Day Five (11/16)

My first day of school!! I had an early wake up call this morning when my alarm went off at 7am. I ate breakfast and left the house at 7:45. It was about a 15 minute walk to the DART station. Although, it was pouring rain and I got splashed by the passing cars. Unfortunately for me, the sidewalks were so small I could not get out of the way! It was a very wet train ride!

The DART tracks run along the coast, and while I was waiting for my train at the Killiney station, I was able to watch the waves roll in. I learned that the doors on the DART do not open automatically like our subway system. Instead you must push a green button to open them. Thank goodness their were people to help me!

I arrived in Bray around 8:20am and had to wait for the 8:45 bus into Einniskerry. When I arrived at my school, I was greeted by the school's secretary and my teacher, Saddie Honner(also the school's principal). We were in the office only for a little while before we went to our classroom. The school is very small and consistsof three tiny separate buildings/rooms. One of the buildings holds the 4-6 yr. olds, the other 7-9 yr. olds, and the last 10-12 yr. olds.

Our classroom is made of almost all windows, so lots of sunlight is able to shine through. The students were great and had many funny stories to tell me! They really liked that I brought pencils for all of them. Today I mostly just observed and helped the children when they were working.

Mrs. Honner's class has junior infants (4/5 yr. olds) and senior infants (5/6 yr. olds). She runs her classroom by first giving the senior infants a task to complete and then she teaches the junior infants. When she is finished, she has them switch roles. I saw the students work on writing (they practiced the letter D-like a drum!), math, and Irish. They sang Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes in Irish! It was so neat, but I was so lost! I could only do the hand motions!

Other things I found interesting: they split their lunch and recess times into two 15min. breaks instead of having one big break. They also pray before eating their food. In Ireland, they don't use the term grade (ex. My brother is in sixth grade). Instead they say class and year. It would start with junior and senior infants which is pre-school and kindergarten. Then 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,5th,6th year would be first grade to sixth grade. Then they move onto the middle/high school and it would be 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,5th,6th year instead of seventh to twelfth grade.

Later in the afternoon, Nola drove me around some of the cities on the coast and showed me some great places to walk. She also showed me where Bono from U2 lives! I spent some time with the girls and listened to them sing and play the piano. We ate dinner and then Anna and I started to watch Shirek 3.