For the past three years there has been a close association between St. Columba's and Deerfield Academy, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1797 Deerfield is one of America's oldest schools and a group of girls from there visited last weekend with one teacher and several parents. Some members of TY were charged with the task of providing their counterparts with a warm Irish welcome. One of them was Sadbh Sheeran and she writes about the experience below:
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| Deerfield in the fall |
After lunch on Friday 18 November, a group of TY pupils and I met ten girls from Deerfield Academy. We showed them around the college, bringing them to various classroom and buildings including the cricket pavilion to show them some of the college’s history.
The girls were curious about the Irish language so Siobhan and I took them to Dr.Bannister's VI form Irish class. Here they got to learn some Irish and because one of the girls was Mohawk we got to learn some of her language in exchange. The Deerfield girls also told us more about their school, it seemed very different from ours!
On Saturday Molly Buckingham, Molly Dunne and I headed off on the bus with the 2nd XV rugby team to Wesley. The Americans wanted to see a rugby match so Mr. Coldrick asked us to go and keep them company. When we arrived in Wesley the place seemed quite empty but the team wasn’t perturbed and started to warm up. After about 10 minutes Mr.Cron realised something was up as the other team hadn’t arrived. He called their coach who said he was very sorry as they must have gotten the days mixed up.
We had a problem! The Deerfield girls were to arrive soon and there wasn’t a team for our boys to play! They started playing amongst themselves anyway and I frantically tried to contact Mr.Coldrick to ask what we should do. At this point a security guard arrived to ask why we were in their school, on their pitches, on a Saturday when the school is closed and playing a match against ourselves...thankfully he was sympathetic!
Eventually Mr.Coldrick arrived and said we should wait for the girls and then head back to school which we did, Molly Dunne and I getting the taxi back with some of the Deerfield girls while all the others went back with Mr.Coldrick taking a minor detour to Superquinn.We congregated in the Drawing Room before heading down to Mr.Patterson's classroom to watch a movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral and eat the sweets Mr.Coldrick had bought us.
After the movie we took the girls to dinner and then we all split up and took three girls to each of our houses, Hollypark, Iona and Beresford. We showed them our dorms which are very different to theirs. Soon it was time to take them to the college’s production of Shakespeare's play, The Comedy of Errors, where everyone wanted to meet the American girls! At the end of the play we reunited them with their parents and teacher.
On Sunday evening they all came to our evensong chapel service, a particularly nice one as it was Mr. Jackson's hymns of praise service. He selected his favourite hymns a lot of which are very popular with us as well, so the Deerfield girls heard us singing at our best.
It was lovely to meet people not only from a different school system but also from a different continent and getting to hear about the way their school differs from ours. I hope the Deerfield girls enjoyed their time in Ireland.
Sadhbh Sheeran
The Deerfield website is found at www.deerfield.edu
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