On Wednesday 26th of March the Comenius Visitors arrived to Ireland from France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and Spain.
First the Comenius teachers and students went to a welcome dinner in Dominick’s Restaurant with some of the teachers in our school and the junior school.
Our school was having a green day, so we were all dressed in lovely green clothes. On Thursday morning the Comenius visitors, the Enrichment group and the teachers from both of the schools went to a Civic reception for a Formal Welcome from the County Council. Peter Burke made a short speech to welcome the visitors to Mullingar.
The Enrichment girls gave the visitors a tour of the senior school. They went around to all of the classrooms. We asked the visitors questions about their school and country and they asked us questions too.Then we had our Seachtain na Gaeilge concert. Each class performed an Irish song or dance on the stage. The Comenius visitors seemed to really enjoy it.
After school, we went to the Harbour Field with the Comenius children to watch the girls in our school play a football match against St. Colman’s. The boys from our school played football on the sideline with the boys from Italy. The girls talked and played games. They knew a few games that we knew.
Later on, the visitors were taken on a walking tour of Mullingar. Danny Dunne, a well known local historian, gave the tour.
That night, the children from the Enrichment group and the children from Poland, Italy, Spain, Slovakia and France had a meal in the school. They had pizza, and they sang and danced. They had a lot of fun.
On Friday the visitors were taken on a tour of the Junior School. They got to see different plays. They had a great time.
When the visiting children came back to the senior school, they stayed in the classes with us for the day. Each class had children from a different country staying in their class. The children mixed really well together and all of the teachers were really happy with this.
On Friday night all of the children had a meal in the school. They seemed to really like it here, and we also had so much fun. On Saturday, Ms. Burke, Ms. Claffey, Ms. Daly and Ms. Regan took the visitors on a tour of Croke Park. They had a very nice meal in the Croke Park Hotel afterwards. The visitors went shopping in Dublin on Saturday afternoon. They returned home on Sunday.
We had a wonderful time with the visitors and look forward to continuing the project work with them over the internet.