International Languages Week Begins

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNTY NOELINE, GEORGE SONG AND MICHELLE DE VOS!
This morning was a tad scary. I thought it would be the first time I had to go to the office to get a late slip. Although I had Chinese class first, I wasn’t just running half a minute late – it was pushing 5 minutes late! As soon as the car rolled up to the back gate, I darted up the driveway like a… cat? I made it to the stairs in C Block and I tried to walk in discretely so the teacher wouldn’t see me. As luck would have it, I walked into my Chinese class and Ms Hsiao (Chinese teacher) wasn’t even in the classroom. Nadia was standing at the back of the class with the pinyata she had bought in the weekend for lunchtime today. Ms Hsiao walked in just then and saw me at the back of the class. It was at this moment I was going to find out if she was in a happy mood or an angry mood. She looked at me, I stared back… the tension grew. Wow, I think this could turn into a short film! No, it wasn’t that dramatic actually. She basically just asked me to go with Carey and put up the posters of photos from the China trip in the holidays.

Carey and I went to get the key for the noticeboard so we could put the posters in behind the glass, but we realised the task was going to be more difficult than we initially thought. When we slid the glass door across and tried to position the posters, the height of the notice board was slightly less than two posters on top of each other, so we decided the only way to fit all the posters on the board was to position them horizontally. However, there were quite a few notices from ages ago that were still stuck there on the notice board. Things like UNITEC revision classes, ball gown hire, scholarship applications… and we didn’t know which ones we could take off or which ones we could cover. Mr Moore walked past and told us that we could pretty much take off anything we wanted, so in the end we just gun-stapled the posters over all the old notices. That way they would still be there after International Languages Week. Good thinking!

At lunch time we had the pinyata hitting game set up outside B Block and it drew quite a big crowd. The first pinyata we had was circular and quite small compared to the other one. The rules were one hit per person and they were spun around blindfolded before they got to hit. It didn’t take long for the first pinyata to break. In fact, the person who swung the last hit at the pinyata managed to bring the whole pinyata to the ground. Everyone (mainly junior boys) jumped at the chance for a small confectionery but the pile up looked like they were fighting over something worth a lot more than a lolly!

After that little brawl I was a little worried for the second pinyata that was twice the size. This one was in the shape of a horse and it took a lot more swings before it showed any signs of damage. After so many attempts the donkey/horse was still swinging and twisting on the string. That all changed when Mr Beguely stepped up to the mark. He took one whack at it and it was enough to break a hole in the pinyata. You can guess what happened next – that’s right, everyone dived in and started a massive orgy of scrambling for lollies. So all in all, quite a successful lunchtime in my opinion!