End of Term 2 - Heritage Day & House Competition Day

We're halfway through the year already, withTerm 2 coming to an end this week (which is also the end of the first semester). As usual it was a mad rush of exam marking and report writing in the last few weeks, so I'm glad to have come out the outside. 


Thursday was "Heritage Day" at school - when boys are encouraged to wear their national colours or traditional clothes from their country of heritage. Junior boys brought in food from their heritage country; so we everything from baklava, borek, various Italian cakes and pastries, to a souvlaki and kebab bbq at lunchtime.


Coincidentally, one of the top news stories on that day was information from last year's census, which revealed that 1 in 4 people in Australia was born overseas, with the population up from 17m to 21.5 million since 2006.


I took the opportunity to give my England rugby shirt an outing; here's me with my mate John from the History dept, sporting his George Best tribute shirt.

And here's hardcore of the PRS department (Jeremy and Dylan). This is, I think, the first time I have ever seen Jeremy not wearing a collared shirt and blazer; he borrowed the England shirt from Dylan (and no, I didn't get the memo about hands behind the back). Also on Thursday, the Wallabies were at Newington running a training session with the junior boys (Will Genia and David Pockcock among them). I considered discretion to be the better part of valour, and kept my distance....

The last day of term was House Competition Day, with the eight Houses at Newington competing in volleyball, softball and four-court tennis (a fun game with four teams in four quarters of a tennis court, two nets with plastic bats and a ball).


And the winning House was..... MANTON!! (yes, that's my House! The Green Machine!); this means we have won back-to-back House competition days. I will have to check the honours board, but I don't think we've won the overall competition in around 25 years, so we now have a real chance this year. It's our turn to sing in assembly next term (don't worry I won't be singing) so watch this space for an update on how we get on; the boys have chosen to perform 'Superstition' by Stevie Wonder.


So I now have a three week holiday. I've got no plans for the first two weeks, but will be on domestic duty with Gill going full time again for the next month. In the last week of the holiday I'm going to Melbourne for the IBSC Conference, so will have to write my presentation for that next week.


In keeping with my heritage, I will be of course be supporting Wales as they take on the Wallabies this afternoon; I will, of course, be donning my red British & Irish Lions shirt....