Activities & Service

Besides classes this week I started both my activities and service J

Aerobic Kickboxing- it’s an hour of jumping, kicking, punching! I never really considered when signing up for the activity how co-ordinated I would have to be, so on Tuesday night I kept punching/kicking at the same time or just losing my place and having to join in. Though it was mixed activity there’s about fifteen girls, we do it in the SOSH room from 7:45-9:00 and then stretches at the end. I hadn’t done that long of stretching since I stopped swimming- back to not being able to touch my toes! It was good fun and I know I’ll feel glad I did some exercise after going to it, possibly even becoming more co-ordinated (wishful thinking?).

Beekeeping- Though we haven’t done much for beekeeping yet I know I’m going to learn a lot from this activity. I’ve never even seen a hive before. We kitted up and they showed us all the hives that they have at the moment, I think there’s about six by the Romeo and Juliet tower and another six in the Valley where Estate Service work. Next week I think we’ll be harvesting the honey which I’m looking forward to doing! MMMM

AOC- I’m not sure how much I’ve said about AOC yet. It stands for Atlantic Outdoor Centre. It’s the only service at the college that actually makes money for the school, about £300,000 per year they said. It’s different groups of kids (some from local schools, some with disabilities) that come to the college to do various activities (I think AOC offer 18 different things in total, we get general understanding in everything). This year, until April at least when the second years start their IB, I’ll just be doing the training to learn how to run all of the activities. This term in my afternoon session on Wednesday I’ll be doing canoeing in the pool for five weeks and then climbing for five weeks. On the night session on Thursday nights we’ll be learning first-aid and various other activities that we can do the majority of learning in the classroom. Last night we learnt about Orienteering with a map, using it to find different spots on campus. The campus is huge, that activity for kids would be extremely physical- but quite fun!

*Open House last night was welsh cakes with strawberry jam!

Tonight is the first in a series of Friday lectures in the Bradenstoke Hall at 1830. It is by Chris Johnes, the Director of Oxfam Wales, who will be representing Oxfam and their GROW Campaign. It’s about poverty alleviation and what we can do about it. It sounds interesting and something I may never get the opportunity to do again, so I’ll be going tonight.

-Weddings, last weekend there were two weddings on the campus and this weekend there is one. Apparently in summer they have them weekly, just a reminder of how beautiful a campus and castle we’re living in.

-Thought I’d mention it briefly that almost every day to get to my History classroom I have to go up a long spiral staircase. I find it really cool that to simply get to the class we’re going through this castle that has so much history of its own.