Introduction:

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.

A Morning with the Opera

In the morning on Friday 1 7th 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