Archive for September, 2009

Our delegation of 13 students, 2 teachers and 3 parents met at Adelaide airport for our 12.15pm departure to Sydney.  It was a bit of a rough journey to begin with, given the thunderstorms, but we eventually cleared them and settled in… mostly.  One of our students had come down with a 24-hour gastro bug during the night. She made it to Sydney without incident, but suffered a little on the leg to Singapore (she is doing much better now).  Another had eaten something that disagreed with her just before departing, and vomited all the way to Sydney, poor darling. She is back to normal now too!  I managed to assist both girls without joining in in sympathy so am pretty chuffed with myself!

We made our connection to the flight to London via Singapore comfortably, and our flight passed without incident. I think the record for most movies watched during the flight was Casey with 6 1/2 films.  I managed to watch ‘The Hangover’ (very, very wrong, but very, very funny), ‘Adventureland’ (quite liked it), ‘My Life in Ruins’ (meh…), ‘My Year Without Sex’ (about the relationship between a husband and wife in the year after she survives an aneurysm – quite good), and ‘Young Victoria’ (had already seen it, but enjoyed it again).

I think we all survived the flight comfortably… some even managed a few hours sleep!

Its been more than 12 months but I am off over seas again, this time with 13 students, 1 other teacher and 3 parents from my school in tow.  We are a delegation from my high school who will be visiting our sister school in Co Clare, Ireland.  We live in Clare, South Australia, a town that was settled by Irish settlers from Co Clare, hence the link.  Our sister school is St Joseph’s Secondary School in Spanish Point.

We leave on Monday, flying  via Sydney, Singapore and London to Dublin.  We plan to spend 3 days in Dublin seeing various sites, before taking a bus to Kilkenny and Cork.  From there we head up the west coast to Spanish Point which is a tiny location just out of Miltown Malbay.  We will spend just over a week here, staying with host families from the school and seeing local places of interest including Ennis, the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, Galway and Connemara National Park.

From there we return to London for two days, touring Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and either Lords Cricket Ground or Kensington Palace.

We are all looking forward to the trip, although at the moment it doesn’t feel like it. Mandy, the other teacher, and I are exhausted and are desperately trying to finish Year 12 reports, write relief lessons for 5 days and manage everything else that needs doing.  Thank goodness for the long haul flight where we can relax in a (relatively) comfy seat, watch movies on demand and have food brought to us… bliss!

I will be trying to update this every couple of days during our tour to keep friends and students’ families updated.