School Trip 2000

This year's school trip was a joint school venture. Easdale Primary hosted a Scottish Opera workshop to which pupils from Kilninver and Luing were invited as well as ourselves. The children stayed with "host families" on Seil Island and some firm friendships were made for the future. Here is the children's account of our ground-breaking trip.

Tuesday 14th March 2000, the Best School Trip Ever

It was an exiting day. We were going to Easdale, on a school trip. We got to school and did our work. Then Fay drove us to the boat and waved goodbye. It was a long time till we got to Easdale from Oban in a taxi.

We stopped at the school and met the teachers and they took me and Jamie to his gran's house first. We got to know Angus (the boy we were staying with) and we played in the garden. It was good and then we walked to his house. We unpacked and got welcome and played pool on a pool table in our bedroom and played with it. We played 'shootie' then met his brothers, Neil and Robert. I beat everybody at pool! We had tea and showed him how to play Spooks in the dark. Then we got ready for bed and went to sleep. The best bit was playing with Angus. IT WAS GREAT


Kilmartin Trip

I got up in the host family house. We woke up about 8.00 am then I had to go to Angus's Granny's house. We waited for the bus, then it came. It was very noisy. The bus took us to school then we had to go on another bus. It was bigger than the wee bus. It took 1 hour and 15 minutes to reach Kilmartin Museum. We got into groups. We were group 2. We went to the video shoot. There were pictures of hunters getting and killing animals. Then we went out the back door in the museum. There were daggers and cists and flutes. We went back on the bus. Then had lunch we stayed in the bus, the rest went some where else. Then we went to the Nether largie standing stones.

We went down three roads looking for the graveyard. I was trying to catch up when my shoe came off in the mud! We found the graveyard there was four panels and there were crosses all over it. There was a little hole, I got through it some did not get through. Then it was time to go to the bus. We met up with the other groups. We went to the graveyard but a different one, it had stones with carvings on them. We had to go back to school so we went back to the bus. It took a long time and I was getting tired but instead of stopping at the school we went into the village to have a look. Around then it was time to go home. My favourite part of the day was the burial chamber, because it was very interesting and fun going inside.

By Jamie Henderson


An evening at Atlantis Leisure

We arrived at Atlantis Leisure Centre at 6:05. There we met children from Easdale, Coll and Kilninver. Mrs Anderson (headteacher at Easdale) put us into groups of eight. I was with Lawrie, Jamie, Kenneth, Claire, lain, Keith and Nick. We got to do football first and so we went into the sports hall. We all got into teams. Easdale- Claire, Ian, Nick and Keith against us. Of course, Coll scored the first goal! And then another and another! We won- 4.3 (hooray!!) Time was up and we moved onto badminton.

We started practising and after a wee while Miss Allan taught us a game called Hit and Run. It was great fun! Miss Allan missed a few times, but so did I. When it was time to change over we went to table tennis.

We started playing table tennis. I played with lain, Claire and Keith. First we were quite good then rubbish and then it was tennis inside with table tennis bats and pingpong balls! It was great fun though!

By Sophie Buchan

Thursday 16th March 2000

Today we caught the school bus to school which was about five minutes away from where I was staying. When we got there we talked about the trip to Kilmartin house museum the day before. When we finished talking we wrote a report about the trip. At eleven we went out to playtime. It was a lot different because there were a lot more people than 17. We played football.

After playtime we made bits of our costumes. The boys made hats and the girls rosettes and broaches. It took about an hour to make every thing. It was a lot harder than it looked. When we finished we went back to the classroom and carried on with our report.

We went to lunch at quarter to twelve. It was very different because we had to wait in a long queue for about ten minutes. When we got our lunch I had a ham toastie. In the afternoon we practised the songs and speaking parts, for the opera.

By Lawrie Porrelli

A Morning with the Opera

In the morning on Friday 17th of March I woke up to Katherine and Elizabeth shouting "It's the Scottish opera today!"

When we arrived at school we lined up outside. Mrs Anderson (the headteacher at Easdale) told us to go inside. The Kilninver and Luing children were already there, so we got into our groups- us and Luing were the Spanish, Kilninver the Hanoverians and Easdale the Jacobites.

The four people from the Scottish opera arrived a 10.00am and took us into the school hall for a quick practice through the songs. Then the two other groups went to practice and we worked with a man called Mark. He showed us all the actions we were to do during the songs and ran through Jamie's solo.

At about 10:30 we walked to Easdale hall, only a five minute walk from the school. When we got there Mark gave us our Spanish costumes. The girls wore long black and red dresses and their combs and rosettes. The boys wore long sandy coats and wide colourful hats.

We had time for a quick rehearsal through the whole thing and were just finishing when people started arriving to watch us. At 11:30am we started "1719" the play we had practised for only 25 minutes and the songs we had heard and sung a million times!! Everything went smoothly. Some funny things happened- someone's shoe fell off, we stood on our dresses and Mark forgot his lines-but I really enjoyed myself and so did everyone else.

When the audience had gone we posed for photos for the Oban Times and then reluctantly got changed, ready to go back to school. After lunch it was time to go and we got into the taxi to Oban, but not before we were deafened by shouts of goodbye! Thank-you! Adios!

By Helena Porrelli

Going Swimming

On Friday after we had finished Scottish Opera and lunch we got into two taxis back to Oban where we were going to stay in Glencruitten Hostel for the night. Once we were there we dropped off our bag' and got out our swimming things and money, ther went down the street.

We went shopping first. The girls were with Miss Allan and the boys with Julianna. Me, Laura and Sophie all got the same hair ties and Helena got a bulldog clip. After we went shopping we met Julianna and the boys at Atlantis Leisure centre to go swimming.

Once we were all changed we put our things in a locker and went into the big pool. We all went in except Julianna and Helena who watched us instead. When we were in the middle of the pool Laura decided to go down the flume, then Lawrie went down. Laura tried to get Miss Allan to go down the flume but Miss Allan said she would only go down if Sophie went down too! Once Sophie had said O.K. Laura asked if I would come down so when we all got to the top, Laura said Miss Allan had to go first, just to make sure she went down! ThenSophie went, then Lawrie, then me and then Laura.

After that we were just swimming around the pool. Laura and I had a competition to see who could stay under for the longest. It was a draw!

At about 5:15pm we got out the pool and went to have a shower and get changed. Once we were we had to wait on Jamie because he was playing a racing arcade game and kept crashing into walls, Miss Allan said she wouldn't like to be in a car with him when he was older!!

By Faye Munro

Dinner at the Great Food Stop

On the Friday we came back to Oban from Easdale we had dinner at the Great Food Stop. When we went in we got shown to our table then we ordered our food. Some of us had burgers, some had fish and some of us had macaroni cheese. Most of us got our food after about 10-15 minutes, but the macaroni took ages! The first one came not long after the fish and burgers, but the other two came about 30 minutes after we'd ordered them!! It wasn't that bad though because we got 25% off our bill!

When we had finished our main course Miss Allan went out to buy a "Times Ed".
 
While she was gone we ordered our puddings and Miss Allan's because she had told us what she wanted. While she was still out the waiter came back and told us that they had run out of what she wanted, so we looked at each other and chuckled! When she came back we told her about the pudding and she decided not to have one after all!! We finished and went back to the hostel, played Trivial Pursuit and pool and went to bed.

By Laura Oliphant