Day3

Today we woke up at seven o'clock. After a refreshing sleep we meet up with the WISE group, Nick and the two Hull and Humber Youth Ambassadors for the visit to Somerset West Methodist primary school which taught around 900 children aged five to thirteen years old.

Upon our arrival we were given a warm welcome which can only be described as "grand". As we all walked into the courtyard where their assemblies take place we received a round of applause from the children. The assembly started with the South African national anthem which the whole of the school joined in with. It was truly uplifting.
As the Assembly continued we were treated to a performance of the ruby dance "the Hakka" which was preformed by all ten of the school's ruby teams. It's safe to say we've never been so scared of young children in our lives! Near the end of the assembly, the Hull and Humber Clipper crew gave an example of the safety equipment: the children loved it.

For the rest of the morning we split into groups and each went in classrooms - Simon and Anna took the Africaans speaking class whereas Paige and Tom took the easy english speaking class. The point of the day was to teach the children about their rights - we were surprised to discover that the English class already knew a fair bit so we ended up devising a list of over twenty examples.

After this success, we took the children outside to do an activity where they had to create a campaign about children's rights and present their ideas in a way that meant we could take them back to Elloughton Primary School near Hull (St Barnabus Shaw who came from Elloughton was the founder of their school back in the 1800s). Overall, the groups came up with fantastic examples, which ranged from dances and roleplays to posters. Paige and Tom then gave a quick talk on life in England, showed their class our uniform and sports kit and answered as many questions as they could before it was time to leave. After many photos with the children, we were rushed back onto the coach and as we left they ran after the coach to wave goodbye. We can say without doubt that the brief time we spent with the children and what we learnt about their lives will remain with us forever, and hope our trip to their school was somewhat worthwhile for them too.

After having lunch in a fancy restaurant on the Waterfront with the sun baking down on us, we went for a visit to the Hull and Humber Clipper yacht. We were shown around by none other than one of our very own SMC Cantine staff's brother Artie, the one who is now infamous for falling overboard. The sun eventually got too much for us so we retired back to the hotel for a well earned rest. Later on in the evening, we went to another fancy restaurant and were lucky enough to have watched what can only be described as the most beautiful sunset we've ever seen.