Hello, ladies! So, I’m back again with some more words of wisdom on the Kenya trip. I still feel weird anytime someone asks me where I’m going next summer, ‘Heya, so yeah I’m off to Kenya next summer, you?’ It’s a lot of fun to say it,too sometimes.

So, any who, even though the holidays were coming up, that didn’t mean that the preparations for Kenya were about to die down. In fact, they actually got a lot more intense!

At the start of December, we decided (well one of our teachers decided) that it would be a good idea to try out a Christmas fair. At first, all of us seemed pretty hesitant to go ahead with this and tried many times to convince her it wasn’t going to work, but to our surprise, it really did help!

We spent a few weeks before the fair was going to take place to try and bring in as many unwanted items as we could; asking others to do the same and we even left a few random buckets around the school hoping people would drop a few things in there.

So the day before, we all stayed behind to set up the stalls and label everything with prices. It wasn’t fun, but I suppose it’ll be worth it eventually! The next day, we opened the doors at 10am and we were shocked by the hoards of students rushing to every table. Anyone passing the room would have mistaken the school for a zoo… Seriously! So the next hour was chaos! I couldn’t hear myself think and there were queues everywhere. We had a great laugh doing it though, and it was nice to see people help out! After all the madness (in the zoo) had stopped, we began counting the money we made. We were so delighted! Our school is small in number, only about 200-250 attend there and we made over 600 euro! It was a good day and the money we made was put away safe.

Another thing we had on the agenda during the holidays was to do a sponsored Christmas Day swim. We got sponsor cards made out and began to fill them. We were all looking forward to the swim, but dreading the fact that we could have possibly been coming home with full-blown hypothermia. Yeah, that idea scared me a lot! It was really cold here in Ireland during December– scratch that, it’s still frickin’ freezing!! Swimming out in the open didn’t sound like fun. Even though, I was still excited.  So about a week before the swim itself, it’s only typical that I would begin to feel sick! I wore about 17 scarves that day….

I was hoping it would ease off within the next few days so I’d be able to take part, but unfortunately, it didn’t. My throat felt like I’d dropped a match down there. I didn’t, don’t worry!

The night before Christmas, we all got a text saying that the swim would probably be called off due to how icy the roads were (they were very icy.. my friend fell a few nights before that and when I ran over to take a picture, I mean, eh…Help her up… I fell! It was funny, but very painful about two days later).

We decided to change the swim to New Year’s Day and I was thrilled that I’d probably be going!

But, eh…Yeah… That didn’t happen (this is the part where you start to feel sorry for Tracey).

The night before, my throat still felt awful, and on the 7^th of January I was going to Dublin to record for a talent show that’s airing on TV here soon (I’ll keep ye up to date on that!) and I needed my voice. So I ended up not going. My friends came down that day to watch a DVD and I saw some photos afterwards that were sent around! Disappointed I wasn’t there, but it’s all good now!

After those two big events, we stopped for awhile; the past few months were hectic and we all needed a break! A lot more stuff will be happening when we get settled back into school and have more time together. I’m so nervous for this trip, because of all the stuff we’ve been told about it, but at the same time, the excitement is creeping in more and more (except for this whole vaccination thing, that’s just not cool).

So, I hope ye all enjoyed this, you guys and I’ll have more to come really soon, and sorry if my weak attempt at jokes didn’t amuse you!! 

Peace & Love!

Xo

Tracey