Boarding School Weekend, February 8–9, 2014

The second boarding school weekend was finally just around the corner. For us, this means that our creative team gets to come up with fun activities to keep the students entertained over the weekend as well.

On Saturday morning, all the students—who had been divided into small groups—gathered in the dining hall to set off from there on what was supposed to be a city scavenger hunt. Not a chance—shortly after 11 a.m., the housemaid Linda stormed into the dining hall and hysterically announced to everyone present that the beautiful Elionor had been murdered. As the students followed her into the tea room, they were able to witness the commotion and the group of suspects up close. A two-hour game of Cluedo began, spanning the entire campus, in which the students, in their assigned groups, had to question the suspects, draw clever conclusions, and ultimately accuse one suspect of the murder. After asking many questions—and sometimes raising even more—and sorting through many possible scenarios in their minds, two groups managed to identify the culprit.

That evening, we gathered again in the tea room for our “Wetten dass…” night. For this event, each house had to propose at least one bet, and the house leaders were appointed as “bet sponsors,” tasked with coming up with fun challenges for the students. The Hessenhaus painted ten boys’ fingernails at breakneck speed; the Bremerhaus identified some students by feeling the texture of their hair; the Mühle tried their hand at egg-throwing; the Stammhaus had three people drink five liters of water in one go; the Biohaus identified different temperatures of water by touch; the Westfalenhaus claimed it could remove banknotes from between a bottle neck and coins using just one finger, and the teaching team tried to sort all the students by age—without being allowed to ask any questions. There was plenty of laughter, puzzling, applause, and nail-biting—but in the end, the Bremerhaus claimed the title of “King of the Competition.” The students also won the auditorium challenge—in which they had to spread out across ten chairs in 120 seconds so that no one’s feet touched the floor—so our host and colleague will be rolling around on the sports field in his swim trunks the next time it snows —we can’t wait to see what happens.

To wrap things up, two students DJed at the tea room during the “Wetten dass…?” after-show party, bringing a successful day to a fitting close.