In the weeks before I went to the Abbey, everybody was telling me how good a school it was. I had my uniform on for the first time and I was ready to go to school. My Dad left me down to the bus stop and Jackie the bus driver came to pick me and a few of my friends up in his yellow bus. I said bye to my Dad and got onto the bus. The bus then collected more of my friends at a different stop and then went on to the Ulsterbus station in Rathfriland. We got off the yellow bus and got onto an Ulsterbus and then went off to school. The bus left us off at the bottom of the hill and we walked up to the school.

My first thoughts of the school were, how am I going to find the classes and will I get lost. The school was massive compared to my primary school. As well as the main building there were sixteen mobiles. This was a big change for me. We met our form teacher, Mrs Mc Avoy, and she brought us to our form class. She was a religion teacher and her room number was N47 which was also our form room. After Mrs Mc Avoy showed us our room we followed her around the school as she showed us all the rooms in the school. Our class name was Brefni 1.

All the teachers that we had were dead on. It was a big change for me moving about to the different classes during the day. In my old school I had only two teachers a day and moved to a different class once a day, in my new school we had ten different teachers a day! It was very hard at the start trying to find the right classes, but as time went on it seemed to get easier. Also at the start of the year I found that I was very tired when I came home from school but as time passed it seemed to get easier.

I was starting to enjoy school when we were coming up to our Christmas exams. I had to study a lot for them because I wanted to do well in them. All this studying reminded me of the Eleven Plus. Fortunately I did well in my exams but near the end of the exams I failed one. Any way I still thought I did well in the rest. It didn't seem that long until the summer exams were starting and I am studying for them now.

I have really enjoyed my first year at the Abbey. I have met lots of new friends, from many different places, we have good crack. I enjoyed the football blitz which our team won, the different games in PE, the technology classes where we made a buzzer for our bedroom doors. Learning new languages was difficult but interesting, the science experiments were good fun. Drama was a laugh when we had to act out things but it made us think. I enjoyed making things for other subjects.

All in all, the Abbey is a good place for a first year.