Gill College, the Somerset East school that was supposed to be a university

The history of Somerset East dates back to 1815 when Lord Charles Somerset established an experimental farm at the foot of the Boschberg. Somerset Farm was started to supply food to the British troops manning the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, provide their horses with feed, and partly to cultivate tobacco for export purposes. By 1825 Lord Charles stood on the stoep of the house in 9 Paulet Street and surveyed Somerset Farm, dividing it into erven, thus starting the…

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Returning to high school rugby

I used enjoy watching DF Malherbe, my alma mater, play rugby and netball on a Saturday. A few years after school I actually helped to coach the u14 team for a year or two but as time went on I got to go less and less as life got more and more busy.  Now Chaos Boy is at DF but he doesn't play rugby so we probably only got to go once or twice last year.  This weekend was the…

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Summerwood Wind Band performing Mary’s Boy Child

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV6lIWS4JJY&w=500&h=400]With Christmas two days away this week's Video Friday post features a performance of "Mary's Boy Child" by the Summerwood Primary School's wind band at the recent Christmas in the Home exhibit at The Boardwalk posted by Derrick Badenhorst on YouTube.

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Cricket at Handhaaf

This afternoon Drama Princess played cricket at Handhaaf Primary School in Uitenhage.  The view from up at the clubhouse is actually quite nice with the mountains in the distance.  Much better than the view from most other schools.

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Primary School Musical

Drama Princess and all her fellow pupils (and obviously all the teachers) at Newton Park Primary School have been hard over the last few weeks rehearsing for the schools musical play that gets staged every few years.  The production includes each and every child with each class contributing a different scene to the show.  This year's story, being narrated by Little Red Riding-hood started with The Big Bad Wold getting bored with being the bad guy and walking away.  He…

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Saturday sports day at Mount Pleasant

On Saturday Drama Princess played netball at the annual Newton Park Primary vs Mount Pleasant Primary inter schools sports day.  This year it took place at Mount Pleasant where I went to primary school many moons ago.  Now who do I support? Sorry Mount Pleasant, the KidZ are in Newton Park. I did walk around reminiscing a bit.  Lots of childhood memories around the area. 

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Priory City Tour 2014

Every year I take the St Dominic Priory grade 6 classes on a tour of Port Elizabeth and have so much fun teaching them a little more about the city's history.  Yesterday we headed out in the howling wind but didn't allow the weather gods to put us off.  Four hours later we had gone for a walk through St Georges Park, visited Fort Frederick, climbed the 204 steps up (and back down) the Campanile, quietly made our way around the Public Library,…

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Schools chess tournament

I realized this afternoon that I never uploaded a picture last night for today's post and that I have a meeting at school tonight so the rest of the evening then quickly gets filled up.  So I scratched around on my phone and found this picture I took a couple of weeks at a chess tournament that Chaos Boy took part in.  Unlike Drama Princess who is very sporty, Chaos Boy likes to rather play chess.  Very unusual for somebody with such…

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2010 Arts and Teaching Legacy Project

The Sydneham Primary School was one of the schools that benifitted greatly from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa due to its close proximity to the Nelson mandela Bay Stadium (seen in the background of the picture).  Chaos Boy played in a chess tournament at Sydneham Primary and it gave me an opportunity to take a walk through the school grounds to have a look at some of the art pieces installed at the school as part of…

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School sport day

Do you remember Saturday morning sport at school? Waking up early, getting dressed and ready to go before your parents even had the first coffee? Running around the rugby field or netball court while the other kids and parents cheer you on? Those were the days (although I don't think everybody was always as enthusiastic as I remember them to be).  Anyway, Drama Princess played her first netball game last Saturday and even though they were totally outplayed we shouted…

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