Alice also rowed in the J16 coxed four the following day, along with Kathryn Bevan, Natasha Gallagher, Jessica Warrior and Naomi Wakeling.

The National Schools Regatta is the highlight of the junior rowing calendar and is a prestigious event to compete in, and to win! Congratulations to all of the girls for their commitment to sport and all the training they have to put in to compete at this level.

On May 25th, Year 7 took part in the Good Shepherd Mass. This is an annual event held for Catholic Schools across the Diocese in Westminster Cathedral and arranged by the Catholic Childrens’ Society.

The girls formed part of a choir of 150 pupils from a number of schools and they spent the morning rehearsing the music needed for the afternoon Mass under the direction of Miss Ryan.

The theme of this year’s Mass was ‘Journey’ and was celebrated by Bishop John Arnold. He began his homily by naming different sorts of journeys and the different kinds of things we pack to take. He reminded us that while journeys–such as going into the Cathedral, to holiday destinations, or to visit friends–were important, the most important journey we would take would be our life journey.

What we should never forget was that the invitation to make that journey in the company of Jesus was always open to us. Moreover, it was, he said, an invitation well worth taking up. ‘Following’ required bringing nothing at all except trust and faith in God and a willingness to grow into the sort of person Jesus was.

St Catherine’s plays a key role in this event as, in addition to providing about a third of the total choir, Miss Ryan does much of the work in planning the liturgy and liaising with the CCS and other schools involved. Once again, there have been very positive comments received by the CCS about the excellent singing (and behaviour) of the pupils, and our participation has already been requested for next year.

Ms M Ryan – Head of Religious Education

Download as PDF with Photos

Sus dey from Cambodia!

I’m sorry I haven’t replied to everyone individually, but I haven’t had a chance to log on for too long between little adventures, but thank you for writing back. I have read everyone’s e-mails so it’s fab to hear what you are doing too! The trip so far has been so great because it’s been really varied. The food is lovely and so cheap, I think dinner last night cost $1.25 from a street stall! On the first day in Phnom Penh we had a tour around the city by cyclo, stopping off to see the Independence Monument and Wat Phnom (a temple on Phnom Penh’s only hill). It was pretty fun joining in with an open-air aerobics session in the middle of a town square, although at 32 degrees out here, we only lasted five minutes.

After that we had a very sobering trip to the Tuol Sleng Prison and Choeung Ek (Killing Fields). These two places were used during the Khmer Rouge regime, so only 30 years ago. I’ll spare you the details, but what went on was so shocking to learn about. Luckily, however, we could put that aside for a time as we travelled to Chambok for a home stay in a remote village with a Cambodian family. The house was on stilts, with mattresses laid on the floor for us to sleep on. After dropping our belonging off, we travelled a little further to climb a short way up a mountain (pretty hard when the humidity level is over 90!). Having emerged out of the jungle about an hour later, we jumped in to the cooling waters of a waterfall up there. The home stay was a great experience as the family, although they couldn’t speak English, were so friendly and answered all our questions (our guide was interpreting). It was a great insight also into the hardship people living outside the major towns face.

Hope all is dandy with everyone:)

Love Surini x

Xin chao!

I hope everyone is well. I’ve just arrived in Saigon, after a really comfortable eleven hour train journey. Vietnam is brilliant: the people are friendly, the food is great (especially the street food as they don’t water it down for Western taste buds) and especially in the North the landscape is really lush.

Highlights so far have been a two hour kayaking trip around Halong Bay, after which we got chased into the sea by territorial monkeys! That bit was pretty scary but kayaking passed beautiful mountains, surrounded by mist, was pretty magical. The seafood here is also great and yesterday we were in Nha Trang and went snorkelling. I found Nemo! The corals did look like cauliflower, which was a bit of a shame, but the fish were amazing colours. Hoi An has been my favourite town so far as it is like a medieval French village with quaint lanes and houses with gorgeous frames/shutters/floors of dark wood. The rest of the group are so lovely. There are sixteen of us, ranging from myself and a guy from Newcastle who are the youngest, to a couple that are retired. Mostly, everyone is in their mid 20s to early 30s but this has definitely created a great dynamic and because there are people ranging from Ireland to New Zealand, everyone has lots of different experiences to share.

It is our last day as a group, although eight of us continue through Cambodia to Bangkok. Tomorrow there may be some new additions. On Sunday we leave for Cambodia and we are touring around for about ten days. I’m most excited about Angkor Wat and staying with a Cambodian family for the night :) I’ll try and check in as often as possible, but I’ll probably be in touch when I get to Thailand

Much love,

Surini x

Sawat de kha!

So update number three from Thailand, sorry in advance if this is a little long. I LOVE it out here. Having arrived in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago, we were welcomed with dozens of random Thai people coming up to us to squirt us with cold water, put ice cubes down our tops, and cover us in flour. No, it wasn’t the Red Shirts going mad, but the Thai New Year festival called Songkran, which is the festival of water. I never thought I could say that I would enjoy being drenched for three days in a water fight with thousands of other people, but when it’s 42 degrees outside, a little ice can go a long way. The atmosphere during the festival was brilliant, and unlike the usual ‘everybody get waaasted’ it was quite clean fun (apart from the flour). We decided it would be a great idea to go on a boat ride down the canals to get away from the water pistols for a while, little did we know that the people living by the canal were ready with buckets of water. After that I met my new group… two other people! There’s a guy who is like 50something from Australia.

He’s quite patriotic and admittedly I was very close to pushing him off the mountain when we went trekking if he said ‘fair dinkum’ one more time. Aside from that he’s alright really. There’s a really nice lady from – would you believe – Hampton Hill as well so I’m sharing a room with her and we get on really well (probably due to our shared love of Thai food and mango sticky rice). There were supposed to be about four other people, but due to a certain badly-timed eruption of a volcano, they couldn’t fly out. So with a few men down, we left Bangkok anyway and went up to Kanchanburi where we went to see the River Kwai and to the War Museum. And it was there, cycling casually down the road, that I bumped in to Ben Pearse (the KGS people will know who this is)! He was on an intrepid trip as well, possibly the best thing I’ve done so far was the 3-day trek in Chiang Mai, where we stayed with the Ka Ren hill tribe in bamboo houses.

Before we started trekking, we went on an elephant ride which was lovely as the elephant walked in to the river and there was a little baby one following us and splashing around in the water. I was sitting on the elephant’s neck so feeding her bananas was quite scary as there was nothing to hold on to! The trekking was really hard on the first day as we started at 1.30pm it was just so so hot. When we got to the top of the mountain the heavens opened. Apart from squelchy feet the rain was welcome as it was so hot and stuffy. Also, we found refuge at a random lady’s house for a few minutes. It was probably the most beautiful house I’ve seen as it was made of teak and had a balcony, veranda and staircase that had intricate carvings. When we finally rocked up at the place we were staying, drenched and in slightly lower spirits as the wind was bone-chilling, the family were really welcoming.

Love Surini x

Using a text from 2Timothy 1:6 (‘stir into a flame the gift that is you’) each girl had prepared a coloured card shaped like a flame on which her friends had written about her gifts and qualities. These were shared as part of the service. Powerpoint slides helped give a visual focus for the service; the readings and music chosen added to the atmosphere of quiet reflection.

Gillian Cross discussed her most recent novel “Where I Belong” which was profiled recently on Radio 4’s “Open Book” programme and moves between the worlds of high fashion and Somalia. As Roma Doonga, a Year 10 student at St. Catherine’s School, Twickenham, said: “She started by asking us what we found hardest in our own writing and told us her ways of getting round these problems. This was successful in helping me get around the problems I normally find when I am writing myself.”

Isabelle Jones, another Year 10 student at St. Catherine’s School, Twickenham, commented: “Another aspect of the visit that I found interesting was her story about her research for “Wolf”. She told us that, for her research, she visited the wolf enclosure at London Zoo. She went inside with the keeper and the wolf pack surrounded her. It was the moment when she felt fear that she realised how to move on with her story.”

Mrs M Turner ~ Head of English

Gillian Cross