Back to school ! yellow bus and lunch box...

Back to school for Mathilde, Amelia and Sibylle ... et totalement à l'américaine : elles prennent le matin le bus jaune avec leur lunch sous le bras..
7h05 pour Mathilde,
7h39 pour Sibylle, et 8h20 pour Amélia.
Mathilde commence à 7h40 et termine à 2h40 après elle enchaîne sur 2 heures de cross country : elle adore courrir ...
Amélia commence à 8h45 et termine à 3h45. Elle a choisi comme option, son french horn et spanish.
Sibylle commence à 8h10 et termine à 2h10.

Et voici les essais de présentation qu'ont écrit Mathilde et Amélia... à lire avec un mouchoir à portée de main ... je vais me balader bientôt avec un autocollant sur ma voiture : "proud of my honor student" Proud of my girls of course !!!!

Mathilde :

Since the day I was born, my life has felt like a constant road trip and along the way, I have seen many marvelous things. I was born in Grenoble, France on September 6th 1996. Only three years later, one year after my sister Amelia was born, I moved to Taiwan. There, I survived through the common annual typhoons and I attended a British Private school, where I was first introduced to my second language: English. As the years went by, I grew attached to this strange little island, to its foreign language, fascinating culture and welcoming people. Unfortunately in 2003, a nasty deadly disease known as S.A.R.S., struck the country and my family and I had to leave earlier than planned. A couple of months before, my youngest sister Sibylle had opened her eyes to what was a brand new world for her, so the Guglielmi family traveled back to their country with a cute new little member.

In France, my parents enrolled me in an international elementary school and later in an international middle school so that my English speaking and writing skills wouldn’t become lost in time. There, I lived in a house located in a small suburban village surrounded by the Alps. Because I lived so close to the mountains, at the beginning of each holiday break,  I would jump into a car and after two hours of driving, I would arrive at my grand-parents’ chalet in the “Massif des Ecrins”. Growing up in the Alps helped me develop my love for hiking in the outdoors in summer and skiing in winter and to this day I still have a vivid passion for both of these sports. Unfortunately, in November 2008, two years after the birth of my younger brother Cyprian (I was in seventh grade at that time.), I was taken away from everything I knew: my fun girl scout tribe, my cool school, my magnificent mountains, my best friends and my beloved family, because my dad was sent to California by the company he worked for.

The first few months were difficult, because not a lot of people acknowledged my existence, but I managed to escape these hard times by rereading my favorite books, writing fantasy stories and visiting unique and splendid places such as Death Valley, San Francisco and Yosemite. Eventually, after a while I met great people like my best friend Margot whom I admire for all the efforts she makes at school in order to pursue her dream of becoming an archeologist, for the way she knows how to listen to people and tell them the right things at the right time and for the fact that she sends me emails and chats with me regularly now that I live in Kansas.  I have unforgettable memories of the two of us rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after having seen Part One, of us watching Inception with awe, making a pizza from scratch ingredients for the first time and talking all day long or even sometimes all night long after having listened to songs from 30 Seconds to Mars: our favorite rock band.

Traveling is part of my life and has shaped me as a person in many different ways: it has taught me how to be open to different cultures, how to adapt to change and how to be curious to a point that when I get more comfortable in a environment, my second nature of asking many questions enables me to get rid of my natural shyness.. But most of all I have acquired the desire to protect this world. Among the many careers that have this same goal, stands out the choice of becoming a wildlife biologist.

By taking this class, I’m hoping to learn about regions of the world that I’m not familiar with, so that I will not be completely lost if I get the chance to visit some of these countries. But most of all I desire to have the knowledge to make our Earth a better place.

Mathilde Guglielmi. 
Petites erreurs de la part de Mathilde et Amélia : nous sommes arrivés en décembre 1999 et repartis en mai 2003. Sibylle est née en mai 2002 à Taipei. ... et il était prévu que nous quittions Taipei en juin 2003, l'épidémie de SARS nous a juste fait partir fin mai.... 

et Amélia : elle devait écrire un essai et répondre à différentes question ... 

I was born on December 18^th 1998, in Grenoble, France. Grenoble is a city in the south-east of France, at the foot of the Alps. Grenoble hosted the Olympic Games in 1968.

            I have 3 siblings: two sisters, one younger, one older, and a little brother.

            About a year after I was born, my family and I moved to Taipei, Taiwan. We lived there for three years and 11 months. When I was about 2 years old, I started attending a Chinese Preshool, where I learned a few words in Manderin. I then went to an American school, where I did another year of preschool, and a year of pre-kindergarten.

            A month before our fourth year in Taiwan would'have ended, we had to leave Taipei because of an epidemic.

            I lived at my grand-parents’ house in Lyon, France for a month, while my parents where sorting things out in Taipei. I had to finish my pre-kindergarten year at a local school. I hated it there. The children weren't very welcoming, and I felt too sad and lonely about being without my parents, to be outgoing.

Everything settled down when we finally moved back to Grenoble, this time farther from town. We lived in an apartment in a small castle. I remember enjoying myself a lot during my kindergarten year.

            My parents wanted me to preserve my English, so they registered me at the International Elementary school of "Houille Blanche" in downtown Grenoble. It was half an hour away from our home. The three languages there were English, German, and French. My teachers were very nice, especially my English teacher, who was British. I had one hour of English lessons per day (English lessons included neither math nor science).

            Halfway through second grade, we moved to a new house, this time 3 quarters of an hour from school.

            I loved my Elementary School, which I stayed at for 4 years and 2 months.

            2 months into my 5^th grade year, my family and I moved to the Silicon Valley, in California. Our house was in Cupertino. I attended FASSV (French-American School of the Silicon Valley). I was very suprised to find out that there were only 13 students, including myself, in my class! That turned out to be a very good thing. It gave a sense of family to the class. The curriculum was half French, half English. I especially enjoyed our one week long trip to Québec, Canada, towards the end of the year.

In California, middle school starts in 6^th grade. I attended Sam. H. Lawson Middle School for two years. Going from a small private school to a public school was quite a bit of a schock for me. Most of my classes now had at least 30 students! After a while, I got used to it. There was a lot of veriety in culture at my school, since 70% of the school population is Asian. There are Chinese people, Vietnamese people, Korean people, Taiwanese people, and Indians. All this diversity made people very outgoing to strangers.

            I moved here on Thursday the 4^th of August. I do not know anyone (yet) here, and I do not know much about Kansas and Kansas City. I got registered at Trailridge 4 days ago, and I received my summer assignment 3 days ago.

            My dream for Trailridge is not just about academic success. It's also about social success. I am new to this school, and I really hope I will blend in easlily.