Upon our arrival in Christchurch, we met the Round Square leaders from the college who took us on a tour of their historic campus. It was saddening but also inspiring to hear of the resilience that the school had to show in rebuilding many of their heritage buildings after the 2010/2011 earthquakes, and it was clear that this brought the school community close together. Interestingly, we also found that there are many similar traditions and connections between King’s and Christ’ssuch as the house system, not being able to walk on the grass of the quad, and the exchange of Chapel crosses between our schools.
On Wednesday evening we then had the pleasure of being able to attend Christ’s International Quiz Night. Together with teams comprised of St Andrew’s, Rangi Ruru and St Margaret’s College students. We competed in several rounds of trivia questions all to do with the theme of the week ‘Internationalism’. It was nice to see many students from different schools cooperating towards a common goal and how new friendships were made throughout the night.
We were also given the opportunity to experience a school assembly at the college on Thursday morning. The assembly was completely student-led, and a number of students from various backgrounds spoke to the school about their cultures and customs. We learned a lot from this and thought that it was a great initiative that we could implement at King’s in the future.
Before we flew back on Thursday afternoon we were able to taste cuisines from around the world thanks to a selection of food trucks, observed an interhouse International Week quiz, and finally, met with students participating in Round Square at Christ’s. The discussion we had was robust and centred around how we could start a collaborative initiative between the three Round Square schools in New Zealand - Christ’s, Whanganui Collegiate School, and ourselves.
Overall, we learned much about how a key ideal of Round Square- Internationalism (among the others of Service, Adventure, Democracy, Leadership and Environmentalism)- is exemplified at Christ’s College and we gained some inspiration for how the ideals can be further demonstrated at King’s and in the wider community.
Cassie Wood (Year 11, Taylor) and Sasha Gabriel (Year 11, Taylor)
