SCHS Music Program Tour to Hawaii, Springbreak 2009:

Our tour to Honolulu Hawaii March 29 to April 5 2009 was truly amazing!  Our 59 musicians were great ambassadors and performed extremely well in all their public performances.  With chaperones and parents our group was 75 in size!   We were able to cover a great deal of the island.  Our students visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial site and performed in front of the USS Missouri.  We took a tour of the north shore, visited the Dole Plantation and enjoyed the experience of Waikiki Avenue.  We also visited the aquarium and zoo.  We performed at the Royal Hawaiian Center and the Aloha Tower Marketplace.  These concerts were well attended and enjoyed by the public.  The highlight of our tour was our day long visit to the Polynesian Cultural Centre where we learned about the tribal nations that make up the Hawaiian Islands as well as attending a Luau and the amazing Horizons Show at the Pacific Theatre.  We finished our tour with workshops at the University of Honolulu with Grant Okamura and Rachelle Samet.   Of course we were able to squeeze in a couple of afternoons on the beach!  This tour was a trip of a lifetime for our students.  We would like to say thank you to our parent chaperones that made this trip run smoothly.

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The SCHS Travel Club is embarking upon a great adventure during Spring Break 2009.  For twelve days, students will take part in an educational excursion of Berlin, Potsdam, Buchenwald, Prague, and Vienna.  This is a custom made trip designed by Mr. Zweifel and Mr. Dale Gillis of Vacations Plus Travel.  Mr. Gillis is the chosen agent for this trip, and has successfully organized over twelve SCHS Travel Club educational excursions.

Students will see the glories of old Berlin, as well as modern Berlin and the reminders of WW II and the Cold War.  A day trip to Potsdam will explore the palaces of  Germany’s glory days of the 1800’s, and will be complemented by a tour of  world-renowned architect Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Holocaust Museum.  The group will leave Berlin with its fantastic shopping and crazy discos in order to visit Buchenwald Death Camp, enroute to Dresden.  It is a serious site, with many horrific yet educational opportunities.  In Dresden, students will be able to explore one of Germany’s most imperial cities, famous for the February 1945 bombing by the Allies.  In Prague, known as Paris of the East, students and chaperones will visit the famous St.Charles Bridge, the old city, and the nearby Karlstejn Castle.  Prague is often described as the most beautiful city east of Paris. Vienna will offer the students a taste of the old and new as well, when they visit the Prater Park with the Gigantic Ferris Wheel, followed by a visit to the nearby Schonbrunn Palace of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Many of the students participating are currently studying German at SCHS, and this will be a great opportunity for them to practice their knowledge of the language.

As all students take Social Studies, the tour will strongly complement much of the material they have learned in class. All in all, this will be a unique opportunity for everyone involved.  Chaperones are Mr.Zweifel and Mrs. Eliuk, both teachers at SCHS.

There are currently a few spots left, anyone interested in still joining should contact Mr. Zweifel at 780.973.3301 for more information, or students can stop by Room 420 for information sheets. Chaperones Mr. Zweifel and Mrs. Eliuk as well as Mr. Gillis of Vacations Plus Travel are very excited about this educational excursion, and look forward to leading the group through a memorable experience.

Select the links below to see the photos!

SCHS Varsity Volleyball to Cuba, fall 2008:

The senior women’s volleyball team is looking to have a very special year this year!  Four of the players have been together since the big win as grade 10’s, in the Metro Premier City Championship.  To make this an even more special year the coach Ron Allen decided at the end of last season, to organize a trip to train in the sport of volleyball, with the best in the world, Cuba.  After some organizing, 11 players from Sturgeon Composite High School, along with 2 coaching staff and 10 parents headed off to Cuba on Aug 31/ 2008 for eight days.

The goals of the trip were to become better volleyball players, to experience adifferent culture, and to bond as a team going into the high school volleyball season.  Well, all goals were surpassed with this adventure. 

We experienced the results of hurricanes, as we landed the day after hurricane Gustov hit Habana; we flew out the day before hurricane Ike arrived in Habana.  We experienced a level of accommodation, complete with creatures we had not seen before.  We experienced training facilities sub par to what we are accustomed to here in Canada. We experienced food quite different from home.  But, the most important thing we experienced was the training regiment that Cuban athletes go through to be the best in the world.  We trained each day for 3.5 hours in relative humidity of 90% and temperatures above 30 degrees.  This was amazing volleyball, with Cuban coaches and Canadian coaches sharing ideas as we trained.  The mixing of Cuban athletes with Canadian athletes and the sharing of cultural differences was an experience of a life time.

Ron Allen, Head Coach

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