Work Experience

Yesterday the 3rd of December was last day of our first term of work experience. I spent my first block week of work experience at FM104 and then moved onto Waltons music shop in Blanchardstown. I worked here almost every Wednesday for the last 8 weeks. It was a lot of fun, i was with two other guys from schools in Dublin for the majority of my time there, if there was ever nothing for us to do we were always busy, I ended up attempting to teach one of them guitar which did not end well.

Most of our time there was spent in the delivery room breaking down boxes that once held all of the products we had bar coded and put onto the shop floor. Its fair to say that all three of us are sick of even the sight of boxes.

Playing and testing out the instruments (mostly guitars and keyboards) was another thing I loved to do there. 

Over all it was a great experience and i would go back again if i could.

Fashion Show

This week was a busy week for everyone in the school, St. Wolstan's held their own fashion show in the Celbridge Manor Hotel. It was on for two nights, Tuesday the 25th of November and Wednesday the 26th of November. 

Models were selected from each year to model clothes from different shops in the area such as Oasis in Liffey Valley and Catch in Manor Mills, Maynooth. 

There were  entertainment acts such as Ballet, Irish dancing and many musical acts.

Mini-Companies in our year were also given the opportunity to sell our product outside the entrance to the fashion show.

"Art" Trip

On Tuesday our year went to Carton House in Maynooth to visit the "Vanishing Art" exhibition held there. There were two parts to the exhibition, the one indoors which included smaller pieces of art and the outdoors one which included larger pieces of art that would not fit indoors.

We saw many sculptures such as a pink T - Rex, dresses made completely from bronze and an owl made from paper.

Everyone's favourite part of the trip wasn't the art but was the Irish rugby team who happened to be training in Carton House while we were there. Unfortunately I didn't get to meet any of the team but a few people in our year did and I am extremely jealous.

Hey Laura i finally updated my blog so you have something to read in I.T.  you're welcome, btw act my age is on rn and I'm Irish dancing in my head okay bye #liara #ashaura

Walk in My Shoes

Last Friday our school had a no uniform and 'funky shoes' day in aid of the charity "Walk in My Shoes". Walk in My Shoes is a fundraising charity set up by St Patrick's Mental Health Services to help raise awareness and support for people with any form of mental health issues as it is a big issue in Ireland. Here are some statistics...

1 in 4 young people in Ireland will experience a mental health difficulty.

Ireland has one of the highest suicide rates in the 14-24 age group in the EU.

Suicide is the leading cause of death among 18-24 year old men in Ireland.

Mental health isn't talked about as much as it should. Doing charity events like this can help people to become more aware of these issues and help combat them.

Everyone came into school in our casual clothes and a few people wore unusual shoes to wear to school like high heels and slippers. If you did not wear your uniform you gave in €2 to help support this charity. 

I'm happy our school decided to hold this event in awareness of mental health because it is definitely overlooked in our country

Work Experience

I wasn't in school for the week 29th September to 3rd of October. I missed many things such as the fun walk and the beep test (thankfully). I was on work experience in FM104, I applied for a placement their early last year so I was lucky enough to get a place.

I was with two other TY's from other schools in Dublin. On our first day, we were given a lot of sheets asking us questions about our favourite music and our ideal radio station which I presumed to be free market research for them. We were also brought into the music studio where they bring bands and artists when they visit the station. We got to see how they play songs on air and how they edit conversations they have with callers.

We got to take a lot of old CDs that were going to be thrown out. I took complete advantage of the free CDs and ended up with about 20, I managed to find some of my favourite bands like Green Day, Good Charlotte and Foo Fighters.

On our last day we were brought out in the cars to deliver prizes to different competition winners around Dublin. We were given a FM104 bag full of Haribo and FM104 pens, pencils, paper and keyrings. 

FM104 "Beetle Bugs"

It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I was given this opportunity

Carlingford

Day One

On Monday 15th of September, our year got on the bus at 7 am to leave for Carlingford. The journey was about two hours long, and because we were traveling on country roads, the service was awful, we couldn't get any YouTube videos to load. I sat beside Laura on the bus and we both realized that we hadn't listened to One Direction in a few months (disgraceful I know) so we decided to have a One Direction jam session which helped pass the time.

We got started in our activities almost straight away after arriving. We sorted out our rooms first and then went straight to the beach to do kayaking. This was one of my least favorite activities if i'm honest, the sea isn't my thing. We did it anyway, Aislinn, Laura and I we're in the same kayak, we weren't very good at it, we ended up miles behind the rest of the group. 

Our next activity was Laser tag in the forest. We were dressed in camo-onesies and walked up a mountain with the laser guns in our hands. It felt like we we're in an army but with less of the actually killing people stuff. We then went back to our rooms to have a 2 hour break for dinner, we we're allowed walk around the small town so we decided to go to the sweet shop. We found the 10 cent lollipops, couldn't get any better than that. 

Our final activity of the day was "Nightline" I think it was called that anyway... We walked up the same mountain as before at around 7 or 8 when it was getting dark. We arrived and we're told we were going to be blindfolded and that we had to get into a line and hold onto the shoulders of the person in front of you so we wouldn't all get lost. The leaders tried their best to scare us, it didn't work on me they'd have to try a little harder if they wanted to scare me. We then went back to our rooms for the night where we demolished our food stash consisting of Pringles, Terry's Chocolate Orange, 10 cent lollipops and A LOT more.

Day Two

Wake up call was at 7:30 am. Way too early if  you ask me. We were woken up by music playing really loud, that music was What Makes You Beautiful - One Direction, even I'm sick of that song now. We had breakfast and went to the beach to do "Canadian Canoeing". There were three canoes boarded together with a wooden plank and some ropes, We all basically had splash wars between each other while we were going out to get to the trampoline, I didn't go on the trampoline in the end but it looked like fun.

Our last activity was the Challenge Course. Each team had to complete as many challenges as possible in two hours. Each challenge awarded gems based on how long your team took to complete the challenge and whether or not you broke any rules. My team completed around 4 challenges and got about 10 gems. We ended up second out of the four teams.

We then packed our stuff and made our way back to Celbridge. Everyone was really tired because we had two very long eventful days. Laura and I passed the time both snapchatting our friend and listening to our favorite band (not One Direction surprisingly) It was a good couple of days.

GAA Memories :')

In our first week of TY, we spent most classes getting to know what we will be doing for the rest of the year. We were split into our classes, which are all named after Disney Princesses, Aurora, Belle and Ariel. I'm in Aurora. Wednesday, we have no classes. Wednesdays are for our work experience and workshops. Last Wednesday, the 3rd of September, we had three different workshops, First Aid to start. We were taught how to do CPR, bandage a cut and to put someone in the recovery position if they happen to pass out. In groups, one person was to bandage up another's arm or hand to the best of their ability from what we had learned in the workshop. I was with Aislinn and Laura. Aislinn attempted to bandage up my wrist, it was a funny experience, I better leave it at that...

Our second workshop of the day was an etiquette workshop. We were told to bring in our heels the previous day, we ended up strutting down a red carpet in the second year mall, without heels the first time, but with our school journals on our head. When we finished that we put on our heels, most of us had heels probably over 6 inches high. It was really strange being back in the second year mall, but the fact that the reason we were back was to walk down a red carpet in our school tracksuits and heels just made it a little bit weird, but a funny story to tell i guess.

Our final workshop of the day was a "Positive Party". The first thing I can remember doing at this workshop was getting lollipops that made me like the workshop straight away, give me food and I'm happy :) The lady running the workshop went through ways of how to stay positive. She made us dance to the Cha-Cha Slide which brought back memories of the bants at GAA. We also did a thing called "laughter yoga" which was doing a movement as you would in yoga, but laughing to it. I have to admit I found it weird at first but in the end we all just ended up laughing at how weird it was.

In our second week of TY, we didn't have any workshops on Wednesday because that was the day we got our Junior Cert results. We came into school that day at 10 to 12, all nervous, we collected our results and made our way back home to get ready to go out to Wrights or Mantra or wherever. I went to Mantra, it was a really good night.

The first two weeks of TY have been good so far