Carlingford :D

Hi :D

This is our third week of TY and it has been by far the most tyring. On Monday my whole year went to Carlingford Adventure Centre at 7 o clock in the morning. we got a double Decker bus from a garage close to our school at 7 and we arrived at around 8 o clock.

 As soon as we got off the bus and got our bags we were moved to a store room so that we could leave our bags and we were brought straight out to our first activity! They gave us army jump suits and army caps (which were HUGE on us) and then they gave us our lazer guns! We were going lazer shooting! Once we had our jump suit, caps and guns we were brought up an extremely steep hill and into a forest. It was amazing, it looked like we had just entered a war, there were huts and trench type things everywhere. We put 3 red lights on our heads and turned on our guns. When you got shot the gun would make an 'ugh' noise as if a person was getting hit, we had 100 health and lots of bullets (lazers). When you ran out of bullets you had to reload your gun. Our 'war names' came up on our gun, I was called Saber. This way we new who was hitting us. to shoot the other team you had to aim for the red lights on there heads, you knew you were hitting them because the lights would flash. When your health reached 0 the gun shouted 'medic, man down, man down' and the lights on your head would turn on permanently. My team won 3 times! It was so much fun!

When we got back we took off the suits and had lunch (sausages and chips) and then went on a 25 minute walk to the challenge course. This was a bunch of little group puzzles you had to do with your team to get gems. If you finished a challenge you got 2 or 4 gems, the team with the most gems at the end wins. There was one of these activity's that i really enjoyed, it was called CB( Communication Breakdown) this was a little tin shed with 3 floors built into it, you went in the entrance and had to crawl your way through to the exit, going up and down every so often,the only problem was that it was pitch black inside and we could not see a thing! Only thing i could see was my wrist bands that glow in the dark, that was handy because i was able to point somewhere and people could see were! Our instructor for the challenge course was John.. What a hero. We got so close to him that we were chatting for ages! In the end my team got 17 gems, we came second in our year.

After our 25 minute back to the centre we had dinner. It was spaghetti bolognese. But before we had dinner we got sorted into our rooms, mine was number 24 and i was with my friends ellen, becca, aoife and aisling. It ended up that one of the groups in the year got split up into diffrent rooms. Helen and Emma were in one room by themselves and they were aloud find another room with a spare bed if they wanted. My room had one extra bed and we were just across the hall from them. So to make sure they both had a good time we took the matress off one of the beds and put it on the floor in our room. This way we ended up having7 people in our room so it was much more fun.

After dinner we went on a night line, we went up the huge hill again and into the forest. They gave us a helmet and a blindfold and we had to walk throught the forest holding onto a rope with our left hand and the person infront of us with our right. It was really difficult but so much fun.

When we got back we all went into the downstairs common room. There was a boys school there and on of the lads had a guitar. We ended up having a huge jamming session and so many people (including me) got up and sang, it was so good. The instructors said that that has never happened before and that were one of the best groups theve had.

The next day (our last day) wasnt that great, we did rock climbing and absailing first and then after we did orientiring (treasure hunting, sorta). The orientiring was a hike, me and ellen went the wrong way and walked half way up a mountain on a really steep slope. I was so tyred after that.

This is an amazing year,
Sarah <3