Leadership - The Prefects...

Congratulations to the following boys who have been selected to represent Mertens House as a Prefect for 2011-12...

HEAD OF HOUSE

Leo Ko

PREFECTS

William Salt

Marcus Hunter

Nico Neizert

Connor Norris

Leadership - The House Council...

Congratulations to the following boys who have been selected to represent their year groups on the Mertens House Council...

MERTENS HOUSE COUNCIL

2011-2012

6^TH FORM                      Manman Wong

                                          Gani Nuredini

                                          Prefect

5^TH FORM                      Marcus Monsell

                                          Laurence Haines

REMOVE                        Tom Bell

                                          Scott Bennington

SHELL                              Jake Freeman

                                         Moritz von Contzen

Mertens Prefect Meeting

Mertens House Prefect Meeting

Wed 23rd Nov 2011

Present: MJC, NJT, Leo Ko, William Salt, Marcus Hunter, Nico Neizert, Connor Norris

·       Introducing Prefect Award

ü  The prize winner is going to be elected by the Mertens' prefects

ü  Names will be taken in on Wednesday night and the decision will be made on Thursday

ü  On a weekly basis and the winner will be announced every Friday morning during callover

ü  Award to one student for showing the greatest effort to get involved in house and showing great characteristics from the Ardingly learning profile
eg. Caring, Risk takers, Self-disciplined, Balanced, Knowledgeable etc.  

·        House council

ü  Role

                                                                          i.      two representatives from each year group

                                                                        ii.      Provide lots of ideas about ways to improve the house
eg. how to spend the house funds more efficiently
       what social events do the boys prefer etc

                                                                      iii.      collect general voices from each year group

                                                                       iv.      work with the prefect group as a team to serve the house

·        Upcoming major House events

ü  Lent term

1.      Chinese new year celebration --> 28th January, 2012

- Plans to be updated soon

2.      Casino night during one of the Friday nights

3.      Curry night
- which the boys are going to cook the curry by themselves and serve the whole house 

Quiz Night

This weekend we hosted our inaugural pub quiz. With nine teams representing all of the boarding houses, our students answered questions on history, geography, music, film, famous faces, dingbats and a famous supermarket "can you really taste the difference?" challenge. The night was hosted by LVIth Prefects, Marcus, Will and Leo, and certainly got the brain cells back into gear for a weekend!

Quiz Masters Marcus and Will

Victory !

Nico Neizert at 'Youth Speaks', an Inter-School Debating Tournament

Inspiration - A speech given by Jake Freeman

Inspiration.

Hello, today I am going to talk to you about inspiration.

At some point we have all had a bit of inspiration. And at some points we have inspiration in our minds all the time.

For instance when on the sports field we may have our favourite player in mind.

In academic work we may have a successful scientist or mathematician in mind.

Or maybe we are inspired by someone we know on a personal level like a friend or someone we know about. Inspiration may come from someone in your family; for instance, in the early years of my life my inspiration was my dad as he seems quite happy with his job, his family and his life in general. Inspiration is quite a hard topic to grasp at as it is so varied in the way we see it. When I was writing this speech I was thinking about great speeches from people over the decades like Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches and the works of other great theologians. I know that I will never live up to their standards of speech. That is an example of everyday inspiration through memories that in the back of your head constantly all the time.

 In summary everyone at some stage of his or her life will have a figure of inspiration or someone who they want to live up to be.

Thank you for listening.

Mertens House Music Programme - STOMP...

House Music 2011

This week, the Music Department hosted the annual house music competition. Mertens was represented by 4 performances:

Anthony Yiu (Piano)

Waltz in C sharp minor

Op. 64, No. 2

Frederick Chopin

Hang Kin Kwok (Piano)

D’amour Mariage

Connor Norris (Guitar)Give me love by Ed Sheeran

Laurence Haines, Gani Nuredini, Marcus Hunter, Will Salt, Marcus Monsell, Scott Bennington, Daniel Frank and Jonah Adomakoh with a modern masterpiece - STOMP, a unique musical theatre of choreographed percussion and movement (choreographed by Mr Tester).

Steepo 2011

Steepo 2011 was once again upon us and, as always, brought out the best of the competitive spirit in Mertens. We had much to celebrate with Eddie Davis in Shell winning the Junior competition - well done Eddie, a brilliant achievement. We also welcomed back our Upper Sixth boys who raced for the House. As ever, a great event - made all the greater by Matron's cakes at the finishing line.

Talent show - Part 2 (Shell and Remove)

To end the first term, we were treated to a second display of Mertens' talent, courtesy of our Shell and Remove boys.  Once again, it was an array of talent from comedy to card tricks, music and impressions. We really do have talent (and there was a guest appearance from Father David...!).

The Mertens Soap Box....

Lately, the highlight of each 9.30pm Callover has been the giving of a small talk by one of the boys in the House. We are slowly working our way through the House list and so far there have been some memorable speeches; Anthony Yiu gave an insight into what it was like to start a new life in a new country which everyone found interesting and all other boys in the Shell have done likewise, choosing a topic of their own to speak about.
One of the latest speeches was given by Sonny Bircham which is outlined below...

JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER

I would like to speak to you all about judging a book by its cover because there are a lot of people I know who say oh look at that boys shoes he’s a loser and weird let’s not talk to him. But I talk to people who other people don’t like because of his dress sense or his hair or his weight but no one knows what goes on behind closed doors like for example his mum could be seriously ill or he could be getting bullied no one knows what happens. So what I’m trying to say is why do we all care what people look like how they speak or why they have no friends if you actually give them a chance be friendly to them and be nice you never know they might have the same hobbies as you they might even look like you deep down so if you see someone on its own go speak to him make him feel confident about himself all that kid needs is a little confidence to get him more friends for example when Jonah was new I don’t think he knew anyone or if he did not that well but summers showed Jonah to everyone on his first day and now Jonah basically is good mates with everyone he knows so all I’m trying to say is don’t judge a book by its cover because you never know what he or she is actually like in person !

Oktoberfest

Last night saw Mertens Haus host 'Oktoberfest' to a lot of excited and hungry boarders. Our German boys (Moritz, Mauro, Tobias, Dan, Konstantin, Philip and Nico) worked extremely hard to put on a fantastic show; complete with authentic Bavarian sausages, potato salad, sauerkraut, pretzels and Oktoberfest music. The night was complete with lederhosen and local dancing - we raise our glasses to next year's event!

Moritz and Mauro preparing the food

Local dancing

Saluting their hard work

Lederhosen!

Herr Curran und Herr Caston