Fitting Farewell

On Friday night the school held a farewell evening for our departing principal Mr Edmeades for the community to attend. I was there to perform as part of the string quartet and the choir, as well as to give a farewell speech. The function was supposed to start at 7pm but we were told by our beloved string quartet teacher to start playing at 6.30pm. The twins had somewhere else to go so they were adament they were going to leave at 7pm on the dot. So there was no chance of shifting our performance to start at 7pm and we ended up playing to people setting up the hall at 6.30-7pm.

After that I caught up with a few old friends from last year who turned up, as well as the head students who did stay, my family and some other people while enjoying some of the food the waiters and waitresses were serving us. What was really impressive was that their aprons had embroided on them 'Rutherford Hospitality' which was really impressive! Us head students who didn't get to go to Rangeview because of the history trip also managed to catch up with Mr Jameson! We kinda shuffled little by little while he was having a conversation with someone else till he was by himself. He didn't really say much. I then had to excuse myself so that I could join the choir.

That's when the programme actually started. Our choir started off by performing two pieces. We had quite a few people missing. Ms Faaea the music teacher talked a little bit, and mentioned that she was only here till the end of the year which is really a shame as she has brought the choir back from the brink of death! If there was any chance of her being retained I'd be four limbs in favour of it!

After us was Jipers and No Right Turn which was a real treat! They were superb. They also sang the school song which is a great song. Following that were many speeches, including one from his wife, which Mr Edmeades had no idea she had written and planned already. Heather and I also gave our speeches. I had only just made some changes a few minutes before I had to give my speech because I realised some of what I had written wasn't true! Our speeches went well although I hope I didn't sound as though I was about to cry towards the end of my speech! My voice got a little weaker towards the end as it only just hit me how much of a loss he would be to all of us and how much I was really going to miss him and his speeches. No longer would I be hearing his voice at assemblies and giving us words of wisdom!

The night turned out to be a truly fitting and moving farewell to Mr Edmeades and now we've got a lot of work to do to make Friday's student farewell assembly just as good!

Oh yeah on Thursday we went on our year 13 History trip to various historical locations around South Auckland and upper Waikato. It was amazing to see how some of the trenches that had been dug maybe over a century ago are still there today! You'll be pleased to hear our Ritchies bus didn't break down and in fact was one of those flash buses with curtains, radio in the background and air conditioning! I sat next to Christine throughout the whole trip so hopefully I didn't annoy her too much!

We visited Pukekohe East Church (where there were some bullet holes from past battles on the site), Alexandra Redoubt, Meremere and finally Rangiriri where we watched a DVD presentation and stopped for lunch. That's where I had to endure coconut soya drink my mum gave me...

Our history teacher created this photo taking competition for the best photo with caption and the wackiest photo, so throughout the trip people were taking heaps of photos. I have a strong feeling Nick has the inside running on winning at least one of the competitions!

There was also this crossword competition for chocolate our history teacher ran as well. No one really took much notice in the crossword till the long trip back home from Rangiriri when Heather was asking me how I had been doing, and said she wanted to beat me because she enjoyed it so much! That's when I thought it's about time to step up a gear and get going! At that point I hadn't done much. Now it was all on! Christine and I worked hard trying to solve the crossword, trading words with others in order to try beat Heather and Patrick. We were all down to the same last three words that we couldn't seem to get. When it started to seem as though I didn't really have a chance to win and Ellyce only needed one more word, Christine and I decided to put all our energy in trying to help Ellyce win! In the end though Casey ended up winning the chocolate.

Anyway it was good fun for a history trip!