A Rutherford Promotion

Today we were going to go over to Rutherford Primary School during period three to donate the books we had fundraised for their school and Rose wanted me to film the presentation. Since I had Chinese in period three, I thought I might go and see Ms Hsiao during my study period to ask if I could be excused from class. At 10:20am, I walked over to the primary school with Rose and Caragh, as well as a few members of the Junior Council. When we arrived at the primary school hall, all the little kids were already waiting patiently for us inside. Rose, Caragh and the Junior Council members went and sat at the front of the hall while I took one of the seats at the back so I could film.

The assembly started with one of the primary students standing at the front as she introduced herself, before telling everyone to stand as we sang the National Anthem. When it was our turn to do the presentation, Rose wheeled the large table/box of library books out to the front and spoke to the children. I think everyone was delighted with the donation and we were thanked for our generosity afterwards. I thought that would be the end of the filming for me, but as I was putting the video camera away, one of the teachers told everyone to stand up and dance the Macarena, and that included the Rutherford College students! I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by without filming it, so I whipped out the camera and focussed on Rose and Caragh. It was pretty funny watching all the students dance, and the range of enthusiasm amongst the little kids. What also amazed me as I sat at the back of the hall was the way in which the primary students behaved. Everyone was very attentive and sat up straight away when the teachers at the front told them to. That’s the sort of energy you see less of when you enter high school, and I think it’s a shame that some high school students cannot seem to find the brighter side of life.

Today at English was our last period to research for our seminars. I thought I might use the period to go online and research a little bit more about my topic of Divine Justice. By the end of the period, I still felt like I had more research to do because I had too many questions that I hadn’t answered. I guess I’ll have to look into it a bit more this weekend. Just another thing to add to the list…

At lunch time I had to track down the TDI projector and borrow one of the laptops in our form class to take to Te Atatu Intermediate School for the promotional presentation this afternoon. Mr Moore took me and Bryn down to the intermediate school (Bryn was going to be speaking to the school because he was a past student) in his car early so that we could set up the projector and laptop.

I managed to set up the laptop and projector on a nearby table at the front of the hall, but there was no sound cable that we could use to plug into the PA system. Luckily one of the intermediate students walked past and knew the teacher in charge of setting up microphones and audio set up for the school hall, Mr Felix. I thought we might just hold a microphone up to the speakers of the laptop while we played the promotional DVD, but in the end Mr Felix managed to find a cable long enough to stretch all the way from the stage down to the floor where the laptop was.

The rest of the performing students from Rutherford College arrived shortly after, as well as the intermediate students filing in after lunch. After the promotional video was played, Mr Moore addressed the school and then introduced Bryn to the stage, who spoke about his experience at Te Atatu Intermediate and Rutherford College. I liked the fact that he said “forget Kelston and St. Doms, they’re rubbish!”. The choir then sang the school song “The Rutherford Way” before an extract of our production “For Today” was performed. Overall, I felt our presentation was a success and hopefully Rutherford College gets the number of enrollments they need for next year.

Before youth group tonight, I remembered about the radio show and thought I might call in before it finished. When I rang up, David answered the phone and I told him that my name was “Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii”. I passed the phone to Calum after he put me on hold and Calum managed to get on air for a few minutes before the end. I think the topic on tonight’s show was sport, but I can’t be entirely sure because we only tuned in 5 minutes before the end of the show.

Tonight at youth group Calum and I led song worship. The first song we sang was “From the Inside Out” and our second song was “Jesus You’re My Superhero” where we got everyone to stand up and join in with the actions we had made up. It was pretty funny watching some of them dance (and for those of you who weren’t dancing, shame on you! haha) We had an activities evening tonight so we spent most of the time working on our poster boards for the foyer in our church. Our group was working on our “High School Musical” themed board, and it was starting to come together. I brought the cardboard that we were going to use as the stage for our board, but it was a little cheap-looking after I coloured it in with brown colouring pencil.

We played a game for the second half of the evening and we stayed in the same groups we were in for the boards. The game was split into physical and mental challenges. The first challenge was a physical challenge so I offered to represent our team, while Jireh was competing against me from the other team. The challenge was to see who could do the most press ups in 15 seconds. Uh oh.. I didn’t want to embarrass myself now. We got into position and waited for the countdown. As soon as On said “go”, both Jireh and I started doing press ups frantically. Initially I felt like I was doing okay, but 15 seconds was taking ages! In the end I managed 30 press ups while Jireh did 27, so our team got the point for that challenge. Phew, that was a good workout!