by Carrie Song
A range of activities, organised by Chinese Club leaders definitely brought a lot of fun to the last week of Term 3, in celebration of New Zealand Chinese Language Week. Students participated in the activities posted on Instagram page (wghs_chinseclub) enthusiastically, including dumpling making, paper cuttings, kahoot game, to name a few.
There was an easy to follow instruction video on Dumpling Making provided by Moe Tun, which you definitely need to give a try. The recipe is so good! So said Julia, Samantha, Scarlett and Ms Song.
Lucy Jobbins (Year 12), was invited to film the New Zealand Chinese Language Week Opening video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojao6jDM9Ds&t=47s) produced by Confucius Institute, which featured many excellent students nationwide showcasing their Chinese. Lucy has also provided a spotify playlist of some of her favourite Chinese songs.
For movie and drama lovers, you would definitely enjoy the list provided by Kanna Sakamoto.
Are you interested in folk arts? Julia Wilkins has provided a tutorial video on Window Flower-Paper Cut: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CUVvIDGB5CN/?utm_medium=copy_link
On top of that, there were Movie Night , Kahoot Game (by Emily Chong), Daily quizzes (from Lucy Jobbins) and Daily Phrase Challenge (by Sybil Carba, etc).
All members’ commitment and devotion are to be commended. They have done such a fantastic job. Special thanks to Lucy Jobbins, Moe Tun, Julia Wilkins, Nicole Mak, Kanna Sakamoto, Sybil Carba, and Emily Chong.
Chinese Club in 2021 has been led by a group of wonderful students across year levels, which aims to bring students together for a lunchtime of food, games, arts and crafts, for example, bracelet making, calligraphy, movies, martial arts, and many other activities its members would like to explore. There are no prerequisites to membership. All WGHS students are welcomed to attend.
This dynamic teamwork has been acknowledged by the nominations for Best Outstanding Play, and Best Ensemble and Technical Design.
In the final week of Term 3, 26 Westlake Girls students competed in the 2021 NZ Future Problem Solving national qualifiers. 
“One of the active things I have been doing in lockdown is just making the most of the time I can for training. When the weather is nice I’ve been heading to the beach for a nice run or walk with my family, or jumping on our bike at home while watching my favourite tv shows to keep me occupied during some of my long sessions.
Millie Wilton – Wairau House Sports Prefect
Remember the amazing 1.6 m square blanket that Ms Mitchley started just before lockdown? Well she’s finished it – and it looks amazing. Trust us, it’s even bigger and better in real life!
Emma says she became involved in this year’s project through her friends. “They were making a film for the Festival, and since I love to film and be involved in activities such as these, I happily volunteered my time behind the camera. I recorded with my iPhone 11 and used a DJI Phone Stabilizer for smooth movement in the chase and action scenes.”
We started off in Auckland Zoo for our first challenge – orienteering. We had an hour to run at full speed picking up as many points as we could with our teams of four. Many teams who had 8 people or more had to split in half (including us). We killed it! Both of our Westlake teams came in very close in first and second with all points collected within half an hour – well ahead of the other teams. So we headed off again to get our bonus points for the next half hour and collected all of those as well, while many teams still hadn’t even come back from their first round. Needless to say – we were the top team overall for this stage. We were really hyped from this first round achievement and ready for the next stage.
Our second challenge was problem solving. Check out the photos to the side to see what the challenge looked like. There were four wooden and four metal pipes that we had to join together using our hands. We also had a small bucket of marbles which had to be transferred by the pipes across a certain distance. If you dropped the marble you had to start again. You could almost say we lost our marbles – in more ways than one! After transferring the marbles we had to put them through a long black pipe to get to a small yellow bucket. If by some annoying occurrence we missed the bucket, the marble would be lost to us. At the end of the challenge, the instructor counted everyone’s marbles to see who had the most. The winner of our round of teams was us! And we came second in this challenge out of all teams. But don’t worry, we found our marbles!
Once there, we jumped off the paddle board, ran to our team and transferred the two life jackets to the next pair to go ahead and do the same thing. The problem was, some of the life jackets had jammed zips. So we had to get two of our teammates to help slide it over our heads.
We drove to our next challenge and our mouths just dropped open. This short but sweet bike course was choked up with mud. Because the previous teams pummelled the trails in the morning after a night of heavy rain, the course had a tiny bit of grass, but the main colour was brown. We had to ride laps of a small mountain biking course. The whole thing was so muddy it was really easy to slip and fall off our bikes. By the end not many people were able to say they didn’t fall off! Two teammates had a bike between us, and everyone had to tag and swap out after riding a lap. The problem was, it wasn’t just you and your mate doing this course, it was two others from every single team. You really got to see human nature with who was kind enough to let you pass them, or make you miserable behind them while they were a moment away from falling off. Overall we won this challenge!! But only because of our wonderful skills of being able to stay on our bikes.
Year 13 baker Maggie Zhou (pitctured left) whipped up some tasty treats over the holidays.
Line a 20cm x 20cm, 28cm x 18cm, or similar sized baking tray with baking paper. Combine the butter, honey, and tahini in a large saucepan. Melt over medium heat while stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the rice bubbles, making sure the rice bubbles are evenly coated with the honey mixture. Press the mixture into the prepared slice tin and refrigerate for 2 hours.