Farewells + School Ball

Today started off with two shortened periods of school. I didn't go to chemistry in first period because I had to help set up equipment for Mr Edmeades' farewell assembly. Next period I had Chinese, in which we were supposed to be doing our Chinese speech, BUT she let us do it on the first Monday back of next term (thanks Bronwen, Nikki and Shiu Tai for persuading her to!)

Finally at 11am we had Mr Edmeades' Student Farewell assembly in the sports hall. It was amazing to see all the teachers lined up along the walls with the whole school sitting on the ground (or the ones that came to school anyway!). Heather, the other head students, prefects and I sat on the left side of the podium while Mr Edmeades, his children and grand-children sat on the other side of the podium. We started off with the choir performing. I felt bad because I was supposed to be in the choir and there was only one guy in the choir singing, while I was sitting up on the platform. So I just sang from where I was. Don't think anyone heard me anyway...

Heather and I gave our speeches. Fortunately I didn't say UMM too often. I had watched the tape of my speech on Friday night and realised I said it too much! Today was a lot better.

The Kapa Haka group then sang the school song as well as a surprise second song. For some reason the school song always gives me the good chills! We really got to teach the rest of the school how to sing it! We then gave Mr Edmeades his presents, and then Hyun had the last say, which I thought was probably the best line of the day:

"When I say school stand, could you please stand while Mr Edmeades and his family leave the sports hall. School Stand. " (something along those lines!)

After school I just waited with Phoebe talking to her for a little while till her dad came to pick her up. Too bad she had to work and couldn't come to the ball with the rest of us! At least she had him to keep him company...;);)

THE BALL - Well I had no idea what I was going to wear, so as soon as I got home I looked through my dad's wardrobe for his suits, and found this criss-cross brown one that looked kinda old enough to be 1920s. I also found this Maozedong hat which looked good enough to be one of those old fuddyduddy hats that I could wear with. Now all I needed was a mustache and a pipe. I went to WestCity to check out all the cheap variety shops for them but I couldn't find any! I came across Mrs Taylor (my dean) who had just gotten her hair done. I got back home, got a bit of a hair trim while Aonghas cut some spare carpet from the garage, darkened it with vivid and made a mustache for me.

I had to get to Crowne Plaza Hotel early as Heather and I being the head students had to collect tickets and welcome everyone as they arrived. I managed to come earlier than anyone else for once!!! So we stood at the top of the stairs greeting everyone. Eventually everyone arrived and we were free to go and take photographs and mix with other people. Steven found me and kinda hung with me for the first half till dinner when there weren't enough chairs for us to sit next to each other (no we weren't partners by the way!) so I sat at the same table as Alex, Nick, Esther, Esther's friend, Christine, Estee, Sarena, Amy, Ellyce and Jonathan while the twins sat with their Korean friends at another table.

We did some dancing, had great food for dinner and dessert, and took a lot of photos (I'll put some up here some time soon). Heather and I ended up having to give a very short speech to thank everyone for coming so I just thanked them for coming and wearing good clothes, and then Heather thanked Mr and Mrs Edmeades for coming and called for the people who were going to award prizes to come up on stage. I didn't win anything, but congratulations to Jonathan who got Ball King, Steven who got Ball Prince, Kirsty who got Ball Queen, Michaela who got Ball Princess and Toni and her partner for Best Dressed Couple!

It was weird going without a partner this year after going with a girl last year. To be honest it did feel a bit lonely at times, especially when they had the slow dances and there was only just me and the wooden man (decoration) dancing together...nah us single people danced together. Go Hyun for dancing with Gwen!!!!!!!! (sorry just really happy Hyun had some good stuff happen to him at a ball after what happened last year...) So yeah Joon and I didn't have anyone to dance with. We were fast coming to the last dance and I really didn't want to go away not having danced with anyone so I just shouted out if anyone was desperate and lonely enough to dance with me and Sarena ended up dancing with me while Amy danced with Joon for a little while.

But apart from not having partners the night was still good fun and was a a great opportunity to hang out with friends in a different way to usual. I'm definitely getting a new camera after this ball. The flash on my camera took AGES to load each time and people had to hold their poses for so long I told them they could relax while I waited for the camera to get ready! Grrr....I've got a Casio camera at the moment and I've tried playing around with all the settings etcetc. read up about how each of the different setting affect certain things but still this camera won't take good photos in rooms with artificial light!  This was the same with our previous Kodak camera, and I'm sure Kodak cameras these days are a lot better than the models they had back then when we bought ours, but does anyone know which brand produces the best digital cameras? I've heard Canon are probably the best but I don't know. I'll probably have to do a bit more researching over these holidays...