Senior Girls’ Boarding Blog 09.12.19

Malvern House Weekly Blog (Monday 2nd December – Sunday 8th December 2019)

Oh my goodness we are about to enter the final week of term! I can’t believe how fast this term has gone. I am sure that you are all looking forward to seeing your “little ones” back for the Christmas/New Year break!

This week has – as usual – been a busy one. For our 5th Year students, it has marked the start of mock GCSE exams, for our Upper Sixth it is interview season for Oxbridge applications and for all year groups it is count down to the eagerly awaited staff panto! Even though the girls have been studying hard, we have had an AMAZING week of activities and trips.

The musicians and singers of Malvern have been very busy practicing this week. Not only do they have our Nine Lessons and Carols Service to prepare for, but they are also practicing for the School’s Christmas Concert next Thursday. On Saturday night Lowenna, Helena, and Katie performed in the Truro Choral Society’s performance of Handel’s Messiah – such a beautiful piece of music for this time of year. We are very proud of Lowenna and Helena who performed as soloists.

Late night shopping was once again a popular outing on Wednesday evening. Several of the girls headed into town again this week to soak up the Cornish Christmas atmosphere and to purchase their secret santa gifts – and I am sure a few gifts to take home with them next week.
Now, Thursday was a very important day for our German/Austrian girls. It was St Nicklaus Feast Day, and for those that don’t know St Nicklaus, or St Nicholas, is the patron saint of children and in Germany/Austria it is a tradition that children put a shoe out the night before his feast day in the hope that he comes in the night to fill it with candy, chocolate or fruit. Ms Mulready very kindly donated her shoes for the evening and as you can see in the photo below we filled one shoe for each of our girls in the boarding house with chocolate and left it outside of their room to find in the morning. There were lots of happy looking faces on Thursday morning and for those that didn’t know about the tradition, they enjoyed a lovely chocolate surprise anyway!

On Friday evening all of our boarders loaded up onto a coach and headed off to the Eden Project – an amazing local attraction featuring diverse biomes and sustainability projects, plants and most importantly – an ice rink! With a pasty in our pocket, we had a fabulous 3 hours there looking in the biomes, enjoying the festive spirit, ice skating and watching our Resident Tutor from the Junior Boy’s boarding house – Mr Thomson – sing Christmas songs with 3 other soloists and a band! I have to say a huge thank you to Holly for helping me find my skating legs! What a brilliant evening it was.

Saturday dawned with another birthday in the boarding house! Theresa celebrated her 16th birthday with us and in true Malvern style we had a morning roll call birthday sing-a-long and a cake! We hope she had a fab day and wish her a wonderful year.

After spending the day either rehearsing, with friends, shopping or at the cinema, suppertime was a nice time to come together with the other boarding houses for a Christmas sing-a-long. With Mr Thomson on the keyboard we all sang our little hearts out! We even sang Stille Nacht/Silent Night, in English and German! The highlight of the session was Mr Hatfield (Resident Tutor for Trennick) making up actions for the 12 Days of Christmas song. Hilarious!

Sunday morning arrived with an air of excitement which permeated the whole boarding house. After brunch, bed changing and some prep the preparations commenced for the Boarders Christmas Party. First up was a beautiful service in the Chapel with each border wishing the others Happy Christmas in their native language, a couple of carols and a lovely sermon from the Rev about the Gift of Christmas.

Having worked up an appetite from the singing, we all headed into the Dining Hall for a delicious Christmas Supper. Kath and the Catering staff did us proud! Roast turkey, beef and pork with all the trimmings – so yummy! Meat a plenty – but we didn’t forget our vegetarians!

After supper, there were speeches from the Head of House for Trennick and our very own Tulip and up next were the awards. Awards for Malvern included “Messiest Room”, “Biggest Procrastinator”, and the “Shortest Skirt”.

Before the disco commenced, we had one more rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas Mr Hatfield style. Everyone had great fun singing and doing the actions! As if that wasn’t enough, the girls headed back to the house to open their Secret Santa gifts.

So, that ends the most wonderful last weekend of term in the boarding house. On behalf of all the Malvern staff, I wish you and your families a happy and safe Christmas. See you in January!

Mrs Wood (Resident Tutor)