My new house

Maybe half the students on the course are living in cottages on the school grounds – this is The Barn, the house I’m sharing with ten (yikes) other people. We are two boys and nine girls from England, Northern Ireland, the States, Australia and Sicily. Antonio made pizza tonight - Sicilians make good housemates.

This is my lovely room-mate, Rachel from Adelaide.

Sunday night is homework night.

(And also live music night at the Blackbird in Ballycotton - photos of that later.)

The school is surrounded by fantastic organic gardens which supply quite a bit of the produce we use in our classes.


There is an acre of glasshouses (they used to heat them but they don't any more), producing all sorts of veg...

...like onions...

...carrots and beetroots...

...broad beans...

...and every herb you can think of.

Once a week there's a gardening club before class. On our first day we each planted a spring onion so that we can watch it grow over the next few weeks...

...and we've planted a little tiny salad garden in front of our cottage.

There are chickens and pigs and ducks and dogs all over the place, it is quite the rural idyll.

The chickens know when it's dinner time.

Mmmmmm delicious...

This is Muffin. Or maybe it's the other one.

Apparently ducks make lousy mothers, so this duckling has been adopted by a hen.