and we were handed our envelopes...the dreaded brown envelope. I was having heart failure by this time. But I was delighted. Everyone seems happy so that's good! But apart from that nothing much has happened.

Yesterday, all TY's visited Castletown House for a tour. Our tour guide was Grace, and she told us all about the history of the house. I've been on the tour a couple times before but I still learned a lot of new facts. It was a great day out and I really enjoyed myself. My favourite room of the house was the Print Room because it was so unique. All of the walls were covered in pictures and newspaper cuttings, which were stuck to the wall with flour and water by Lady Louisa Lennox. So that's all for now guys, On Monday and Tuesday we will be in Carlingford!! Yeaahh buddyyyyy!!! So I'm really excited about that. Hopefully I will have loads of pics for ye which I will upload onto my blog so keep an eye out lads! Bye for now!

2 Important Events

So..it's the evening of Tuesday, 10th of September. Which means 2 things. Firstly it's G's birthday but, it is also exactly 15 hours until RESULTS! I'm going to keep this blogpost short because if I dwell on the fact that RESULTS ARE IN 15 HOURS, I will probably start to quiver with fear :) The fact that our results are in an envelope at the moment makes kinda scared.....but excited too. I have mixed emotions about how I think I did, in some subjects, I feel like I did rather bad but in others I feel like I did well enough! I just hope I'm happy with my results.. To be honest, at the moment I'm not nervous but all those emotions will kick in later :) Well, best of luck tomorrow everyone and hope you all get what you wanted! Sweet dreams everybody! By the way I'm going to count how many times the sentence "what did you get" is used tomorrow! :P

Teresh-kova or Ter-esh-kova?

One of the most exciting things about going into any year, is finding out your class names. Our classes form 1st to 3rd year were constellations: I was class Pegasus which was the best class ever! (Shoutout to Niamh O'H and Eimz and all the rest of the pegs.) This year, our classes are named after women who were the first to achieve something for example, my class is called Tereshkova, which we've all had trouble pronouncing. Isn't that right girls? Some people pronounce it with the accent on the second "e" while others put the accent on the "o." But anywho, I love the name because it's really different. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space. The other classes are Tabei, (named after the first woman to climb mount Everest) and Cornaro (named after the first woman to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree.) but of course class Tereshkova is the best. :)

The Junior Seniors

So...The first week of TY is over! Well it hasn't technically been a week, but you know what I mean. It's hard to believe that the year has finally started...it seems like the junior cert finished a couple of days ago to be honest! None the less I am delighted that TY has started, having a routine, and getting to see all my friends, shoutout to Gráinne who is watching me write this :) I've really enjoyed having new teachers and making friends in my new class. One thing I like about TY is the fact that everybody has to do all the option subjects. I've never done tech in my life so I'm pretty excited about trying it today for the first time! It's very different to all the other years, you're entering the senior cycle, yet you are the juniors of the senior cycle, if that makes any sense at all. There is completely different vibe in TY, no stress, and everything is a bit more laid back. So far, I don't think this year is a doss year by any means. We've already gotten two projects to do and homework on top of that! But I'm not complaining. We do a lot of group work (sci-fest, junk kouture etc.) and I really enjoy it as it gives me a chance to bond with my new classmates and get to know everybody better. My class (Tereshkova) are mixed up with the other classes in some of our subjects eg. maths, science. I quite like our class name this year but I'll talk about the exciting names in my next blogpost maybe?? Anyway I feel like this is getting quite long so I'll wrap up now, but can I just say how great it is to finally be in kilt... Right, here's my stop, I see y'all back here in my next blogpost, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!