Alicia Cries with Envy

Joeleen Lynch is on her year abroad from Aberdeen University at the University of Guelph in South West Ontario studying history of art She is having a ball and got to see polar bears in a nature reserve - she loves her polar bears. she finishes her course in April but is staying on until June to work and travel. She will be meeting up with her old classmate kathrun Denvir, studying English and Japanese at Leeds University. Kathryn heads off to Tokyo on Tuesday for six weeks to stay with some university friends. Then she heads off to New Zealand for a week in Auckland on her way to Los Angeles in the US where she will start her five month Zig Zag tour of the USA (this is where Alicia goes green with envy!). she will eventually meet up with Joeleen in New York and then head back to Leeds.

Candle at Both Ends

Matthew Gould called in to update us on his year out so far. He has been in Meridan in Mexico, working in a school, in Uganda building classrooms and doing youth work, and he is already booked in to work for Camp America. How did he do all that? When he gets all this done, he'll be off to take up his place at Queens.

A Real Surprise

I received a real surprise of an email this week, from Anne Marie Mueller. Anne Marie is a Shimna Old Scholar of sorts! She came to stay in Newcastle as part of our exchange programme with our German partners, the Am Thie Grammar School in Blankenburg. She is now a medical student in Berlin, and would love to come back to Newcastle and to do a medical residency in a hospital within travelling distance. I am trying to find out what I can about securing such a placement. Anybody able to advise me?

Leanne Comes Back to us

We are delighted the Leanne Spiers will be back in our art department for a five week placement. It will be great to see her, and great for our students to meet up with first hand experience of art college.

Three Visitors

It was great to see Katie Dalton back with us for a couple of days. Katie has returned to live in England and is capitalising on her excellent GCSE results from Shimna as she follows through with her A level courses at her new school. On her last day, Neil McKay and Sean Smith called in to tell us how they are getting on with their plumbing course and placements. All three look great, and it was great to catch up with their news.

Rebecca and Paul Take Over

Today's the day that Old Scholars Rebecca Murphy and Paul Swail take over the running of our Duke of Edinburgh's'President's Award group. In the year of Naebh Dunn collects Gold, it's great to see things turn full circle.

for Fear of Leaving Anyone Out

The formal is the best event of the year for catching up with the gossip, and this year there were so many people their with stories to tell that I would be too scared of leaving anyone out if I started naming names. There is an amazing range of careers and lives and families and children going on out there. Clare Murphy is working hard on our new Webalumnus site, which will be linked into our main website. It is a really sophisticated site for keeping everyone who ever went to Shimna in touch with us and with everyone else who went there. More news as soon as it's ready. I really hope that we keep up the tradition of the formals of staying in touch with everyone, whatever they decide to do in life.