house spirit

Jagger, Rolt and Merriman.
Herschel is divided into these three houses, all grades, from grade 8 till 12. Each house has it's own colour and mascotte. Jagger is green and has the hippo as mascotte, Rolt is yellow and has a rabbit and Merriman is red with the raindeer as mascotte. As Lauren belongs to Jagger, I automatically belong to Jagger too.
This week started with a "House Braai" which is Afrikaans for a house barbecue. The house braai started at 6 'o clock and took place at the house of someone from Jagger. The purpose of this braai was to initiate the grade 8 girls and to prepare ourselves for the inter house gala which took place today. The dresscode of this event was obviously green. When we arrived, we were requested to put our personal belongings on the side, the purpose of this became clear later as they greeted us with the host pipe and threw green goo at us like we weren't already green enough with everyone walking around in green shirts, shorts or other assessories. As soon as everyone had arrived, the initiation could begin. The grade 8 girls had to jump in the pool to get their badge out and swear to always be loyal and true to Jagger. Apparently the initiations used to be much worse, when lauren had to do her initiation, she had to drink this lovely smoothie consisting of tomatoes, eggs and grass. No house is allowed to be as extreme as then. After the initiation we could eat from all the food everyone had brought with them adn we finished the evening with rehearsing our cheers for the next day seeing that we had to support the swimmers for the inter house gala.

Today was the inter house gala which was like nothing we have ever had at our own school back in Holland. Everyone was wearing their house shirt and sat at the pool. Warming up our voices for the cheers, the swimmers started the race. Everyone was singing and cheering as loud as they could and it seemed like over a thousand people were there when there were only 600 girls. The swimmers were trying their hardest to win the cup but unfortunately, Jagger didn't win the cup, this year it was Rolt. They have the best swimmers and won with a total of around 450 points while jagger only had for about 250 points. There were many other cups for individual swimmers but another main cup was the "Spirit Cup" which was won by Merriman. Everyone was going home with a sore throat of the cheering but you could see them leaving, all with a smile on their face.