Monday, 23 March 2009

Final Reeds Movie

Last Weekend to London

20-22 March

Jeroen:

Friday:

This was the day my father came to London to visit us for the weekend.
This friday morning we woke up just for registration. The irritating thing was we had the first two hours free. And we couldn't sleep till our first lesson. The first lesson we had was economics. The nice thing was that we could go away, because the class had to do some test we didn't need to do. So actually we had the first 5 periods free, because the fifth period we had already a free period. We watched some films in the free time and did some dutch homework. Our first lesson before lunch was physics. After we ate chips and hamburger at lunch (the food that we always have on a friday lunch) we had chemistry, our last lesson for that day. After school we packed our stuff for the weekend. And we waited until my father would come. At about 5:30 my father arrived at Reeds with the taxi. We quickly had to get in the taxi and the taxi drove us to the Hilton hotel near Cobham. It was a beautiful hotel on top of a small hill between the trees with a view on a meadow. When we came their, we first unpacked our stuff in our room. Next we went downstairs to have a drink. We ate our dinner at the hotel restaurant. I really liked to be with my dad again after such long time. I saw him for the last in the christmas holiday. At dinner we talked about our stay here in Reeds. My dad also told me about his work. That he is searching for a new job, because he isn't needed in Cairo anymore. He said he applied for some new jobs already, also a job in Moscow. That was very interesting. After such a delightful dinner we were quite tired. so we went to bed early.


Saterday:

This morning we could sleep a little longer. We had breakfast in the hotel. For Breakfast I ate a nice english pancake. With the taxi we went to Weybridge station. I took my video camera with me to film. At the station my dad bought three day tickets, for the train, bus and underground. When we waited for the train to come, we met Tom, a boy from the boarding house. He was going to his family. At an other station another swedish boy from the boarding house came on this train. He was going to London too, to make pictures of buildings. He did this for a project of photography, another subject on Reeds. The train took about 45 minutes. We arrived at waterloo station. From there we walked past the Shell-building to the London Eye. This time my dad bought tickets and we went in the London Eye. Although the queue looked very long, it went very quick. The London Eye was beautiful, you had a magnificant view over london. With its height of 135 metres, it rises over every building. Except the buildings in Canary Warf, which you could see easily. I filmed many things. Something funny was, that there was a guy and a lady in the cabine in front of us. The man asked the lady to marry him and everyone in our cabine started to clap, because it definitly that the lady said 'yes'.
When we were down again we walked further along the thames to the westminster bridge. We went past the Big Ben, to the Westmister Abbey. After that we went with the tube from Westminster station to Bank station. There we went to see the St Paul's Cathedral. In the cathedral we could take the stairs all the way up. The heighest part you could go to was about 90 metres. It wasn't as high as the London Eye, but you could still see much of London. It was even as fascinating as the London Eye. When we were back down we went to have a drink in the starbucks. It really was a splendid day, quite warm and much sun. Then we took the tube to the Tower Hill station. There we saw a sort of show in front of the Tower. People were shooting with a catapult. We walked to the Tower Bridge. And there we saw the exhibition of the Tower Bridge. I liked it, you saw the machines which lift up the bridge. It was very interesting. After this we went to the Regent Street with the tube, because my father wanted to buy some new Bose earphones. We walked on to Picadilly Circus and further to Leicester Square. There my dad bought the tickets for the musical that evening. We went to Trafalgar Square. In the middle of the square is the statue of Nelson. When we came there, a show was just starting. We thought that would be very interesting, because we saw he had diabolos, juggling clubs,a unicycle etc. But when he started off with diaboloing, we were so annoyed that he got very much attention of people, while doing the easiest tricks. He even said the tricks he did were very difficult, while we knew they were not. So we walked away. We ate dinner in a Italian restaurant. I ate a delightful pizza with pepperoni. After dinner we went to the theatre. We were going to see the musical 'Les Misérables'. This musical is the longest performed musical, already since 1980. The musical takes place in the end of the 19th century in France and it's about the life of Jean Valjean. We really loved the musical. In only 20 minutes we just made it in time to get in the train back to Weybridge at Waterloo. Back at the Hotel we went to bed.

Sunday:

We woke up very late, about 10:00. After breakfast the taxi drove us to Reeds school. Arrived at Reeds, we gave my dad a tour around the school.
Then I had to say goodbye to my dad, although I will see him soon again. Sunday evening after dinner we had a special church service. This was only for all the boarders and it was obligate for all the boarders. So this was the end of our last weekend at Reeds.

Thursday, 19 March 2009

London

Wichert:

Friday

This weekend was definitely a weekend were I was looking forward to because my parents were coming to London to visit me and Jeroen and to go into the city. First we had school as normal. We had the first two hours off. That sounds amazing, but it isn't here at Reed's because you still have to wake up early to go to registration. So we woke up early went to registration were nothing really special happened. When we came back we had to empty hours were Jeroen and I did some homework in for the Rijnlands. After the two empty hours we had economics, one empty hour (again) and two hours of chemistry. During chemistry we had to make a test. The tests are really different from the ones in the Netherlands because over here they focus more on things that you can really learn by heart instead of understanding. So Jeroen and I didn't do the test very well except for the understanding part. We told this to our teacher and he understood our problem completely.
My parents should contact us when they had arrived at Reeds to pick us up. The problem is at Reed's that you don't have any mobile-phone connection except for in an area of 10m2. It is really funny because everybody is calling to people there at night.
So after chemistry we were walking back from our classroom and I saw my parents sitting in front of the sixth form house. I was so happy to see them. I gave my parents a quick tour around Reed's because they were very curious how we actually lived here for 5 weeks. After the tour Jeroen and I collected all the stuff that we wanted to bring to London.
We didn't go to the hotel immediately. We first went to old neighbours from us who live in London now. We had dinner there it was really nice because I could finally Skype with Steph and see her again and we had a really nice dinner. When we had finished our dinner we went to the hotel quite soon after that because tomorrow we had a long day. Jeroen and I went to bed quite late because we had internet on our computer so we msnt and skyped quite long.

Saturday

We had to wake up early that morning and had breakfast really early so that we could be longer in London. The hotel was about 10 miles from the center of London. There was a station very close to our hotel and we had a straight connection to the center of London. So we were there in 30 minutes. We decided to go and see all the touristic sites because my sister had never been to London before. When we arrived in the center we took the tube to Leicester square. Jeroen and I guided our parents around because we had worked out a route the evening before. We showed my family where we went to the movie when we were in England on the London trip. When everybody had a good look on Leicester square we went on to Piccadilly circus. While my father, Jeroen and I were walking around my mother and sister saw a store with nice clothes and my sister wanted to buy some. While we were waiting we just started to look around and Jeroen made a few movies that we will place on the blog. It seemed like an hour but my mother and sister came finally back. We carried on with our tour and walked through Regent Street to Oxford circus. After we had seen oxford circus we asked one of the people in the red jackets how we could go to the Abercrombie store. They gave us the exact direction to the store they know all the streets in London by heart it's quite amazing. We arrived at the Abercrombie store and I had the good hope that I could buy a lot of clothes. When we got in to the shop we couldn't see a thing because it was very dark inside and there were 500 people in the store all wanting to buy clothes. There was also a very big queue and with very big I mean very long, approximately 50 minutes. My mother went absolutely crazy in there so we decided to go out of the store and search for a Hollister store. We had printed out the address and the guys in the red jackets helped us out again and said that we had to get out at Sheppard’s Bush. So we did this and arrived in the one of the biggest shopping malls I have ever seen there were probably 50 stores in it. We went in to the Hollister store where it was much more quiet and bought a lot of clothes. After Hollister we went back to the center of London to get lunch. We went to the city to see the tower bridge and had lunch in the Mc Donald’s, because Jeroen and I really missed that food. When we finished our lunch we took the tube to Westminster station because we wanted to see the Big Ben. We all found the Big Ben a pretty impressive building if you consider the fact that it was build so long ago. After we had seen the Big Ben we walked along the Thames for a while. We had a look to all the bridges, we also wanted to go in to the London Eye, but there was such an immense row of people that we decided not to do this. So we walked back to Westminster station and decided to go to Buckingham palace. We missed the change of the guards but we enjoyed to just have a look at him and see how they made themselves ridiculous by walking so strange and wearing very strange uniforms. We were very entertained by them. We took the bus to Covent garden because my mother just had to sit because she was very tired. So we took the bus along Piccadilly Circus to Covent Garden we saw a short bit of a show. In the show a man was standing on a 9 feet ladder and was walking around. It was really nice there but also very busy. I also wanted to buy some play station games and an internet cable and we couldn’t find a store that sold things like that. Until my mother came up with the brilliant idea of going to Harrods. Before we went to Harrods we first ate a few slices of Pizza as dinner and then went on to the store. I love that store because they simply have everything there. When Jeroen and I arrived at the games department we became very happy. I bought two play station games and an Internet cable. After we had shopped at Harrods we went home again. Jeroen and I were so tired that we went to bed straight away.

Sunday
We woke up at 9:00 o’clock and had breakfast in the hotel. My parents were already going home at 13:00 o’clock so we didn’t do anything special except for talking to each other and relaxing on our rooms. My parents dropped us of at Reed’s and we said goodbye to each other. Jeroen and I had a perfect weekend with a lot of nice things and we are already looking forward to next weekend with the father of Jeroen.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Another boring day

Wednesday 11 March

Jeroen:

We woke up just in time for breakfast. Breakfast was already nearly finished, but we made it in time. A nice english breakfast. This morning after registration we had chapel again. We had to sing hymns and pray. We have chapel every wednesday. It only takes about 20 minutes, so it isnt so long. After chapel we had a double hour of physics. In physics we did a practical about electricity and temperature, that when a thermistor was heated up there was more resistance in the circuit. It was loads of fun. A teacher made photos during this lesson and he would put them on a wall.
After physics we already had our last double hour of the day, chemistry. We were finished so early, because we stopped with science. We did this to have some more time for our dutch homework. Since we dropped science we could have a very early lunch. That was very chill, because it wasn't crowded and we could have a calm lunch. After lunch it was time for sport. Wichert had a match with the third team. I went with them to film the match some time with my camera. They had an away match at an other school. So we went with a minibus to the other school. It is so strange, because when we were driving, the minibus drove on the left side of the road. It was such a strange feeling, as if the minibus was driving against the traffic. Arrived at the match, the team made themselves ready to play. As the match was playing I filmed occasionally. Sad enough the team lost 2-1 again. They lost, because they just couldn't finish their tackles. After the match we drove back. We were just in time for dinner at six. After dinner it was prep-time again to make homework.

Sunday, 15 March 2009

University of Surrey

monday 9 march

Wichert:

I had a lot of difficulty with getting up because Jeroen and I went to bed to late the evening before. As a result of this Jeroen and I missed breakfast but we didn't really mind. After missing breakfast as normal we went to registration where nothing really special happened. We had to go to Sixth form meeting where a lot of things were discussed that didn't apply to us. When Sixht form meeting was finished, we still had to stay where we were because Assembly was next. During assembly awards are awarded to people who did good things for the school. Jeroen and I were also named. The guy who tried to pronounce our names had a lot of difficulty doing so, because of this everybody started to laugh. He said something like: " we want to thank wikkhart koeloes for scoring the only goal and Jeroohem Boesh for being goalie". Everybody was laughing really hard and the whole school was looking to us, it was a funny experience. We continued our day with one hour of Physics and two hours with Ms. Dijkshoorn doing some dutch homework. We had two more hours of science after this. After the break we had general studies. They had invited a speaker who had cycled around the world. She told al lot of stories and showed us a lot of pictures. To every picture belonged a story and it was very nice to listen to her stories. To finish the day we had economics for 2 hours.
That evening we had something really nice to do. We went to the University of Surrey were we got a reading about Forensic science. It was really interesting because the three professors explained us three parts of were you get to deal with when you study Forensic science. The subjects were: explosion, gun fire and DNA profiling. The reading was very nice, the funniest thing was when the first professor was finished with his story about explosion because suddenly we heared two loud gunfire shots and the first professor pretended as if he was shot. The loud gunfire shots came from the second professor who held a gun in his hand with blanks. The reason for this was that the second professors was going to talk about how to identiy the criminal who had committed the crime with a fire weapon. After the reading we were very tired and went to bed immediately. We had really enjoyed the reading, but were happy that we could go to sleep.

Monday, 9 March 2009

Weekend

7-8 March

Jeroen:

Saterday

We had breakfast at 9:00. And again as always beans, scrambled eggs and sausages. At half past eleven wichert made himself ready for another hockeymatch. I didn't play, because the fourth team had a rest for this weekend. I was going to film wichert when he was hockeying. But when I came to the field, the team asked me to keep for their team, because the keeper of their team didn't turn up. So I keeped the match for the third team. Mr Balls was very proud of me that I keeped for this team, because he is the coach of the third team. The sad thing was we lost 2-1, while our team was better. Wichert scored our goal. I was so hungry after the match, that we had lunch. This was our last hockey match here, because the next weekends we will go to London.
In the evening we watched a movie.

Sunday

This morning I did something very strange. I got awake at a time I thought 10:00. I woke up Wichert and we went to breakfast. When we were in the dining room we saw nobody, that was strange. Wichert looked on his watch and I saw his face changing. I looked on my watch and I saw it was 8:00, two hours to early. I was so astonished, in how I could mistake myself in time. This was so strange. We tried to sleep until brunch at 10:00. This day was the day that we were going to participate th sunday trip. The sunday trip was organized by Mr Clapp. We were going to fish. Mr Clapp drove us in the minibus to the trout farm. Driving to the farm we saw the beautiful landscape of England. It is so different from holland. You have those neverending hills and small roads between and over them. And sometimes these nice cosy typical english houses. We really liked this landscape. After 30 minutes we arrived at the lovely trout farm. There everybody got a fishing-rod. This was my first time I ever fished, but it was fun. I caugth one fish and I pulled it out of the water. Then I had to kill the fish by hitting it with a wooden stick. You really had to hit the fish a load of times until the fish was dead. Wichert also caught a fish. And also killed some fish.



We really enjoyed the fishing. When we drove back we went past a supermarket, where we could by some food. At the supermarket we bought 38 liitle bags of crisps. Including my favorite: salt and vinegar. Then we went back to school. Back at school we had to take the guts out of the fish. I fortunately didn't have to do it, because it was disgusting. It also stank. At 6:00 pm we had tea and we ate our trout we had caught that day. Although I have seen them being cut open, the trout tasted really nice. This was the first time I ate fish here.

Thursday, 5 March 2009

Church service

Wednesday 4 March

Wichert:

Today was a busy day. We had to get up early to have an early breakfast. We were very tired but, we knew we had to be on time for the chapel service. We had to organise the chapel service with our tutor group. A tutor group is the group were you always register in, in the morning before the lessons start, to see if everybody is there. It only happens ones in the two years that the same tutor group has to organise a chapel service, so we were very lucky that we could participate in the service. We started to prepare the service one week ago. The story was about gossip. Lilly a girl from our tutor group wrote a very good story about how bad gossip was and that it can have very big influences on the lifes of people even when the gossip starts out as a really small thing. I had to search some proverbs out of the bible that were about gossip. I found three and had to read the proverbs to the whole school. Jeroen also had to read some sentences in front of the school. At 8:15 we had our final repetititon before the church service would start. The repetition went alright. So I wasn't really nervous to speak in front of the school. Everybody was slowly coming into the church and sat down. Then it was our turn to speak to the school, everything went really smoothly and a lot of teachers came to our tutor and said that our church service was really good. The rest of the day was normal, we were just following the normal lessons. After school we had our hockey practice. This was really fun and very similair to the hockey practices in the netherlands. We were doing all kinds of exercises to improve our skills. After the hockey training Jeroen and I played some games on the computer as we always do. Around 19:30 Mr. Waller came in and said to us that we had to follow him. He was going to a place where we had never been before in the sixth form house. When we walked through the room we entered a giant movie theatre room. Where we were going to play a horse betting game. Mr. Waller had a dvd with him on which horse races were recorded and we had to bet on which horse would win ofcourse. We all started with 5000 pounds and we did six races. I won with 230000 pounds. I was really lucky because after the 5 race i had 11500 and two persons had more money than I had. So I went all in on horse six and it won. The horse had an odd of 20:1 so I earned 20 times the money I had put in. After the horse betting game we were so tired that we went to bed.

Monday, 2 March 2009

Begin Second Week

Monday 2 March

Jeroen:

That morning I was so tired, because that night I had gone to bed way to late. That morning our Tutor Ms Avens was absent, so we didn't have any registration. The first hour on a monday morning, there is an assembly. First for the sixth Form and after that for the whole school. The funny thing was that we had to stand up when the headmaster came in. We would never do that in Holland. These English children have much more respect for their headmaster. In the Assembly they talked about the coming week and the events happening. After that children reported back over sports that weekend. Wicherts name was mentioned over the first goal in our hockey match. At the end of the assembly we had to pray. Our next lesson was physics. As usual it wasn't difficult. Next we had dutch again and made some homework from Holland. And last before break we had Science.After the lunch we had to go to General studies, at general studies we had a a lecture about alcohol. In the beginning I found it quite boring, because I have heard all the bad consequenses about it already a dozen of times. It became interesting at the end, when there was a workshop and pupils could tell their own stories with their experience. Actually we may not have laugh, but the stories that were told were just so stupid and funny. I'm not going to tell these stories here, because thats just to embarrasing. The last two hours we had economics.

After school I rested for some time, because I was very tired. That evening I was in my room, and suddenly an alarm goes of. It was the fire alarm. Someone forgot to get his pizzas out of the oven. We had to get outside and a registration was taken to see if everybody was there. Fortunately it wasn't a big fire. So we could go in the building back quickly.

Sunday, 1 March 2009

Hockey Match

Saterday 28 February

Wichert:

Our first weekend day was a busy one. We got up at 8:55 to have some breakfast. After having breakfast we were started to upload some movies on our blog and to edit the blog a bit more. When it was 12:00 o'clock we realised that we had to prepare our selves for the hockey match in the afternoon. We had to play for the fourth team of Reeds. At 12:35 we had be on the pick up point together with our teammates which is on the parking lot. After all our teammates had arrived. We got into the coach. In the Netherlands they always ask parents to drive the children around, over here they just order 4 busses to drive everyone to their hockey match. Some of our teammates already had their own cars, so they drove to the match location by themselves. Mr. Atkins was our coach. We had to play against Epsom college which (according to my teammates) was an even more expensive school than Reeds. It was a very big school, it looked like an entire village. With typical english school buildings. We had to play our match on grass where Jeroen and I were not really used to. I scored the first goal and Toby ( a guy from our team ) scored the second. The match ended up in a draw. After the match we were al really exhausted. Mr. Atkins asked me after the game if I also wanted to play for the third team. Their match started 10 minutes after our match. The third team luckily enough played on Astro's ( artificial grass ). Sadly enough we lost the match with 3-6. But according to Mr. Balls ( the coach and leader of the Reeds sports department) we had played a good match.
When we drove home in the bus my legs felt like concrete and I was so tired. During dinner I drank 8 cups of lemonade, because I was so thirsty. After dinner we Jeroen and I decided to watch a movie which is called the Body of Lies, and then we went to bed.

Reeds Sixth Form House