Thursday 15 February 2007

A....nice(?) Valentine's Day

(continuing from previous post..) I had one of the worst sleeps in a while that night. I woke up once to try wake my arm up after sleeping on it for a little while (you know when your arm goes dead?) before waking up again to peel my face off the mattress. It got colder later in the night and so I got out of the bed again and tiptoed over to the guys' cubicle to grab the blanket Lauren offered me the night before. I ended up waking up at 5am, thinking that was when we were supposed to wake up. Everyone was still asleep though, so I just lay there till more people started waking up afta 5.30am. By the way, throughout the night, someone snored really really badly! I won't name any names ;);)

When everyone was up there were heaps of hugs around with Valentine's Day wishes. I managed to hug nine people, with one of them being Zahir! :D Yeah what a great consolation for being single! I went and had a shower, and was amazed at how fast I showered compared to the time it takes for me to shower at home! I only had one bar of soap so I came out of the shower smelling like a big strawberry. In the bag of stuff Patrick picked up for me I had the t-shirt that Gwen and Alex got me for my birthday so I wore that for the day. I even got a compliment from Christine about that t-shirt, and that was probably the first time EVER someone has complimented me on what I am wearing!!

We got all our stuff packed, the dorm cleaned up and then we all headed down to the carpark to wait for the taxis. Michaela, Patrick and I ended up catching a ride with Miss Nepe after all the taxis got filled. Because we were some of the last people to arrive, everyone else had already eaten their breakfast. Michaela wasn't feeling too well, while I ate my muesli with fruit salad. Once everyone finished their breakfast the Rutherford and Kelston prefects had to go into the marae to take part in the powhiri to welcome the next two schools Tangaroa and Onehunga.

The powhiri followed the usual protocol, speech from each party, song and then that thing Maoris do when you rub noses with each other or kiss the girls. There were about sixty prefects from both of those schools, so we all stood in a line and noogied them or kissed the girls one by one. What a way to celebrate Valentine's Day!!! As soon as that was over we jumped on the bus and headed across the bridge to the North Shore campus. There was love music playing in the bus, all of us singing to Kelly Clarkson, oh what fun it was!

As soon as we got to the campus we got straight into things. The police had set up a little course on the field. Apparently they use this course to train their police recruits. It consisted of such obstacles as climbing over walls, through holes in walls, sliding underneath bars, jumping over fences, dragging a 70kg dummy several metres and pushing a trailer. Man compared to all those strong guys I was like a weakling! At least I didn't embarrass myself too badly. The first time I tried to take a run up to the wall to jump it I ran straight into it, and I didn't exactly dive properly underneath the bar for fear of wrecking my t-shirt! The three groups went around trying the different obstacles before a few brave souls attempted to do the whole course within the time limit of 1.57 minutes. Some of the Tamaki College students who we were with went under 1.40!

We all had a bit of morning tea and headed back up to the room to work a bit more on the action plans. I mainly hung with Chen and Charlene who were working on the Junior Council plan. At least now I can rest assured that the Junior Council is in good hands! After the allocated time had passed each group had to state their main goals for the year before we could go to lunch.

During lunch Patrick and I went to sit in a discreet little corner with Rebecca to have a private conversation about certain matters like who we thought should be deputy head boy and our future involvement in helping out with the Prefects that Peak programme. We concluded our little talk with discussing if Patrick and I had any girlfriends. Patrick's kinda seeing someone, and as for me I'm still single. Rebecca told me that I've got a few 'best mates' in the group and I think she said something about things not happening or something I don't know...

So I went back to the field to join Chen and learn the names of Ruth's friends like Rita, Tinnah, Matilda and Falen. That was embarrassing having to ask them what their names were! I'm sure I knew some of their names but I just got their faces mixed up! After a while the girls came over and started approaching me with evil looks before accusing me of telling the great Rebecca stuff about them! I wouldn't do such a thing! They then told me the predictions Rebecca made for them - Zahir and Angie, Phoebe and some new guy some day, Jenna and a younger guy (I think?).

We then joined the Tamaki College and Kelston guys in playing some more team building games. Everyone thought we were going to have a water fight and so there was a frantic rush to fill water bottles and buckets with water, but...it didn't eventuate. The last game the group played was really weird-looking - the group had to come up with some way of shifting a bucket of water with only a certain number of people touching the ground.

After that we all went into the gym to watch farewell skits/performances from each school. Tamaki performed a nice song, Kelston sang The Lion Sleeps Tonight (what they performed down the street when busking earlier) which was funny with the white guy doing a little rap in the middle. I was hoping and hoping Rutherford's would match the rest as I saw a little bit of what they had planned - a little chant that lasted only a couple seconds. They managed to pull a good one off! We all said our goodbyes to each other before jumping on our buses and heading our own ways.

The bus ride back to school was good. I sat next to Gwen talking about...certain things in Cantonese (I need the practice!!). Everyone was pretty worn out by the time we got back to school. Patrick and I had a short little walk through the school to check out the changes and caught up with the science teacher Mrs Butler Shaw and the year 10 dean/history teacher Ms Cumming before heading off home.

So yeah I originally didn't think I'd even get a chance to go to camp and ended up being allowed to stay the night! It was really cool seeing all the guys again and being able to help out wherever possible. I'm missing them already!! I'm sure those who dreaded going to camp had changed their mind after the three days. It certainly did help the group get to know each other better, and through up some interesting questions...


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