International Relations April 2017

April is here and with it comes Easter and the school holidays.

Since our last newsletter, our student body has grown yet again.

At the beginning of April, we welcomed Ryosuke Hata to our school. Ryosuke is a keen rugby player and comes to us from our sister school in Tokyo, Meguro Gakuin. Ryosuke hopes to gain NCEA Level 3 while at Shirley, play rugby and go to University in New Zealand, with the plan to do a sports-related degree. Ryosuke arrived in the morning on a cold wet Monday and was on the field at practice that afternoon. He has played in several grading games and is very excited to be here. We look forward to following his progress both on the field and at school.

Our International student body is now seven students: four from Japan, two from Thailand and one from France. Next term we are expecting a new student from China.

On Friday 7 April we held an International event together with Avonside Girls’. Scotty Buckner, an Old Boy of Shirley and owner operator of Skate Skool, came to SBHS and ran a skateboarding and inline skating session for the students. There was a lot of laughter, bumps and spills, together with success! A great time was had and the weather played along. After all that exercise, the students were hungry so we finished up with a barbecue. Ms Nesbit showed her culinary skills and cooked up a storm!

We have instigated twice monthly “Rice Wednesdays” and the boys showed their appreciation by polishing off a big  cooker full of rice!

Keigo, Koki and Yusuke attended an International Student Welcome Event run by Christchurch Educated. They took part in a Taiha lesson run by the Kapa Haka group at the event. They showed some very good martial art skills which transferred well to the use of the Taiha. Their instructors where very impressed!

We celebrated Liew’s birthday in March and wish Yusuke a happy birthday for April!

With the holidays pending, we have three activities planned for the students. We are off to the Crusader vs Sunwolves’ game on Good Friday;  we hope to challenge Adrenaline Forest and will do a day trip to Akaroa. Please look forward to photos in the next newsletter.

While most of the Shirley family are stalwart Crusaders supporters, we now have an international connection to the Sunwolves Super 18 team. Atsushi Tanabe, an International Old Boy of SBHS is now part of the coaching team. Atsushi played rugby for SBHS and returned to Japan to play at a professional level. He is a capped All Japan player. We congratulate him on this next exciting step in his career. Atsushi’s son, Jack is now at Shirley and plays rugby here.

The International Department has recently created a facebook page. We hope you will visit and follow us.

Any families interested in joining our homestay data base can contact Leanne Russ, International Administrator on lor@shirley.school.nz