Art Exhibition

Last week we went to Carton House for the 'Vanishing Art' exhibition. We left the school at 1:20. We were all really excited to see the art but also because we had heard that the Irish Rugby team were going to be training there at the same time as we would be there. We started in the indoor exhibition, we got a map of the exhibition and then we were allowed to go around and look at all of the pieces ourselves.While we were looking at a sculpture named 'Horses', we noticed some of the Irish Rugby team training staff coming out of the building beside the sculpture. 6 or 7 of us went over to the doors and next thing we know, Johnny Sexton walks out of the glass double doors behind two men. Naturally we were all excited. We asked him to sign our sheets and we even got a group photo with him! He was really friendly and didnt seem to mind us asking for a photo. Then he got into a car and drove away. We stood there in shock for a few minutes but finally realised that we had to finish our worksheets about the art trip. Some of the sculptures were really interesting and really caught your eye. Some of them were incorporated into nature and were hanging in the trees. Later on while we were looking at more sculptures, we heard loads of screaming. When we looked towards the door to the spa, we saw Tommy Bowe surrounded by lots of girls from our school. Everyone was looking for photos with him and his autograph, it was crazy! There was  one sculpture that I particularly liked, it was of a rhinoceros with a gold bird on it's back. It was called 'White Rhino'. I liked this sculpture because it showed the contrast in size between the bird and the rhino. It also shows how delicate the golden bird is and how not delicate the rhinoceros is. It was a great trip and it was a really good experience to visit an art exhibition and of course to meet some of the Irish Rugby team!

Road Safety

Last Thursday our year had a talk on Road Safety from the Garda Traffic Corps. The talk was to raise awareness of road safety and the rules of the road. It was really interesting because the speaker used his own life experience and stories from his years of working in the Traffic Corps to help us understand the dangers that go along with careless driving. He began by telling us some of the statistics from the past few years. He then went on to explain to us some of the main reasons for collisions on our roads today. The main causes are, speeding, using mobile phones while driving, drink driving and fatigue. We learned that young male drivers are the most at risk on the roads, the reason for this is because young male drivers become very confident in themselves and their driving skills once they have passed their driving test and believe they can handle any situation that is thrown at them, when really this is not true because driving takes years of experience and the more experience you have, the better you will be able to handle certain situations.We then watched videos about road safety, drink driving and speeding. Some of the videos were really graphic, but they definitely made us realise that the choices we make have an affect on the other users of the road. Overall it was a really interesting talk and it was definitely worthwhile. 

rsa.ie