Our last morning in Paris. The weekend had gone by so ridiculously quickly. Almost everyone enjoyed their breakfast again this morning; Dylan - or was it Billy? - would have preferred a fry, but Trevor was happy out. Crepes, croissants, pains au chocolat, we ate them all, showing how cultured we are. Quick head count, bags on bus, another head count and off we went to Disneyland.
The students were told to go and enjoy themselves, to make the most of their eight hours in the theme parks. Unfortunately the young people of Paris, who were on mid-term break for two weeks (TWO weeks!), had the same idea and the queues got pretty long pretty quickly. Some students coped with this by strolling though the fastpass gates without a care in the world, while others were used as surrogate children holding places for their "parents", aka the teachers. At one stage the three teachers, with their eight children keeping a place for them, were able to get right up to the front of the queue for Big Thunder Mountain. Thanks kids!
Six-thirty came and the counting started again. 28 off the bus, 28 into the park and 28 back onto the bus. The bus trip was short, but this meant we had loads of time to find Jonathan Kelly's missing phone (it was in his pocket), and that we would have loads of time to kill in the airport, get a bite to eat, do some last minute shopping, and so on. But no, it couldn't be that easy, could it.
Cue a forty minute argument with the French check-in staff about whether or not our kit-bag was a golf-bag and who would pay for the extra three kilos in it. Those three kilos were no problem for Aer Lingus leaving Dublin Airport so we couldn't see how they would be a problem on the way back. We settled it when we opened the kit-bag and started to remove three kilos of mud-stained and disgusting jerseys saying we would wear them onto the plane rather than pay a single cent of an excess baggage charge. Thankfully they didn't call our bluff and they didn't relish explaining to the Aer Lingus cabin crew how and why they let us on with mud dripping off of us.
All that fun meant however that we had very little time left and so we had to go straight to security. No real problems this time, although it was suggested by one of the students that we stop talking about someone "using the 'F-bomb'" while we were in the airport! No argument there. The reality that we were on our way home and the trip was over did start to set in however.
It was a great trip, and great trips like these aren't made by the destination, or the activities. They're made by the students. One last time, from one to twenty eight, and with thanks to all of them;
Jason, Jojo, Dylan, Sarah, Billy, Saragh, Sorcha, Chloe, Luke, Cliona, Vickie, Caoimhe, Eva, Sinead, William, Holly, Mark, Laura, Anna B, Cillian, James, Kelly, Jem, Anna S, Claire, Jonathan, Roisin and Lisa. Thanks everyone for a great trip to France!
fantastic weekend thanks for everything
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