The Weight of Responsibility

The last two weeks in the dorm has seen some exciting times.

Firstly, the whole house enjoyed a pretty successful inter-house 7-a-side rugby campaign with our u14s winning the final and the u19As and Bs making the final of the tournament.

Inter-house soccer has come and gone with Egor, Junade, Vuyo, Jean, James and Matthew representing the Grade 11 dorm in the senior team. Winning our first match, we made it to the Semi-final where we narrowly lost to Founders House in a close 1-2 defeat. Congrats to Egor who silenced his critics by scoring a textbook goal but it seems a shame that his celebratory dance was somewhat peculiar...

The all-grade 11 White House inter-house mountain relay team claimed a resounding victory over the rest of the houses. With a formable line-up of Callan, George, Matt and Seb, the team even managed to beat the staff team by a matter of inches!

Timothy and Daniel have volunteered to join a planning committee that hopes to support a group of 30 underprivileged students from the Cederburg to spend a weekend in the Mother City. Many of these kids have never seen a massive city, been to the movies or see the sea. The committee plans to raise money for this initiative by holding a Disco Party in the 2^nd or 3^rd weekend of next term. Stay tuned for more information on this noble matter.

Since the last post, the whole of grade 11 attended a leadership conference near Simons Town. The three-day camp proved to be extremely productive with interesting outside speakers, group activities, endless indoor soccer, the usual night time mischief and (perhaps most importantly) great food! The whole dorm agreed that experienced had achieved its purpose to focus and prepare us for the massive responsibility that lies ahead of us in the next 12 months.

Talking about leadership and responsibility, Mr Firth has asked us to begin thinking and discussing our goals and strategies for next year. This is an exciting process that has already served to animate each boy and given us an enriched sense of unity. Hopefully, by next week, we will be able to post a list of selected portfolio heads on this page.

PS. Go Bokke!!!

September Update

So, yes, this blogspot has been somewhat quiet but it has not been due to a lack of activity in the Grade 11 dorm!

Tim (left) and Jean (right) with Paul Josop a White House OD
from 2010  (middle). We're loving the new hairstyle Paulie!

The dorm treated itself to a ‘2-for-1 Burger Special Night’ at Spur last Monday night. Although the meal was delicious, I think we’ll all remember it for the bus ride back instead... Don’t ask. George, Jason, Vuyo and Seb were recently selected for next year’s 1st XV conditioning squad. George and Seb have wasted no time, motivated by the saying “Time spent outside gym is time wasted!”. This week White House claimed victory in not only the junior but senior inter-house basketball competition. Congrats to Matthew for being named the most valuable player of the competition. After months of hiding from his parents and his dentist, Callan was finally forced into the chair and now has braces. The dorm congratulates Junade for learning a new word – ‘Please’. Dan celebrated his 17th birthday by buying the whole dorm cake... let’s just say none of it went to waste! Dave and Chaaba have both started their intense Waterpolo practices. Don’t give up now Dave and Chabs, only 547 practices left. Otherwise the dorm has been up to their usual shenanigans. 

Quote of the week year featuring the legendary Egor: “I admit... I am quite sexy...”

And finally.........GO BOKKE (and England and Russia and Namibia)!

Week 5 Already?!

This week saw the White House Academic Awards Dinner take place on Wednesday night. Jason was announced the most improved academic in the house (by 10% since last year's exams) while Seb was announced top academic in the dorm and received a White House tie of excellence.

Jason in Action

Congratulations to James and Matthew for contributing to a great win over SACS in their 1st XI hockey match on Friday! Score 4-2.

Unfortunately our rugby teams weren't as successful on Saturday. The only okes in the dorm managing to come out with a win were Egor and George 'The Bus' Bartlett. Rondebosch next weekend!

Against all odds and after 90 intense minutes, Arsenal beat Chelsea. In other words, Seb is now the dorm's reigning of FIFA 11 after destroying Egor (who beat Junade) on Friday. Whether this was a fluke is bound to be a topic of great debate next week.

The dorm is bracing itself for Monday where we officially take over this years Matrics' house duties (eg. lights out, inspection). This year is going way too fast!

The Past Week

Another week has passed in a term that so far has been whizzing past! Four down, seven to go!

With Monday and Tuesday off (Happy belated Woman's Day by the way), the dorm was left with only three school days this past week. Sounds good yes? Don't be fooled... Those three days saw our grade working flat out in numerous tests and homework assignments and sports practices. A weekend has never tasted so sweet!

Of course it wasn't all bad. James managed to score a hat-trick of goals for the 1st XI Hockey side on Friday night in arguable the biggest schoolboy hockey derby in South Africa. With the aid of Matthew in goals and Jack as defender, our boys were able to pull out a whopping 5-2 victory over Wynberg!

Unfortunately Daniel was pretty sick this week. Let's hope it has nothing to do with Kings of Leon Tour next month...

Lowdown on the Last Few Months

So, the Grade 11 blog has been a bit quiet for the last term. Apologies for that... However, it’s only fair that you –our faithful readers – get a brief update of what’s been happening in and around the dorm for the last few months.

Junade has proved his legendary skills at FIFA 11 (that’s a soccer videogame) after securing his title as FIFA King of the small Grade 11 dorm.

Apart from being kicked out of class on numerous occasions to shave his bushy beard, Egor managed to do the impossible... A feat attempted by so many, yet conquered by so few... See the video link on the home page of the blog for more...

George has also broken a record of a different kind. Normally, boys playing rugby are continuously fighting to secure a place in higher teams. Sometime these boys may appeal to their coaches and manage to move up. George, however – the strange Englishman that he is – requested to move down a team! After his appeal was rejected by his coach, he took his case to the highest authority (the deputy principal). Unfortunately this failed to and George was left to play in the 4^th team.

James represented the House, the school and his country in these past holidays when he was selected for the SA U18 Hockey team that played Australia in Durban and Jo’burg. James did us ‘Fabiani’ (proud)!

After having a revelation, Callan eventually realised that academics are in fact an important part of school life. It’s for this reason that he has really impress his teachers in the recent weeks by putting his head down and working hard at his studies.

Chaaba was selected to play the role of ‘God’ in the White House play during the Eisteddfod. According to Chaaba, he didn’t even have to act in order to enter his stage character!

News Alert! If any of our readers is keen to witness some first class fashion design. There is a fashion show taking place at St. Cyripians High School this weekend. I would go, but the sight of Matthew parading about in a pair of Speedos doesn’t sound very fashionable to me!

Jason, apart from playing some superb rugby for the 1^st XV this season has officially become Woolworth’s most valuable customer as he alone makes up for over 23.12% of the company’s net food sales!

Omphile has taken up a new sport... sushi eating. If anyone needs advice on the best deals involving sashimi or fashion sandwiches, Omphile’s your expert!

Dan hasn’t slept in the last three weeks. Nobody’s exactly sure as to why he’s acting so peculiar... Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the famous rock band, Kings of Leon, have announced their tour dates in Cape Town!

Vuyo, after getting tired of being called ‘Vuyo’, decided to take the matter into his own hands. After many hours of meditation concerning the matter, he has officially dubbed himself ‘Daddy’.

Tabile has mastered the Ukulele (a sort of mini-guitar). Unfortunately, the majority of the dorm thinks the Ukulele has about the same musical appeal as Egor’s renditions of the Soviet Anthem.

Since the last post, Seb has come back from an International Science Fair held in Los Angeles. He travelled as part of a South African Science team and assures us that the 2 week trip was without a doubt the highlight of his college career.

Jean’s family has recently moved into their new house in Rondebosch. In fact, he now lives so close to the school that he’s calculated that it is closer for him to walk from class to his new house that it is for him to walk from class to his own cubical in White House! So much for long-distance boarding Jean!

The dorm recently celebrated Dave’s 17^th Birthday in traditional White House fashion. Curious...? Well, ask Dave about the experience.

Tim, after months of temptation has eventually given in to tremendous peer pressure. He fought valiantly against its lures but in the end it all proved too much for him to handle... Time has started to watch Family Guy (a very addictive cartoon TV series)!

So, there you have it. A good lowdown on the last few months in the Grade 11 dorm.

Until next week...