Running to Rio, Burn’s Night, and a Home Cooked Meal

This week has been very busy, and time has started to fly by. It was Kate’s (South Africa) birthday on Sunday and Callam (South Africa) and Marnie’s (Australia) on Tuesday. Julia’s (Australia) is this coming Tuesday as well. Hopeman had a brew for Kate in Mrs Sill’s (Hopeman housemistress) apartment, with drinks and cake.

There was also a goodbye brew for Miss Maxwell, one of the winter skills leaders and also one of Hopeman’s tutors (which is the equivalent of an advisor at Athenian). Miss Maxwell is really great. I know everyone at Gordonstoun is sad to see her go, but wishes her the best of luck at her new job in Wales.

If the school yacht (fancy, right?) is available, there will be a trip up to Loch Ness for the exchange students this Thursday. I really hope we get the opportunity to go, but apparently the yacht might still be up in Inverness for maintenance.

The Run to Rio competition has begun, which is an inter-house competition to see which house can run the equivalent distance of Gordonstoun to Rio de Janero (the site of the next summer Olympics) in the fastest time. Hopeman is currently in the lead for the girls and it has motivated a lot of us to run every day.

I made the netball team, which is a surprise, seeing that I’ve never played it before I came to Gordonstoun. For those of you familiar with netball, the position I play is either Goal Shoot or Goal Attack.

After a night run with Lizzie, we had an exchange meeting with the guardians on Friday to talk about the upcoming International Week. The guardians are year 13’s and are like the Head Girl and Head Boy at Gordonstoun. Their names are Ella and Jolly, and we all agreed that Jolly has the coolest name ever. We brainstormed ideas about activities and snacks that would be incorporated into International Week. We also were asked to wear national dress for one of the days during International Week, and I’m trying to figure out what to wear. All of the Hopeman Year 10’s think I should dress up as Captain America, but unfortunately I left my Captain America costume at home.

Saturday was Burns Day, which celebrated the works of the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns. Students read his poetry and sung songs he had written in chapel. For the social Saturday night, we had haggis for dinner (which is not my cup of tea, but I’m definitely glad I tried it) and listened to bagpipes. After dinner we had reels, or traditional Scottish dancing. It was really fun, as the whole school participated in dances such as Strip the Willow, Military Two Step, and Dashing White Sergeant.

Today I played in the inter-house volleyball, and Hopeman got first place amongst the girls’ houses! It is very exciting, especially because we had also just won squash last weekend.

After volleyball, Kate, Laura, and I were invited to dinner over at the Smit’s house. It was amazing to have a home cooked meal, especially after weeks of cafeteria food.