Barnacle House

Welcome to Barnacle House!

Hi, everyone!

My name is Putt Charoenprawatt, and I will be writing and managing Barnacle’s blog posts this year.

About me:

I was new to SMUS last year. As someone who is from Thailand, obviously there are lots of differences in our culture, but SMUS, especially Barnacle house, helped me ease into the school life really well. Everyone in Barnacle trusts one another – which enables us to have a well-oiled community and not-so-strict houseparents!

I was genuinely excited to meet all the new Barnacle boys this year. Being a new student and a Barnacle boy last year, I wanted to see what it was like to be on the other side to welcome new students. I wanted to give back to the community here at Barnacle and SMUS, so I decided to manage the Barnacle blogs and a link leader as my leadership role. I’m really looking forward to having another great year with the boys, and make sure that all of us make the most of our time here at SMUS. When we’ve all grown up, I want everyone to feel like their time in Barnacle was one of the best times of their lives.

I plan to keep weekly updates throughout the year. I look forward to having a great year!

Putt

Feel free to share or leave any thoughts below!

This Week In SMUS

Hello to all! My name is Karter Fry and I am a grade 11 student in the Barnacle house.

This past week at SMUS has been very exciting featuring “Pride Week”, many sport highlights and a cross campus strings session! Pride week went extremely well this past week at SMUS, students all around campus dressed in many colours to help support the LGBTQ+ community. It was a proud moment for our school coming together as a community to celebrate.

The junior boys rugby team had a 7’s tournament in St. George’s on Friday and came 6th in a hard fought last game against Brentwood. Highlights of the game featured Barnacle boys, Paul Mueller’s accurate kicks and Eric Xiong’s powerful tackles. The Sr. Girls rugby team traveled to Toronto on Thursday to participate in the CAIS girls national rugby tournament winning all of their games during the first day. While participating in the tournament the girls have been traveling throughout Ontario visiting university’s and the infamous Niagara Falls. On Tuesday the senior girls soccer team played St. Andrews and won 4:0. This past Friday they played Shawnigan in their first game of ISA’s tying at the end of regulation 0:0 but unfortunately lost in a penalty shootout. Their second game of the tournament was against WPGA where they won 2:1.

On Thursday junior, middle and senior school students joined together for a wonderful strings performance hosted by UVIC at the Farquhar. It was a night of impressive music and heartfelt celebrations for Mrs. Mary Smith, who will be retiring after working 33 years at SMUS!

Next week we will be looking forward to the Boot games which will feature Barnacle talents, Tristan Kuhn, Mark Finnamore, Eric Xiong, Paul Miller, Edward Kim and Louis Chang.

Message from the editor: Hello! It’s me Deon again, I hope you enjoyed this update by Karter Fry. Last week we also had the opportunity to debate with the Head of School Mark Turner and we also had our grade 12 Barnacle Boy Max Zhang go to Vancouver to compete in Hullabaloo, a spoken word competition, where he and his team got first place.

This week in Barnacle

Hello all! I am this week’s blogger, my name is Paul Mueller and I am in Grade 10 boarder in Barnacle.

This week was rather a quiet week. From Monday to Friday several events for Health and Wellness Week took place, like yoga during lunch or a talk from guest speaker Dr. Greg Wells during assembly. The best of the Wellness Week were probably the therapy dogs that visited during lunch. The dogs visited the Junior, Middle and Senior School.

On Monday, the Junior and Senior Rugby team played against Eastdale, a team from Ontario, with a total of eight Barnacle boys on the two teams. Due to the poor weather conditions they were close games but Eastdale managed to win both of them. Eric Xiong was honored with Man of the Match for the Junior Team. On thursday, five Barnacle boys played for the Junior Rugby team against Brentwood. After coming back in the second half the highly competitive game ended in a tie.

On the weekend, Ryan Cheng took part in ShawMUN. As a member of ADHOG, the committee of crisis, he contributed to the directory of a debate on the events of 9-11.

In two weeks the Grade 10 Experiential Program will have its next Expedition day. I am in the Sports Analytics cohort. We work on combining sports with math and numbers to better predict future performance by analyzing game statistics. Last time we travelled to SFU in Vancouver and talked to professionals about their knowledge of Sports Analytics. I think that the Experiential Program is a great opportunity to get to know a specific field and helps you determine what you want to do in University and after. Although there is tons of work packed in a day, the Experiential Program is a lot of fun and the cohort members get to grow even closer together.

A message from the Editor (Deon Lam)

We’ve started an initiative to have more members from the house post updates, so that we can have more frequent updates. You’ll still receive the sporadic updates that I’ve done in the past but we will also have more constant material driven by the other members of Barnacle. I hope that you will enjoy this new initiative.

First Weekend Back from Spring Break

Hello again!

The first week back felt rather long to most of us Barnacle Brothers, and the weekend could not have come sooner. The first weekend back we went to the Best of Queen, performed by the Victoria Symphony with hits such as Radio Ga Ga, Bohemian Rhapsody, and We Will Rock You.

On Sunday we had House Games: Ultimate Frisbee, California Kickball and Family Feud. At the end of the day we won 2 games in Senior Ultimate Frisbee and 2 games in Kickball and lost 2 games in Junior Ultimate Frisbee and lost 2 matches in Family Feud.

After House Games we hosted the Barnacle Community Dinner, themed Spring. People dressed in their most floral outfits. Before we got up to get our food, we had everyone (300~ people) sing happy birthday for someone special to me. Me! Deon Lam. After singing, we had food such as BBQ Ribs, Corn on the Cob, bread, salad, salmon and others. After our meal each house had 2 people step up to perform a Spring-themed rap that they were preparing during the meal.

The weeks are coming by fast and the future is exciting. The points between the 3 boys houses are close and we can clinch a victory through the last house games, the house olympics. But until then, since always, for always, as always, Vivat!

Sincerely Me, Deon L.

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Welcome Back To SMUS

Hello there everyone!

The Spring Break has ended, and we are reaching the home stretch for the school year. Roughly 2 and a half months remain until the Summer Break. Us Barnacle Boys have been to many places during this break. Some went home to Hong Kong or Saskatchewan, some went on school trips, such as the music trip in Europe and the Costa Rica trip.

I went to the music trip in Europe with 3 fellow Barnacle boys, Boris, Eric and Joshua. The music trip is a school run trip to Europe that is available to those in the St. Michaels University School music program (Band, Choir, Strings Ensemble). We went to Eisenach, Winchester, London, Rome and Trevignano. We performed for 3 International Schools during our trip, saw the Bach museum in Eisenach, view sights such as Stonehenge and watch two musicals (Hamilton/Everyone’s talking about Jamie and Come From Away) among other activities.

For the first weekend back we’ll be enjoying “The Best of Queen” by the Victoria Symphony on Saturday and on Sunday we will be having House Games, Community Dinner and Chapel.

It’s the home stretch, hold your breath and count the days Summer is coming soon.

Cheers, Deon L.

Mamma Mia!

It’s been a while since I’ve last written on the Barnacle House Blog. Today marks the bittersweet end of the SMUS Musical Mamma Mia! A production in the making since October. Honestly it’s rather amazing that we’re done with the musical.

I was in the pit orchestra with my Barnacle Brothers Wilson (clarinet), Tony (violin), Boris (violin) and Alex (guitar). We’ve been meeting with the rest of the pit orchestra for the past few months every Sunday in preparation for these past three days of the musical. Honestly it has paid off. It was a wonderful production.

I played percussion in the pit. That means I got all of the dozens of pages of tamborine. And more tambourine. I played 9 different instruments in total for the production of Mamma Mia. After we finished taking down the set after our last show we had an after party in the drama room back at school.

We celebrated the end of our time in the production of Mamma Mia with pizza, cake and soda. After our thanks to the directors of the musical, the grade 12s said words about their time in the musical. Many tears began to appear as continued to talk about our time in the production. I guess I’ll just write exactly what I said.

“This is my second year staying in the musical. It’s honestly so surreal that it’s finally over. I could honestly cry but we can all say that. It’s going to be weird having 2 extra hours every Sunday. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Sleep I guess. I remember getting my music for last years show and playing the slide whistle, this year I guess it’s the tambourine. What can I say. I am the dancing queen on that tambourine. Thank you all.”

Yours Truly, Deon Lam

MEC Halloween Race

It is 7am on a raining Sunday morning, and four grade 12s are spotted trekking from Barnacle Winslow to the Sun Center. It is the morning of the MEC Halloween Race, and Spencer Dearborn, Narjes Al-Zahli, Alex Menun, and Max Zhang are on their way to breakfast just before the run. It was going to be a fun day.

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It turned out to be an all Barnacle/Winslow affair, as Winslow houseparent Ms. Clarke drove the group up to the Beaver Lake race trail. As a result, the group came up with some impressive turnouts. Ms. Clarke ran a blistering speed in her “Northern Lights Fairy” costume to claim both the #1 overall women’s place in the 10K event and the best overall costume award. Narjes blazed through the 5K event to take 1st in her age category. Spencer, Alex, and Max all ran hard but got outsmarted by the trees. They got lost along the course and, accordingly, ran an extra 3K, resulting in an 8K race. Spencer sported Ms. Clarke’s grandma’s vintage snake suit for the run as well, resulting in many compliments.

The creativity of the group shined throughout the day. Sporting all grey sweatsuits, the squad created an immaculate model of the historical Stonehenge. Their ingenious resulted in the win of “best group costume”.

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Overall, a great day for the barnacle and Winslow house. It continues to showcase the all-around athleticism and success that the members of the house possess.

This post was written by
an anonymous Barnacle boy.