Day 34

Together with the students from Holland!

  Swimming Carnival! 

Karragaroo house

Melaleuca House

Today was so much fun! The swimming carnival is a complete celebration here! Everybody dresses up with clothes of the color of their house and it looks amazing! They use paint, tutus, ribbons, costumes, onesies, flippers, anything you can imagine! There were more than 70 races today including backstroke, breastsroke, butterfly, front crawl, medleys and relays! There was also a very interesting race which was borders vs day girls! As I have told you before, St.Hilda's is also a boarding school and there is a special race between them and day girls. This race is a really fun race. It is a relay race and students are supposed to  swim in different ways with body boards, also they swim holding another swimmers' hand and they have to work as a team to get to the other side, etc. (check photo below)

Banksia house

The St. Hilda's pool is a 50m pool with around 9 lanes. The competition lasted all day (Friday 14) in which students didn't go to class and everybody was expected to be there cheering for their house. Also the swimming carnival has a "participation race" in which anybody can swim in freestyle and only by getting to the other side they get a point for their house, which is really good because it gets everybody involved. 
What I would like to highlight the most of today is the house spirit that there is. I was blown away by the houses and all of their energy supporting each other! They have songs that they sing, cheers, school war cries, house war cries, etc.

Valentine's day lollypops

The School War Cry :
Chinika Chinika, Jumbah hoo
Sara waka tom tom Sara waka hoo
Simi dimi ha ha Simi dimi ha
St. Hilda's St. Hilda's Ya Ya Ya

House War Cry: (Banksia)
Banksia! Are you ready?
Are we ever!
Red White Red
Banawara Banawara Barrabee-hoo
Aracata Aracata Arracoopanoo
Illawarra Mittagong Yarrabee-ha
Banksia Banksia Ya Ya Ya                                     

House War Cry: (Karragaroo)
Karragaroo! Are you ready?
Are we ever!
Gold Black Gold
Wagga-Parra,Wagga-Parra Oomparee
Boomerachi Boomerachi Wallawaree
Yanki-tara Yanki-tay Dandi-garra-hoo
Karriton Karritah Karragaroo!

House War Cry: (Melaleuca)
Melaleuca! Are you ready? 
Are we ever!
Blue White Blue
Hocka-tika Hocka-tika Karra-jarra Hah
Boomericka Bositicka Loo Doo Hoo
Melaleuca Melaleuca Blue White Blue

Today was also Valentine's day so I hope everybody had a really nice day surrounded by the people they love! To celebrate there were students who were selling lollypops, chocolates, etc to raise money for charity which was really nice of them! 

The school has different House events: 

• Inter-House Swimming Carnival
• Inter-House Athletics Carnival
• Inter-House Cross Country
• Inter-House Musical
•  Inter-House Drama
• Inter-House Debating
• House Chapel and Dinner
• House Fundraising

Talk to you later!

Border VS Day Girl Race

Swimming pool