Lecture #3

On Tuesday the 25th of September we were visited by Denis Sexton of the Irish Society for Autism. Denis' lecture was based mainly on the characteristics of autism and autistic people. He got involved in autism because his son, John, who is 27 years old, has autism. Denis went through the different levels of autism, from where they do not speak at all to where they have only narrow speech. He also listed a couple of obsessions that autistic people may have, like closing doors and gates for example. I really found it interesting to learn about autism. It is something I have heard a lot about in my life but never really knew what it was about until yesterday. He really had an in depth knowledge of autism and really got that across.

Lecture #2

Yesterday, the 18th of September 2012, we had a lecture on Chernobyl. Two speakers, Siobheal Nic Eochaidh and Darragh McGrath, came to tell us about their trip to Chernobyl and the charity work they did there. On the 26th of April 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had a catastrophic explosion. Though the power plant is in Ukraine the winds on that day blew a lot of the nuclear waste over to Belarus. They speakers didn't actually have a lot of time but they managed to tell us a lot about what they saw and felt while they were at the orphanage. They seemed to have built up a strong relationship with some of the children who had been affected by the explosion even though they had only been there for a week. I enjoyed hearing about their work over in Belarus, it shocked me though to hear about how little was being done by the government in Belarus to help these children. I didn't actually know very much an the Chernobyl explosion before their lecture, now I feel that I learnt a lot about the explosion and how even after 26 years there are still big problems linked to it going on.

TY Trip to the Aran Islands

For our TY Irish Culture trip we went to Inis Mór, the largest of the three Aran Islands. We left at 7 o'clock on a Monday morning and arrived after a 4 and a half hour bus journey and a 45 minute boat journey. On the first evening we went to our hostels and the for a long walk around a part of the island. After the walk we arrived at the hotel for dinner then we went on to the community centre for a 'Trath na gCeist'. After this we went back to our hostel.

The next day we cycled around the island visiting some sites on the island. It took about 5 hours and afterwards we were so tired. That night we had a ceile which was great fun.

We left the island the next day and made our way home.