Monday, September 29, 2014

My first day in Work!

For my work experience I am in the kitchen in the Celbridge Manor. I was greeted by Gayle who brought me to the kitchen to meet the corporate chef Johnie and the head chef Darren, I was then given a tour around the kitchen and a list of tasks that I had to preform during the day. 

My first task was to prep for breakfast the next morning which took longer then I expected as I didn't think that we needed to prepare as much food as we did. I then made sandwiches and paninis for the staff lunches. I then had my break where I met some of the waiting staff who work in the restaurant.

After my break I was asked to chop different type of veg for wedding prep, I've never seen so many cherry tomatoes or  bags of lettuce in my life! After I finished chopping the veg it was time to go home and on my way out I was introduced to the owner of the hotel and his wife, who were both very friendly. 

I hope to gain loads of knowledge on what it is like to work in a kitchen and I hope to do more then chop veg in the coming weeks! 

Carlingford Day 2!

On Tuesday morning we were woken up at 7 a.m  by Dave giving us instructions for the morning through the intercom, he then put on some songs so nobody would go back to sleep. We got out out bed and ready for the day as after breakfast we had to pack our bags as we had to be out of the rooms before we began the activities.  

Our first activities was canoeing which was really fun as we had 3 of the canoes connected together!  
We canoed over to a big trampoline in the middle of the water, I jumped off with sophie who was a little shocked over how cold the water was but we made it back to the canoe so everything was g! We then set sail for the beach so we could go into the fountain of youth. We all had to go into the cave so that we could put our heads under the water which was ice cold!! I don't think any of us really enjoyed that. After everyone had gone into the cave we had a race back to the beach before we got changed for lunch. 

After lunch we had one our last activity of the trip which was a challenge course where we had to work in teams to solve challenges and collect gems. My team lost sadly:((( After we finished the course we headed back to the hostel for our debriefing and to collect our bags. We then said our goodbyes to the instructors before embarking on our journey home. 

I had a fantastic few days in Carlingford getting to know a lot more about the other girls in my year and I think next years TY's will really enjoy it!

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Carlingford Day 1!

On September 15th we went our first TY outing to Carlingford adventure center. We had to leave celbridge at 7 a.m so that we could be in Carlingford early to get a full day of activities in. On our trip we were accompanied by our coordinator  Ms. Leonard, Ms. Hughes and Ms. O'Callaghan.

On arrival we were greeted by two of the instructors who showed us where we would be staying and explained the rules of the hostel to us. We were then showed our rooms before we left our bags, grabbed our wet gear  and made our way to the meeting area before heading out to do our first activity of the trip.

When we arrived at the center we were given wet suits to change into, which were already damp (which isn't the nicest feeling in the world). After we got changed we headed down to beach where we played some warm up games with our instructors Teddy, Edel, Peaches and Dave, after the games they showed us how to use our paddles correctly before we set sail in our kayak's. We sailed over to a small beach on the other side of the pier where we played more games like wink detective. After about an hour we sailed back to get changed out of the wetsuits (which were very hard to get off), once we were dressed we headed back to the hostel for some lunch. 

After lunch we headed back out to start another activity, thankfully on land this time! We were told that we would be playing laser tag up on the mountain but that we needed to put on army suits, after we had our suits on we were handed very heavy guns which we had to carry up the hill. We were introduced to our instructors for the afternoon Martin and Keith. Emer, Zave and I were not the best at the laser tag I must admit but we had a lot of fun anyway and our team won which was great! After around 8 rounds we headed back down to center, on the way down we had a good sing song with Martin who also gave us some good life advice in between songs. We then went back for dinner which was really nice.

After dinner we had a couple of hours before we went out for our night link. When we got back to our room we raided the food drawer, we had tons upon tons of food as on Sunday night we went to Tesco and spent €70 on food! It seemed like a good idea at the time but we had loads of  food that we had to bring back home with us. 

At around 9 p.m we headed out to do our night link which was back up the mountain to do our last activity of the day which was like a trust exercise thing. We were blind folded so we could see where we were going! We had to rely on the person infront of us, whose shoulders we were holding and the rope on one side, it was very scary as the instructors kept making sounds and setting of the guns we used for laser tag as they made shot sounds.  When we were finished we headed back down the mountain towards the hostel, when we arrived back we went to our rooms for a while or we could go to the Chinese around the corner for some food. After the girls went for their food we went to the communal area for a disco with the rest of girls in our year.

When the disco was over we headed back to our room's and got in to our pj's, we then stayed up for a few hours much to the disapproval of some of the girls, especially Molly! To say she wasn't happy in the morning would be an understatement!  

Overall day 1 was very enjoyable :)