Our trip to Bray-Ireland

Our trip to Bray-Ireland

Introduction:
Dear Readers,
We students of the 3rd classes of the Language school and the Commercial school of La Villa are going to present you our language course of one week in Bray, a village near Dublin, the capital of Ireland. Bray is a small but very nice city near the Irish Sea. This town is not very populated but the people who live there are all very friendly. We stayed there from 5th to 12th March 2010. The accompanying teachers were: Dr. Ester Tavella and Dr. Christian Ferdigg.

Friday, 5th March 2010

We left South Tyrol on Friday, 5th March 2010 at 4 a.m. We were all very tired and sleepy. It was a starry morning but it was very cold. During the first part of the journey by bus all were sleeping apart from three photographers that took the most impressive pictures of us sleeping.

When the sun rose we began to wake up and to think about the poor students at school studying hard. At about 8 o’clock in the morning we stopped on the motorway for breakfast.
We arrived at Orio al Serio Airport in Bergamo at about 9 o’clock in the morning. The flight was at 10.35 so we had enough time to do all the controls without stress. For some of the students it was the first time on a plane so we were all very excited.

We arrived at the airport in Dublin at 1 o’clock p.m., but in Ireland it was 2 o’clock because of the jetlag. Then after one hour of bus we reached our destination: Bray. While we were waiting for our host families, the teachers showed us around the classes.
Every person who came out of a car made us feel more excited; our hearts began to beat faster. When the host parents called our names we were afraid but happy. We arrived at our host families’ home by car where we met the other members. They showed us the house and we relaxed until dinner.
After dinner we met with the teachers at the bowling house to spend a funny evening all together. After an intensive day and a hard play everybody went home and had a nice sleep.

Saturday, 6th March 2010

It was Saturday and it was our first official day in Ireland. We had to be at school at 9 o’clock. The first day we were very tired, because of the jetlag. At school we met our teacher Mrs. Susan, a very nice and well-mannered person. We had to do a little exercise to test our foreign language skills. We had break from 11 to 11.30, which was very fine because usually we have just 15 minutes of break. The school finished at 13.30. In the afternoon we took the train and went to Dublin. The trip lasted just 45 minutes. In Dublin we made a tour of the city with a guide, where we saw:

Trinity College, which has one of the most important bookcases of the world
the Spire of Dublin, which is one of the world’s tallest sculptures (121m)
the General Post Office, which is located in an old, Georgian building the Halfpenny Bridge, which is one of the symbols of the city and it is called like this because people who wanted to pass over the bridge had to pay half a penny.

 
After the tour we could go shopping alone for an hour. There were a lot of interesting and nice shops. Then we took the train back to Bray. At seven we where at home, we had dinner and then we had to go to the train station once again because we wanted to go to the cinema of Wicklow. The whole class saw the film “Alice in Wonderland” in English.
We came back to Bray at about 11.30 p.m. It had been a really tiresome day.

Sunday, 7th March 2010

On Sunday we got up at 7 o’clock and we had breakfast with the host families. At 8 o’clock we had to be at school all together. We started for a long trip to Belfast by bus; an Italian group of students came with us, too. Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland although it belongs to the UK. It took us three hours to arrive there and someone of us slept the whole journey, some chatted with friends and listened to music.
We arrived in Belfast at 11 o’clock so the plan was that we could go shopping until 2 o'clock p.m. But the shops were all closed because it was Sunday morning, and the shops opened at 2 o'clock. We were all very angry about this. Even the currency is different than in the rest of Ireland, so if we wanted to buy something we had to exchange the money but unfortunately the exchanging machines and offices were closed so we couldn’t buy anything. So most of the students waited on a bench taking photos or looking around.

We had to wait for two hours until the tourist guide was ready to show us the city and tell us about her history, for example the wars between Protestants and Catholics that had taken place there.
The guide spoke very fast, nobody of the group could understand him well because of his Irish accent, so we couldn’t follow. During these 2 hours we all listened to music and took photos, we nearly fell asleep.

Monday, 8th March 2010

In the morning we went to school from 9 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. After school we took the train and we went to Dublin. When we arrived in Dublin we went to Trinity College, where we visited the biggest library of Ireland. In this library we could also find The Book of Kells, which is the most decorated bible of the world. We stayed in this library for about one hour.

It was very interesting and we were impressed by the amazingly precise decorated book. After this visit in the library we went to the centre of the city where we could go shopping. At 6 o’clock we met at the Spire with the teachers. Then we went to the Temple Bar quarter where we ate in a restaurant. We also saw the Temple Bar, one of the most famous places in Ireland.

After we had eaten we went to a pub with the teachers, but they told us to leave, because we weren’t of age and while we were waiting we could listen to some Irish music. Then we went to the Hard Rock Café which is like a museum where the most important Rock artists donated some of their most representative things of their past career. We left Dublin at ten, because we had to be at home at 11 o’clock. We went back by train and we had to walk for about half an hour ‘till we arrived home.

Tuesday, 9th March 2010

In the morning we had to go to school at 9 o’clock and we finished at 5 p.m. During the lessons we did more different things. In the morning we did some group work on typical Irish traditions. Every group had another topic: some students worked on the Irish specialities, others on the Irish music and the traditional instruments, others on typical sports that are practised in Ireland. In the afternoon we had another teacher and we played a lot of games that helped us to improve the English language. In the evening we could learn typical Irish dances. We were split up in 2 groups made up of 4 couples each forming a circle. We learned a lot of dancing steps like: “Show the lady”, “Swing” and “The Body”. We have learned these very well and we had a lot of fun. It was interesting to learn a typical dance of another country. The day had been very exciting because we had learned a lot of traditional Irish things.

Wednesday, 10th March 2010

In the morning we went to school again till 1.30 p.m. and after school we met the teachers at the station where we took the train for Dublin. In Dublin we had a tourist guide, who accompanied us to S. Patrick’s Cathedral.

It is a very big cathedral and we had a sightseeing tour for about half an hour. After we had seen the cathedral we walked for about half an hour to the Guinness Storehouse. There we saw how Guinness beer is produced. It was very interesting because Guinness is a black beer and that isn’t common for our country, because we especially have blond beer.

After the tour in the Guinness museum we could go to the top of the building. There was a bar where we got something to drink.

From this bar we had a wonderful view of the city of Dublin. After the drink we went down to the 1st floor where we could buy Guinness’ souvenirs. When we went out, we took the bus ‘till the Spire and from there on we walked to the train station. At 6 o’clock we had dinner, even if we are used to eat at about 8. After dinner we went to our school and watched the English film”The Notebook” with English subtitles. When we had finished the film we were very tired because of the intensive day.

Thursday, 11th March 2010

Thursday was the last day in Ireland. We woke up at a quarter to 8 as usual. We had some toast and a cup of coffee. Then we walked to school like everyday. The first 2 hours we had Teacher Susan then 30 minutes recreation.
The next two hours we had Teacher Jennifer. We could have some more time to finish our project about Irish traditions. Then we had to present it at 12 o’clock. It was very funny to hear our class mates telling about Irish traditions.
This was the first afternoon at our own disposal. There was nothing on our program so we could decide what we wanted to do.

Part of the class went to Mc Donald’s to have lunch and then shopping in the little shops in Bray. The others went to the sea to take photos. Two of our friends walked to the top of the hill near Bray. We smiled about the fact that the population of Bray calls it a “mountain“, a hill just of about some hundred meters. These two girls missed the way so it took them 2 hours to walk to the top of the hill.  At 6 p.m. everybody went home and had their last dinner with their host families.
 Some of us gave their “mum“a little present for her hospitality, which they enjoyed very much.
With the whole class we went to play bowling for the second time. It was very funny.
We went home at 12 p.m., but most of the students decided not to go to bed because we had to get up at 2 a.m. to get ready for the journey back home.

Friday, 12th March 2010

So the last day arrived even for us. It was time to go back home. We were all sad to leave that beautiful place, with a lot of nice memories. The bus attended us at school at 3.20 a.m. so a lot of students hadn't slept the previous night. Everybody was very tired and was going to fall asleep any moment. At about 5 o’clock in the morning we finally saw the planes that were taking  off and we realized that we were at the airport of Dublin. While we were waiting for the departure of our flight at 6.30 a.m. we had the opportunity to have breakfast in a bar. The flight was on time, so we could enjoy the Irish sunrise. When the sun caressed our faces we fell in a sweet sleep. The earache announced that we were going to land. We could feel the Italian air and we were happy to be back safe.

In the bus there were some students reading, some chatting, some playing cards and some listening to music.
Though to an unforseen event we arrived home just at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We were happy to see our family and our friends again.

End:
Everybody of our class has enjoyed the week and felt very good with the host families. We have been very lucky with the weather because it didn’t rain and it wasn’t so cold.
The families were very kind and hospitable; they tried to speak a lot with us and tried to make us feel at home. The houses were comfortable, small and the walls were colourful. Some students said the houses were too cold, because they don’t heat so much and they are used to the rough climate. We have eaten very well even if the food was different from ours and we saw that they don’t use so much salt as we are used to. They eat a lot of vegetables, especially potatoes and beans. They drink black tea with milk. For breakfast they have especially toast, and porridge with honey. It was very exciting to try other kinds of food, even if pizza was very expensive (11 €). The way of teaching was different, because the teachers knew only English and so we had to speak in such a way that the teachers could understand us. During the lessons we played some language games, we could speak a lot and we didn’t have to write so much. The teachers told us that our English was good, but we didn’t believe them.
Finally we would like to thank our teachers and the headmaster for the organisation, for having accompanied us and especially for the patience they have shown us.