The winter sport season unofficially ends for School House on a sunny spring day at Green Island Rugby Club.

What a contrast, yesterday the boys were sweltering at the Green Island Tens and today the boys are shivering at school! While conditions were prefect for the Tens on Sunday the organisation of the tournament was certainly not. Even though the boys had a good time and we won the competition, it is highly unlikely we will return next year, unless Green Island makes some changes in the way they run the tournament.

Congratulations to Ryan Dey who attended the New Zealand Secondary Schools Swimming Championships last week. Ryan came away with six personal best times, and four top ten placings for his age group. A great achievement, especially considering many of his competitors are considerably bigger than him.

On Thursday the boys were treated to a special Thai dinner. The food was cooked by our own Thai boys Chanand Phoonwathu, Tong Rochanasorn, Kanon Vanichvoranan and Guy Rattanapan. It was a very authentic Thai meal and pushed some of the boys out of their comfort zone, it certainly wasn’t a meat and three veg type meal!

Hostel food has been a topic of much discussion recently. On Thursday, the board approved the use of Cibus Catering to run our kitchen. Cibus are Dunedin based but operate over forty sites up and down the country, predominately in rest homes and schools. The boys got a taste of their service last night when they cooked us a delicious roast beef dinner. At this stage, the meal was just a taster with Cibus starting properly this Sunday. We are hoping to improve the standard of the meals and the consistence by outsourcing the kitchen. Cibus have also been advised that they need to make the meals healthier with less use of the deep fryer. This is a very positive and exciting change for the hostel.

To borrow a headline from Stuff today, the hostel Ski trip promises to be ‘epic’. With Queenstown getting a heavy dump of snow, the Remarkables should be in great condition on Saturday. As I write the ski field has already had 45cm and it is still snowing! We really just have Year 9 and 10’s coming on the trip due to senior exams next week. While it would have been good to  have the seniors with us, this is really the only weekend we can go due to winter sport and other school events. Good luck to all the seniors for your exams next week.

I am pleased to report that we have appointed a new weekend Matron, Emma Buttler. Emma is originally from the UK but has been living and working in Australia in recent years. A physio by trade, Emma will be accompanied by her partner Richard Freeman who is one of the coaches of the Australian Secondary School Rugby side this year. Richard is also from the UK and has considerable experience coaching rugby in both England and Australia at a high level. We have appointed Richard as a Housemaster and along with Emma will start on the first day of next term. Both Richard and Emma have previous experience working in boarding schools. We are very lucky to have secured the services of two very talented people and they will be a real asset to the hostel.

During the weekend we had a few boys wanting to go the beach. While in previous years the boys have been able to go to the beach unsupervised, this is no longer the case. The boys are not permitted to go the beach unless accompanied by a hostel staff member. During the summer, the hostel staff will provide the boys with the opportunity to go to the beach on safe, supervised trips on the weekend and on rare occasions during the week.

Mid-term fatigue has certainly hit the hostel and many of the boys are looking forward to the holidays. It has been a long term with no long weekend or mid-term break. It is important that the boys see the rest of the term in a positive fashion.

I hope you all have a great week, keep warm! 

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