First Week of School: Hospitality and Art Excursion

This week was just a regular school week, except for yesterday (Thursday) when I went on an art excursion to Brisbane. I'm getting quite used to school life at St Hildas now, and I don't really feel like a complete outsider anymore. Even though everyone was very welcoming in the beginning, I still didn't feel like I was actually part of the school. I've made quite a lot of friends already, I'm used to getting up early and, believe it or not, I can sort of find my way around the school at this point. That's right, clapping is in order.

 

On Monday, Bella and I were driven to school separately, because she had touch trials at 6:30 am. I'm also planning on playing touch, but the Sports Coordinator told me there was no point in going to the trials, because they'd see if I could join a team after they'd all been formed. Before class, I went to the Senior School Centre to choose my subjects and they told me to follow Bella's classes until they'd emailed me my timetable. Do and I then went to the IT centre to connect our laptops to the St Hildas network, and chilled in the library till the start of the second period. During Morning Tea, Do and I had a meeting with the Head of Year 11 and all the new girls to talk about our first few days at St Hildas and if any problems had arisen. 

During lunch, everyone here spreads out around the school and I usually sit with Bella and her friends at a particular table near the Reeves building. Oh, something funny I forgot to mention as well is that most people take eskis (cooling boxes) with them to school to keep their lunch nice and fresh. That's something I'd never seen before since at the RLW everyone just takes their sandwiches in little plastic bags. They also have a tuck shop here, which offers a much wider variety of foods than our canteen at the RLW.
 

Tuesday was just a normal school day, nothing very interesting happened. I had English and Maths with Bella since I still didn't have my own timetable and I was quite surprised by the content of the maths class. I reckon there's quite a big difference between the level of maths here and back home; some girls didn't even know what factorizing was, which is something we learned over 2 years ago. In English we analyzed a poem called 'The Man From Snowy River', which was actually quite interesting. We talked about binary opposition, intertextuality and juxtaposition, which I'd never heard of before. The teacher is very enthusiastic and knows how to make the lesson interesting and gain the pupils' attention. To be honest, this is something I can't say about a lot of teachers at the RLW...

Wednesday started off great! Do and I had hospitality (cooking) and we made some incredible bruschetta, legitimately the best I've ever tasted (see picture). There is a big cooking room with 8 units which you can work at. Each unit has cupboards and drawers with everything you could possibly need to prepare a dish. At the back of the room are all sorts of blenders and serving plates and there are also two huge fridges with the ingredients needed every day. We have 4 hours of hospitality a week, 2 of which are theoretical and 2 practical. The theory you learn differs every lesson. So far we've learned about all different kinds of knives and ways to cut, and health and safety regulations in the kitchen. I really enjoy hospitality and I think it's a pity we don't have something like that at the RLW.


Yesterday (Thursday), I went on an excursion to Brisbane with Bella's art class. I couldn't do art as a subject because it was already full, but Kaia had arranged for me to go with them on the excursion, which was really kind of her. We first drove up to Brisbane, which took us about an hour, and had Morning Tea in front of the UQ (University of Queensland) Art Museum. The university campus was really nice, everything was neat and tidy and it wasn't too busy either. In the UQ Art Museum we saw an exhibition by an artist called Linde Ivimey. It was really interesting to see all the different sculptures made of skin, chicken bones, fabric, hair, teeth, gemstones, etc.

Afterwards, we got onto the bus again to go to the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). We had lunch on the grass field in front of it and chilled in the sun for a bit. I didn't like this museum as much as the other one, because we mostly saw paintings, which I'm not a big fan of (especially not when they belong to the any-five-year-old-could-do-this category of paintings). We had 2,5 hours to walk around the museum, but after an hour we figured we'd seen pretty much everything so Bella, Libby, Abby, Caitlin, Zara and I just chilled in the children's area till it was time to leave.

We had dinner with everyone at this very cute Vietnamese restaurant near the GoMA and I had some delicious Hokkien noodles with beef. I sat at a table with the same girls I just mentioned and we tried to plan a Valentines party for next weekend but we kept drifting off topic so it didn't really succeed. After a very long but enjoyable day, we got home at around 8:30 pm and I was pretty exhausted so I went to bed early.

Today (Friday) was just an ordinary school day, nothing too exciting. We did have a really nice hospitality lesson. Every group of 4 people made a dish and then everyone sat around a table and shared all the dishes. 

 

After school Bella and I chilled in the sun for a bit, and afterwards we got changed and went for a run through Surfers (actually called Surfers Paradise, which is the neighbourhood Bella lives in). It was really nice to run along the beautiful clear blue sea. Luckily, it wasn't too hot either, so we didn't die of the heat. When we got back home we both took a long shower and then Craig came over so we just chilled with him for the rest of the night. Right now, I'm about to go to bed and I'm really excited for tomorrow because we'll be going to Jess and Kate's (the twins) farm with some people!