It's my second week on the job as SAL and it's peak week! With more than 650 students there's a lot to get through! It's 7am and I'm getting up to go and do my breakfast duty from 7:30 until 8:00am.

Breakfast duty seems easy; it's early so the students are unenergetic and still half asleep! Once my duty is done I hand over to the next Activity Leader, and go get something to eat.

At half past 8 we have our morning meeting in the activities office. We talk about the plan for the day and each person explains what they will be doing in their activity. We start the day with confidence; we all know what we are doing and where we need to be. The activities start at 09:00 but we go to the meeting point for quarter to, just in case any of the students are early.

It's five past 9 and most of the students have arrived. We wait until 10 past and there is only one group missing. There are three or more people on each activity so two Activity Leaders begin to take the students to the activity and one stays at the meeting point to wait for the missing group, who FINALLY decide to turn up at twenty past! Turns out two of the students forgot their lanyards in their rooms so they had to go back and get them. They decide which activities they want to do and are escorted to them by the Activity Leaders. When the two and a half hours are over, we've got 17 acts for the talent show including pianists, singers, dancers and a guitarist! We walk the students back to the meeting point where their Group Leaders come to meet them. Some of the GLs have gone shopping in the city centre so we keep their studetns with us and walk them back to the halls. As we are crossing the road, their Group Leaders are getting off the bus so we hand them over to the right people and go back to the activities office to grab a bit of down time.

Thinking ahead to the talent show we decide that we need to be taking part. We'll do Stomp, Thriller and S Club 7, practising in our free time after lunch and dinner. After we've grabbed a bite to eat we kick off talent show preparation. Thanks to a YouTube walk-through, we perfect Thriller and I have a Stomp routine that I remember from last year, so I teach the rest of the group until we're all happy we know what we're doing. We're on zig-zag this week so the afternoon's actvitieis are the same as this morning. Being an SAL though I'm on planning so I spend the rest of the afternoon sorting out the activities for the rest of the week as well as thinking to the week ahead.

I go for dinner at six, where I am greeted by all 3 summer schools onsite attempting to get food at once! Even though we are all allotted dinner times by the time our students arrive at half past six there's a massive queue. Luckily there are plenty of us on duty so we manage to keep control. After dinner I pop back to my room quickly to get a bit of rest before the murder mystery activity tonight. At 19:00pm I head back to the activity office where I meet the other ALs who are working tonight. We've already prepared the play to explain the story to the students, so are ready at 19:45 to head to the meeting point to collect everyone. Most of us wait in the lecture theatre to greet (and seat!) the students as they arrive. It's a slow process but by 20:20 everyone is in and ready to start.

By 10:15 we have all the students back in the lecture theatre and announce the winners of the event - after a quick song to reward their victory we take them all back to meet their Group Leaders. After all the students have been seen safely off we have a quick de-brief to talk about how the evening went and suggestions for next time (plus a little bit of self-congratulation at another marvellous activity!). No lights out for me tonight, so I'm off to grab some well earned rest before it starts again tomorrow!