Gaisce Hike!

30 of us TYs headed off to Kippure in the Wicklow Mts. to partake in our 25km hike which we needed to do to complete the President's Bronze Award. We were so excited and had bags full of food to last us a week even though we only went for one night. This was another challenge we were willing to take up! When we arrived we dumped our bags in our houses. I was in house Gryffindor! We then set off on a 13km hike for the night. After the first km i was wrecked and I reckoned we had just about covered half of the trek. I was soon disappointed to find out we had another three hours to go. We hiked through fields, forests and very wet bogland. We crawled through a 5000 year old tomb which used to be used as a meeting place. I for one would definitely not like to hike up to the top of a mountain everyday just to hear all the news.

The night in the house was one to remember. We stayed up all night, making ourselves dinner and brownies, and watching High School Musical and some other cringey movies.

Next morning we were woken at 8 o'clock and set off on another hike of 12km hike. We were a lot quieter that morning than we had been the previous night. We were all so tired and the cold was certainly a shock to the system. The second day was more uphill with a lot more wet and boggy land. At the end of it all it felt like such an achievement to have completed 25km in just two days! It was such a fun weekend and I'd love to do it again!

Nationals with Bressie

We were so nervous going to our national bank competition. We had no idea what would be in store for us that day. When we arrived we unloaded all our bags and had a lovely breakfast :) Then we went into the chill-out zone to relax before our important interviews. The chill-out zone was mad! There was a silent disco, a giant draughts set, penalty kicks, air hockey, a cinema screen and loads more! We practised our presentation on the big stage with our podiums and microphones. We were then called out to do our interview. It was in a tent looking thing called a 'hub'. It went on for twenty minutes and we each spoke about the different exciting aspects of our bank. The interviewers seemed very impressed. Next up, dinner was served in the hall. It was delicious! There was a great performance at the beginning of the presentations with loads of acrobats and dancers and stilt-walkers. It really got us in a great mood :D Then the host of the day Bressie came out! :o He also performed on the day which was great because it was like our very own private gig! The songs just kept on comin'! :) He awarded us with our plaque, renaming us 'St. Waltons' and admired our outfits :) It was such a great day and one of the highlights of TY for sure!

We are the champions!

Our school participated in the West Leinster school sporting events and we did pretty well. Students from our school took part long jump, triple jump, javelin, shotput, hammerthrow, relays, sprints, hurdles, steeple-chase, high jump and more all in the hopes of taking home the gold. The awards system was based on points so wherever you placed you got a certain amount of points for it. The girls did extremely well in all events and we managed to take home the first place prize for Junior Girls, Intermediate Girls, Senior Girls, and the most important, Overall Girls for yet another year! Most of the competitors will now be continuing on to the Leinster finals now and our school is so proud and excited to be winners again :)

Retreat

I went on a retreat to Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mts, today and it really got me thinking about my beliefs and my actions. Here is what I remember about the day.