Today was the best Monday ever!!!
It all started last Wednesday when Mrs Gillivan came in to the classroom and announced that 5th and 6th class would be going to Coosan point on Monday to try kayaking and paddleboarding. We were all absolutely thrilled. Some of us had never done anything like this before so it was a real treat.
Monday finally arrived and we went in to school as normal with a hyper buzz filling the room. Our teacher told us to write down our homework. We all protested in disgust, exclaiming that hardly any of us had brought our school bags. Our very kind teacher gave in but she said we all had a space in our bags for a maths sheet, which everyone thought was fair. We were all too excited to argue and we couldn’t wait to get going.
Our day began with our weekly swimming session in the Athlone Regional Sports Centre. The students in the deep end did the breaststroke first and then the inverted breaststroke, which is the breaststroke on your back. Then we started towing people! I was paired with Laura. She did the towing much faster than I towed her, but all went well and we are both still here to tell the tale! Then we had some playtime. I jumped into the water a couple of times and we played tumbling through the water. It was so much fun. Then we had to go back to the changing rooms. 6th and 4th class shared one dressing room while 5th class were in another one. We all met outside and walked to the bus together. The time we had been waiting for was finally here….it was time to go to Coosan!!
Once we arrived at Coosan Point we were so so so happy. Coosan School were already in the water doing the activities. We hoped we wouldn’t have to wait too long. We sat on benches under a marquee, beside the closed pub. We ate our lunch. Then we got restless waiting. Very restless!! The 5th class were waiting with their bags at the side of the marquee. Us 6th class girls walked to the playground with our bags. Everything in the playground was soaked, but we still got on everything. We got very wet and very dirty extremely fast. We started messing around and made up a game where we decided each piece of equipment was a den and you could only spend 15 seconds on each piece of equipment. It was the best of fun. We were sopping wet but we didn’t care because of all the fun we were having. We probably looked a bit silly, a bunch of 6th class girls playing in the playground for an hour and a half!
Finally, it was our turn in the water. We didn’t have to be called twice. We sprinted over to the marquee. We were given our wetsuits and quickly changed. Once we were ready we put on our life jackets and helmets. Leah and I volunteered to go first. We took a paddleboard and set off with the paddles in our hands. We got in to the water and after a few minutes I decided to attempt to stand up. I managed it…for a few seconds until I lost my balance and fell in! The water was freezing!! After a while be both succeeded in standing up and held our balance for a minute or two. And then we toppled over!! Then we went to get a kayak but there were only 1 person kayaks left which we didn’t enjoy as much so we went back to paddleboarding. I was absolutely flying it and could stand up for ages. My back was very sore afterwards but that could have been from all the laughing we did. It was sooooo much fun.
Sadly the time came to leave and we were all devastated as we were having such a blast. We were under a lot of pressure to get changed quickly to get back to school for the regular home time. Everyone was panicking as there were 18 of us in the tiny space and our stuff was all over the place! I couldn’t manage to stuff everything into my bag even though it had all fit last night! When we were on the bus Ms Kelly asked who owns this shoe? My runner had fallen out of my bag and I hadn’t noticed. Everybody was non-stop talking about how much we enjoyed it. There was very much positive energy on the bus all the way back to the school. It was an absolutely gorgeous day out (well not the weather) and we would do many times again if we got the chance! I rate this trip 100/100. Best day.
Rachel – 6th Class
