My Transition Year: Galway, Day3

17th, Oct '14

For my morning activity I did abseiling. I had done it once or twice before so I wasn't afraid to do it. It was at a place know as the pigeons hole and it was either 60 meters or feet of a drop, which was very high. Our instructor was Edwina, she was one of my favourite instructors because she was very kind. I was eager to go down the drop so I went first. The rocks were were slippery and uneven which made the first few meters of the drop hard, but once you got past that part it was pretty easy, you just had to let the rope out to let yourself down. If you let the rope go to fast in your hands it can burn them, I did that. I thought it was really fun, and it was really good that everyone tried. Some people were terrified but they were brave to do it anyway. Once you unhooked yourself at the bottom you had to climb up a steep stairs carved into the rocks which really took the breath out of me. I enjoyed it so much I went down again, with more ease this time. The harness you wear can dig into your legs a bit going down, but I didn't mind. I'm glad I did it and would love to do it again anytime.
My evening activity was sailing. I was really looking forward to it because a lot of the other groups had enjoyed it. The wetsuits we had to get changed into were cold and wet from the morning activity, which were extremely uncomfortable to get into and I moaned a lot. It was quite windy and rainy once we got down to the boats. Our instructor, Aodhán, gave us a quick lesson in how to sail. Myself and two of my friends were in the biggest boat for three people, the other two groups of two were in smaller boats. The water was cold when we first walked out with the boat, I kind of squealed a bit with the cold, i'm not a big fan of it. I then pulled myself up onto the boat once we were out far enough. I can't really remember all of the sailing terms anymore, but once I was on ,I pushed down the rudder and the balance piece thing in the middle. Then as the boat drifted out deeper my two friends couldn't get onto the boat. So we just sat there drifting for a while, while Aodhán helped the other groups with there boats, because as soon as they got into the water they capsized, we were the only ones upright. Then when he came and helped we were all on the boat and we pulled on the ropes to sail and we were going really fast, which was fun, until we needed to turn, as soon as we turned the rudder the boat capsized. It was really windy which didn't help us much since we were only beginners. But Aodhán just kept going in circles to help everyone but it was kind of useless because none of us could sail. So for the whole hour and a half we had to sail, all of the boats were capsized. I was kind of annoyed that I didn't get to sail properly because I was really looking forward to it and all of the other groups had perfect weather for it and enjoyed it. But at the end of it Aodhán took us on a speedboat ride around the lake which was really fun, then at the end he pushed us all out to swim to shore, which was funny. The boats were quite heavy to wheel back aswell. Then I got a nice hot shower,, which is the nicest feeling in to world after being in freezing cold water.
After dinner for our evening activity we were supposed to have a bonfire. The first Galway group did. But it was raining so we couldn't. Instead we split up into groups in a contest to drop an egg without it breaking using balloons, straws, cups and foam to help up and tape to stick it all together. I think my group did good. We then dropped our egg creations out of the window. All the teams eggs broke. I don't think we had enough equipment to make them not break. But I had fun putting them together.