Mini Company competition

Today we all had our mini-company competition... All the work that we had put in over the past year was finally being displayed.
I was part of the minicompany accessoreyes, and our aim was to provide the Irish market with a brand of interchangeable arms that can be clipped on and off glasses so you can change the colour/seeing of your glasses.
We were working right up until the very last minute as our prototype broke last night so it was all systems go to develop a new idea and mane a new prototype and with the hard work of mr W. (thanks so much sir) we got it done! :D
We had to set up a display stand and do a presentation and an interview and it all went pretty well! However the two judges said that we wouldn't have a product by the next round of the competition so they didn't put us through.
It was a great (but stressful) experience and we learned a lot from it.
We are all a little sad that it's over

Here are the links to our minicompany blog and website:
www.accessoreyes.blogspot.com
www.accessoreyes.webs.com

Book Review- My Sisters Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

My sister’s keeper is a story of a child that sues her parents for the right to her own body. Anna was conceived to be a donor to her sister Kate after she was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia. It is set over a time of one and a half weeks and documents the journey of the Fitzgerald family as Anna decides she’s had enough and refuses to donate her kidney to her sister.

The narrative of the story alternates each chapter between different characters, this was a very interesting and captivating technique used by the author and made the novel unique. I liked the way we got to see the story from the point of view of many different people and seeing how they were affected by the events that unfolded

There were many different characters in the novel, however I felt the one that I connected with the most was Anna Fitzgerald. She stands out as the most conflicted character of the novel, and the plotline surrounds her struggle as she refuses to undergo any more medical procedures for the benefit of her sister. She wants to be the best sister she can to Kate, however she is tired of hiding behind her sister and wants to be independent, and although she feels awful about the decision she thinks it is the right thing to do.

The character of Sara Fitzgerald was also very interesting; throughout the novel she is motivated by her duty as a mother to keep Kate alive. This however hinders her relationship with her other two children, Jesse acts out by starting fires and Anna rebels by sueing her parents. Sara’s whole world revolves around Kate’s recovery and she becomes stressed and frustrated due to this.

The novel also had many interesting themes; one of the strongest of these is Love. Love between siblings, parents and children, spouses, boyfriend and girlfriend and even extended family members. The love that stands out the most however is the love between mother and daughter, Sara loves her daughter dearly and could not cope with the thought of her dying, she does everything she can for Kate. We also see love between Anna and Kate, Anna has undergone many operations and medical procedures to try to save her sisters life, and when a dramatic twist occurs in the novel we see that even though what Anna is doing to her sister may kill her, she is keeping her sisters best interests at heart.

The ending of the book was very shocking and effective, I felt that it was a huge climax in the novel and that it left us on edge until the very end.

My sister’s keeper is a very well written book about a very striking issue. Jodi Picoult envisaged the emotions of the characters very well and made the story flow very well. I really enjoyed reading it and would highly recommend it. It is now one of my favourite books and it much much better and more poignant than the film

T.y. Life ;)

So it's been a while since I've posted, and lots of things happened since I was gone.
We went to go see Laura (a fellow eriudlian) in the nutcracker valet, she was pretty amazing, I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did.
Today we had a dress up day in school, lots of people dressed up but we didn't have a parade like we usually do :( it was still a good day though, well done to everyone who dressed up, especially fiona caitriona and Brona
We've also been working on our home ec project, we have the fashion show tomorrow :), my groups theme is Cinderella.
There's been lots of project work going on, we presented our geography and history projects, and I'm kinda gkad theyre over because I hate speaking in front of people.
There's also the English drama we're doing, our group is doing a drama based on the songs concrete angel and how to save a life, the main theme of the play is child abuse and we are entering it into a competition in January
And of course the big news this week was the eircom spider award our ty blog won
WELL DONE EVERYONE :D

English Review, Brooklyn by Colm Toibín

            Brooklyn is begins in 1950's Wexford, it is  about a young girl named Eilis Lacey. Due to difficulty finding a job, Eilis' sister Rose has arranged for her to emmigrate to Brooklyn, New York. Eilis knows this is the only option for her so she leaves all she knows and loves in Ireland and sets off to start her new life in America. This book describes her journey to Brooklyn and the many trials and tribulations she faces when she arrives.
           There are many aspects of this novel that stood out to me, these include : the characters, themes, style of writing, cultural context and the author's vision.
            I really enjoyed watching the character of Eilis develop through the novel as she adapted to her new life. She started off as a shy timid girl, who depended largely on her family, and grew into an independant capable woman who could fend for herself. She showed great bravery throughout the novel especially when she left Ireland, I found this a very admirable quality in the character of Eilis. I found the charactee easy to connect with and very well portrayed. There were also many other characters that impressed me for example Ms. Kelly, who in my opinion was described impecably, Rose, and Ms.  Kehoe.
            There was also  many interesting themes running through the novel, the one that stood out the most to me is the theme of love. The theme of love mainly featured after Eilis moved to Brooklyn, when she meets Tony, an Italian-American who she meets at a local dance. She almost instantly falls in love with him and his kind gentlemanly manner. She begins her relationship with Tony with a few date, but as the story progresses they begin to see each other more and more until it becomes a daily occurence. They soon marry and make plans for the future, but then a major twist in the plot puts their relationship in jeopardy.
           The style of writing used by the author was in some respects good, such as his narrative which was in the third person, which meant we knew everything that was going on and we were not biased towards the views of one particular character and also the authors use of strong poignant imagery. However there was some parts of the style of writing used in this novel that didn't appeal to me, for example the layout of the novel, it was set into four long sections. I felt that this made the novel much too cramped together and in my opinion the use of chapters of about 10-15 pages would have been much better.
            The cultural context of the novel was quite interesting. It was set in the 1950's where social classes were very predominant and values were very different to today. There was also quite a huge contrast between the way of life as Eilis moves from Enniscorthy to Brooklyn, This showed me how much more advanced in society Americans were to Irish. I believe the cultural context in this novel gave us a great insight into life back in the 50's and educated us about the time.
            The vision of the novel was both optimistic and pessemistic, the optimism was seen in our hope for Eilis, her overcoming of her homesickness, and the prospect of new love. However there was some pessimism in the theme of death and homesickness.
            Personally I really enjoyed the novel and I would definately recommend it to people because of the excellent way in which it was written, I believe Colm Toibin is a fantastic author and would definately read another of his books.

irish projct

So lately in irish class we have been working on projects. We were put into groups of three and we were allowed to choose our own title. I have been working with shauna and caitriona and we decided to our project on TG4. The first thing we did was look up information on the internet, but the internet didnt really give us the information we needed. We got thinking and we decied the best way to find out about TG4 was to actually go there. It took a lot of planning but we finally got there. On wednesday the fifth of october, we arrived at the train station (after much deliberation we decided to take the train instead of the bus) and we were off...... but when we reached athlone the train broke down and we ended up taking a bus after all :-(. We arrived in galway city (an hour late) and we were picked up in a TG4 van and we asked our chauffer, the caretaker at TG4 lots of questions (thanks john). when we arrived at TG4 HQ. we were taken to reception and greeted by Caitrionas uncle (who very kindly arranged our tour), he took us to orla the hr manager of TG4. She brought us to a control room to watch PONC being filmed. After that we met the presenters of ponc who were very nice and gave us free hoodys and mugs (thanks colman and maire treasa). then we did a tour of all the studeos and got our picures taken presenting the news. When we were finished that we went for lunch in the TG4 canteen. When we finished our lunch we went and visited sile, the girl who presents the weather and does the voiceovers and she showed us tow to present the wheather. We also met the sound engineer and he showed us how they do the voice overs and the promos. Last but not least we visited the set of ros na run, it was unbelieveable how small it was. And then it was back home to our beds. :-)
It was definately my favourite project of all time

geography project

Recently i have been working on our geography project. We were put into groups of three and we have to plan a trip around the world to 2 first world, 2 second world, and 2 third world countries. Our group are planning to go to morocco, nepal, vietnam, malaysia, japan and ukraine. I have been working on vietnam and morocco, they are both very interesting countries.
i'm planning to visit the chu chi tunnells in vietnam, they were used by the vietnamese soldiers in the war with america and are now a major tourist attraction. and we are going to go to the souks in morocco

chu chi tunnells

moroccan souk