Riverdance

Hello ILE Families and Friends! As today was the last day of classes, I'm fairly confident the students were quite upset and in a state of mourning, but unfortunately that's how the schedule was made out and we couldn't change it. Like normal, the classes for the students started at 9:00 AM and they began with Irish literature. Angie taught the students about Patrick Kavanagh, the famous Irish author and the different works he completed. Kelly said she couldn't wait to read more from Kavanagh. Angie also gave the students a reading list of well known Irish authors-it's not just the friendship and memories that outlive the duration of the ILE program, but also the passion for the Irish culture, language, and literature. The students went straight into their Irish history class. Although at this stage from the films and tours we expect all of them to be experts on the 1916 Rising and the Civil War-they did study it in class today. This war is probably one of the most important turning points in modern Irish history. In the Civil War, after the 1916 Rising, it was Michael Collins on the pro-treaty side fighting for a free state and Eamonn De Valera on the anti treaty side hoping to continue fighting the Brits until Ireland had a 32 county Republic. Brigid and Lottie claimed they like De Valera, because in the film he was played by the actor that played prof. Snape in Harry Potter, but Kelly preferred Michael Collins because Liam Neeson was cute-not quite what we were looking for, but Kelly also said from her studies she liked Michael Collins as a person and believed in what he stood up for. After this class it was time for the students to do their presentations on an Irish American of their choice. This year we had a record number of students who chose to keep this project personal and research a member of their own family who came directly from Ireland. Mary Kate was chosen to have the best presentation, where she spoke about her uncle. Mary Kate really admires her uncle and her pride in him shone through in her presentation. Ann and Petey gave very touching speeches about their grandparents. It came time for their Irish studies class, where each student was quizzed on the geography of Ireland-this is where Anica's useful stories about their location came in handy. She even got 100%! Wowzers! Finally, their last class. The students learned one last lot of vocabulary-the Irish for hand (lamh: laaawv), for foot (cos: cuhss), for right (deis: desh), for left (cle: klay) and for blue, green, yellow and red (gorm: grr-um, glas: gloss, bui: bweee and dearg: ja-rug). This was when things got interesting, the Twister board came out. The class was divided into teams of four or five and one winner made it through to the final from each team. The winner, was obviously Mariah, which was an easy guess due to her grace and balance she has learned from ballet classes. After lunch there was a Celtic Frames Workshop set up for the students. Each student was provided with the equipment needed and examples of Celtic designs and could decorate the frames as they wished. When provided with the exact same supplies, it's always fabulous to see how each student will make their frames turn out so differently. Liam, for example chose bright colors and decorated his frame by saying ILE 2012 along the bottom, whereas Ryan decided to do a Celtic design along the edge of his frame and leave the outside of the design wooden. Both so different, but beautiful. As the evening schedule was to be slightly different, this evening drama took place before dinner. This was also to be the last practice for drama class, so dance was cancelled and drama was extended to a full hour. While one group is keeping their drama top secret, (Ann Brigid, Conor, Kathleen, Lottie, and Tyler-we're going to find out at some stage!), there's another group that has an outline and a plan of improvisation, (Casey Luis, Mary Kate, Raquel, and Rosie). All we'll say is we can't wait! After dinner, there wasn't much time to prepare, but the students managed to doll themselves up to the last just in time for the bus to collect everybody for Riverdance. Even though Morgan had seen it a few times already, she was still excited to get to see it where it first began. She said it was simply brilliant and she even thought it was better than the three times she had seen it previously. Even our counselor Amy could barely contain her excitement-(scratch that, our counselor Amy can never contain her excitement!). Brigid just LOVED it, and to be fair Liam was just a bit speechless after it. The night ended with an entertaining bus ride home from Peter-at King's Hospital. He tried to see just how many times we could go around a round about. What a perfect day!

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