Wednesday, April 25th – Last Day
Today we met early as a group to reflect a bit on the trip
and what we had learned during our time here.
After a class we spread out around the school to give gifts to all the
teachers and staff who had made our stay so enjoyable. Louise Deane came by to tell us how she had
been getting very complimentary reports from folks outside of Belvedere. Many of the teachers also stopped to
compliment the group.
We then met in the Oratory with Eoin Keogh to do an Examen
of the two week experience. It was very
restful and a nice way to wrap up the spiritual strand of the trip. From there we went straight to our annual basketball
match, where unfortunately, the Eagles went down to defeat to the Belvedere
squad despite the great efforts of coach Conor Lane. A good time was had by all.
Our last outing of the trip was to Croke Park and the GAA
Museum. Croke Park is the home of Gaelic Games, hurling,camogie and Gaelic
football - an enormous 82,500 seat stadium, with a great collection of
artifacts and experiences to try out in their museum. The site also has a very important place in
the hearts of Irish people because of the killings there on Bloody Sunday in November,
1920 in retaliation for the deaths of British agents during the War of
Independence. We got to go down to the
pitch and visit the locker rooms and press spaces. It was a terrific tour and a great way to
wrap up our visits in the city. We were
rescued by Simon O’Donnell of the school staff, who commandeered the school van
and drove us to the park and back in the pouring rain.