By Krisha Lad
International Prefect
On 11 February , the International Department celebrated the Chinese New Year with packed lunches and little gift bags and on 22 February, we had our very first International assembly of the year 2022.
The Chinese New Year is celebrated every year by the Westlake Girls High School International Department. Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year or Spring Festival, is the most important festival in China and a major event in some other East Asian countries. Chinese New Year is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. It was traditionally a time to honour deities as well as ancestors, and it has also become a time to feast and to visit family members.
This year, in light of the Covid-19 situation we weren’t able to put on a shared lunch, instead the International Department put together a packed lunch to celebrate this festival. The International students enjoyed Pad Thai, yummy dumplings and a little gift bag with some chocolates and lollies. It was an amazing experience as an International Prefect, considering it was our first ‘event’ (of many!) of the year and it was a way for us to meet almost every International student. The girls had a wonderful time, coming and going, as well as, catching up with our amazing International team that were able to pull off this incredible lunch – Mrs Croot, Miss Moon and Miss Owen. I think it’s safe to say we all had a really amazing lunch that day!
On 22 February, the International students had our first International assembly of the year in our new Events Centre foyer! It was a first of a lot of things – it was our International prefects very first assembly as the leaders of the International students. We were finally able to introduce ourselves to the students after not being able to have the awards ceremony last year. Roori, Clara and myself, Krisha Lad are very excited to work with our small, but strong, International cohort of 42 this year! The theme for our assembly was based around trying and not giving up.
We chose to play a song – ‘Try’ by P!nk, encouraging our students to try, and not give up, as it is the beginning of the year. For our Year 9s, the beginning of their first and for our Year 13s, their last year of high school. We had our Principal, Mrs Stanley, come and speak a little around this theme, as well as our Senior Leadership Team member, Mrs Wilson, encouraging the girls to join various clubs including the choirs! I think this assembly was very successful for us prefects, and we are very excited to have many more over the course of this year!
The New Zealand Track and Field Championships were held over the week end of 3/4 March, with Year 10 student Karmen-Elizabeth Maritz competing in three events in the U18/U20 category.
Having good systems for using your time can significantly improve your ability to stay on top of school, family and extracurricular commitments.
DIARY
This day was a huge success with each Form Class participating together over four activities – tug of war, skipping challenges, ball throw into a bucket, and volleyball hit up with a massive ball.
A big thank you to our superb Prefect team for making this day possible. Special mention to these Prefects for running all four activities and demonstrating amazing leadership throughout the entire day:
To complete the Bronze Award I needed to commit to three months of each skill, service and physical recreational activity, and then spend one night away for each of the adventurous journeys. To complete Silver I needed to commit to six months of each activity and two nights away. And finally for the Gold award I need to commit to 12 months of each activity and three nights away for each adventurous journey.
The Duke of Edinburgh Award has given me many opportunities to experience new activities and learn new skills which has mainly been from the Adventurous Journeys I have gone on. The experience that I loved the most was a 7-day kayaking trip around the Hauraki Gulf, which was for my Gold adventurous journeys.
I’ve often asked myself why I started the Duke of Edinburgh award in the first place and the one answer I think of is that it was out of interest or curiosity for me. I remember hearing about the award in an assembly during school and at that time I knew nothing about it. When I got home that day I spoke to my parents about it, searched up more information and decided to give it a go.
Each episode has a new focus, with students explaining the significance behind their cultural item such as the hijab or the pounamu. The series will be shared to Form Classes to get everyone engaged in the project.
Since then, Maggie has been a member of the Wider Training Group (2018) and the National High Performance Squad (2019-present). “Locally I referee Premier Men’s rugby in Auckland and have been on the Premier Panel since 2020. In my role I referee for the Farah Palmer Cup (Women’s Provincial Tournament) and this year I’ve been selected to referee Super Rugby Aupiki. I was even able to officiate some development test matches in Fiji at the end of 2019 before Covid really hit.”