Half Term

This is a late post about the first half term 

Half term is here. For the juniors this will be their first half term but will be 4th for the seniors. The special thing about half term is that all Bruneian sixth form students from different school will make their way to London Paddington to stay in Brunei Hall.

BRUNEI HALL

Located in Norfolk Square, Paddington, London. A place only for Bruneian students. The permanent residences are for those whose university is in the centre of London which is a cheaper alternative to renting apartments in London. It is near to St Mary Hospital and the very famous Oxford Street. Some, like us stayed temporarily during school break.

The room in Brunei Hall can fit up to 4 people. Brune Hall is complete with a study room, library and even surau. Every Thursday night, sembahyang jemaah and tahlil will be held in the surau.

Brunei Hall have it's own canteen where they serve food for breakfast and supper during the weekdays and lunch and supper during the weekend. This is really nice for us because we've been eating English food in school so Bruneian treats are always a delight.

Some of us started their half term during the weekend but unfortunately for schools like Harrogate and Leighton Park, half term starts on Wednesday. For HLC, school still continues in the morning. For HLC, it is 3 hours of journey to London Kings Cross but schools like near London may take less than an hour.

Our Half term is about 10 days. There are many things to do this half term. Let’s see what some of us have been doing last weekend. .

I'll pass this to Khairah.

Ehem ehem. Testing.. Testing..

Assalamualaikum everyone!

As Husna has said earlier, some of us started our half term during the weekend. This is the first ever half term for the juniors and I am sure they feel as excited as we were last year!!! These are what we did throughout the first few days of half  term.

Sunday, 20th October 2013

On this day, the warden of Brunei Hall came back safe and sound from Mekah, Alhamdulillah, after performing haj. In conjunction to this, the students and staffs did the Maghrib and Isya' prayer together as well as reciting Rattib Al-Attas. 

The thing that touched me the most during the ceremony was when the warden came and everyone was doing the dikir. It was the one called Asyraqal Badru 'Alaina and it really reminded me of the Majlis Berbedak or the powdering ceremony which is one of the Bruneian wedding traditions and people usually read the dikir as the grand finale.

Then we were served a lot of food including sambal belacan with ulam (vegetables?), Tom Yam, fried chicken, kelupis with beef rendang (or was it curry?), fish with sambal, samosa, curry puffs and several Malay desserts like kueh apam. Gosh, that was a hard one, reminiscing the priceless taste of Malay food. Hahaha.

Oh, that night, some of us also had the chance to go to John Mayer's concert! It must be SUPER fun knowing how renowned John Mayer is. 

Monday, 21st October 2013

We went to Seymour Leisure Centre for badminton.  Yes yes. We do not neglect health and sports here. Ummm, I guess. ;) We played for one and a half hour although we only booked the courts for an hour. We got lucky as we can extend the time without paying extra fee. Hehehe.

Tuesday, 22nd October 2013

I just want to say that all my life, I have never spent one whole day at a museum. But not until I went to the

 
Natural History Museum, London. 

We decided to make an ~educational~ visit to the Natural History Museum. ;) We arrived at the museum around 11 and we had to queue outside for a few minutes as there were a lot of people coming as well. The museum is one of the tourist attractions and there are a lot of students doing school trips there too.

THE MUSEUM WAS MASSIVE!

When we first entered, we were welcomed by a HUGE dinosaur. It's as huge as.... I don't know. 10 double deckers, maybe? I might be exaggerating because I've never seen anything like that before. Hahaha. The we looked at some exhibitions at the main hall, from a big jade stone to a tiger in a glass, as in a glass enclosure, glass cage, not that glass that you use to drink.

Then we went to the Dinosaurs section. It was so cool. There was this bridge that we walked on so that we can see dinosaurs exhibition from above. Coolsiesssss! And we also saw a big, moving T-Rex. We found it funny though when we saw how little its hands are compared to his body. Hahaha.They look like chicken's feet even!

We also went to many other exhibition hall like Human Biology, Earth and also the Wildlife Garden. No wildlife as in wild insects. Not African wildlife like tigers and lions.

The good thing about the museum is that there is a faith room so we can pray during the visit. Hehehe.

There's A LOT of exhibition hall at the museum but a day is just not enough to go to all of them. CRY CRY CRY. Out of more than 10 hall, we were able to go to about just half of them. CRY CRY CRY. I surely want to go there again. :')

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25th & 26th of October 2013

On this day, 14 of Bruals students went to a trip to Birmingham to attend Maher Zain concert for human appeal. 

 

30th October 2013 -2nd November

9 of Bruals students went to visit Amsterdam for 3 nights.