With our time in London having sadly drawn to a close (but luckily with plenty of souvenirs, clothes, shoes and jewellery to remind us) we made the drive north to Cambridge, our lunch stop for the day. Cambridge is a beautiful little town, which basically exists to service the renown university. Some students elected to wander the small winding streets of the town, play touch footy on the grass in the park, or have a more civilized lunch in a beautiful Cambridge restaurant with a very 1920s Gatsby parlor feel to it.
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| Lunch Cambridge-style |
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| Meeting billets and opponents |
Back on the bus and onwards to Uppingham School, our home for the next couple of days. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the PE department members and Principal with an afternoon tea to meet host students and parents. Uppingham is an incredibly impressive school, but for different reasons from the others we have played. There were no intimidating single castle buildings shadowing the school, or acres of rolling green fields. Simply put, Uppingham School is literally a town. The $40 million sports centre compete with heated indoor pool, badminton/basketball/netball courts, squash courts, lockered change rooms and complete gym is obviously mind blowing. The $30 million Science centre was incredible, and we only saw the full wall fish tank and two story swinging pendulum at the entrance.
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| Yoga warm up |
The rest of the school, which is 400 years old, exists in buildings scattered throughout the town. All students are boarders and there are 16 houses with approx. 10 students from each year level. And when we say houses, this literally means houses - students live in houses throughout the township where they both sleep and eat. Formal lunch is a unique affair - teachers rotate through the houses every day and enter very formally with students standing and waiting silently, and with a very precise process of serving and eating. Every age group table has a teacher guest who they must entertain for the lunch. The manners and social skills alone that this process develops is remarkable and it was such a great experience.
We ventured to the nearby Stamford, a beautiful little cobblestone town, before returning to school for the matches. The boys held their own incredibly well, with a tied score of 7-7 at halftime but Uppingham's fresh legs in the second half running away with a 32-12 win.
Our nicely stretched girls (thanks to a yoga session led by Mrs Ahern) gave another strong performance but with a more tightly contested game, with a 25-15 win. We are now aiming for the girls to have an undefeated tour, though Yarm's netball team expected to be quite strong. The boys are gunning for a win on tour and the Yarm boys certainly have a force coming at them.
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| Slight height difference in our MVPs |
A big congratulations go to Isabella Dooley and Tom Wright as the nominated MVPs for the games - a very deserved achievement.
Students were off to their host families again (some of the boys staying in actual castles and the girls back to their boarding dorm) for a final night in Uppingham. We were lucky enough to be invited to chapel before our departure the following morning, and we could see what all the fuss was about. The stained glass chapel is beautiful and the students do not hold back from singing at a thundering level - it was an incredible service and a lovely way to end our time at this phenomenal school.
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| Go Grammar! |
Posted by K Kybus
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