August 14th 2019, a group of students arrived at a school campus in Shenzhen to embark on their high school careers, a school campus in Shuiwei village.
Those students were the new G1 students for SCIE and the last cohort of G1 students that would come to the Shuiwei campus.
Of course, that is your cohort. You are the last group to have been in Shuiwei.
Thinking back to that year now, it seems strange – who remembers the G1 camp? Out in Dapeng and with the torrential rain in the night. Later that year you also saw the last Sports Day until your A2 Sports Day a couple of months ago. Then just before your CNY break you had the CNY concert at the Nanshan theatre.
Then everything changed.
We left Shuiwei – we said farewell to our old campus.Some of you may even remember how I bid farewell to our old campus. In the traditional SCIE fashion when leaving. You are privileged to have seen me dance! A very rare sight to see. Although there was rather more of me then.
We came here to Antuoshan, to our brand new campus. Some more of you joined us then into G2.
Do you remember how new everything was? We had only the dormitories and classrooms. This theatre was still empty – no seats, no stage.
But you survived, actually, No, you thrived.
Slowly things got easier as it all got more finished and we ironed out the teething problems, opening all our facilities and the garden with the turtles.
You move up to your A1 year, and more of you joined us, to be our biggest ever cohort with over 300 of you. It seemed somehow like we were almost living in a bubble at times.
This year, A2 and college applications but also those traditions you remembered from G1, from Shuiwei came back – the Food Fair, Sports Day and even your “Chinese New Year” A2 Superman show in your senior week.
Now you are ready for everything to change again.
You have finished your high school life as part of our SCIE family and you are ready to go out into the world as global citizens.
You are ready to sail away into the sunset, sailing away to far horizons and to new adventures.
As you sail away, we will remember you and I will think of you as the last graduates from Shuiwei, who saw me dance, and that makes you a special year.
SCIE is going to demonstrate just how special your year are because you are not just SCIE but Shuiwei SCIE.
If you look behind me you will see the coffee shop square, and some of you may have noticed it was known as Sifang Square. No longer, we are going to immortalize our history and the memories we share with your year– and from now on It will be known as Shuiwei Square.
Over this Summer we will remove the tree from the middle of the square and suspending over it will be a special sculpture. A sculpture of the ship that is sailing away to the far horizons – the ship that you, our graduates, take as you become alumni and go off to university. All of our alumni will be remembered by that sculpture.
So to you, our class of 2023, as you sail away on your new adventures, I remind you to come back to visit and to see the amazing sculpture of the ship suspended above Shuiwei Square.
Congratulations!
Neil Mobsby
Principal of SCIE
