The days are getting shorter and shorter, and nights are getting longer. Yesterday evening at 17:30 when we were making our way to study hall, we saw something really beautiful shining up in the sky. It turned up to be the planet Venus. Its really bright, so you could easily notice it in the sky. It’s isolated and seems to be shining alone in the sky as the first star to come out. Everyone who lives near to Switzerland will be able to see it, and they will enjoy looking at it for sure – look to the South West in the very early evening. It was great today because the skies were so clear.

Today the weather has been really bad for us, and furthermore tomorrow we have the parent teacher conference. How lucky we are!

On the bright side, the tuck shop is finally open! A tuck shop is simply a shop for the boarding students that is inside the boarding house. It allows us to have some snacks and drinks without leaving the house! And it is also much cheaper than grenier where the students usually buy.

Happy halloween everybody!

The campus is currently alive with pumpkins skilfully carved by our boarders! On Tuesday evening we all got our hands dirty and enjoyed what has become an annual event at CdL – it was great fun as always. Tonight the boys will have the option to go to the high school halloween dance which I am sure will feature some of their handy work as decoration!

Incredible … the first break is with us already!

The boys have all had a great start to their year at College du Leman and I know they have all been looking forward to this week to head home and abroad to meet up with their friends and families.

I hope you all have a fabulous time together and I look forward to hearing all the tales of adventure when everybody gets back!

Some of you might remember this light painting e did last year to send a message home.

This year the activities have changed so that we can choose our own activities every day. I am doing archery, biking, and learning Japanese as well as all my other studies. Some of the other guys in the house are also doing some sculpture, football, golf and mentoring the primary pupils in chess and sports.

This is really good because we get to do the activities we really enjoy and spend more time with our friends from other boarding houses.

Here is Alexey showing off his archery skills!

After brunch our boarding house went cycling for couple of kilometers to a petanque field.

We had a nice pic-nic there with all kinds of snacks and drinks, and after that we had a petanque championship.

Andrey and I won the championship with the score of 8-1!!!

After the winners were announced Mr Robertson prepared some prizes for the winners like crisps, drinks, and the cup for the first place.

I really enjoyed this trip, it was really fun.

Congratulations to Gio and Jia Hao who both played for CdL yesterday against LGB, an international school in Geneva. I have had a report from coach Pierre that they both played very well and helped the team along to a 5-2 victory, coming back from 2-0 down!

The boys are all proud of you!!!

On Sunday we went go-karting in France. I took the second place over all!!! The funny thing is I didn’t want to go but they had one free spot and I decided to give it a shot and I was second over all!!!!!! Although we had to wake up early on a Sunday morning, all of us loved it. We enjoyed the loud noise of karts and cheerful people driving and showing off their skills. But it here is a bad bit, I was trying to improve my time so much that I hit the pitwall – that hurt a bit but it was worth it!

Today our activity was biking – and it was raining! We were expecting it to be terrible, but it wasn’t that bad. Even if it was dirty and wet everywhere, we still kind of liked it. Also we caught a moment to see a rainbow, you can almost see it in this picture!

Have a great day Mauro – many happy returns from all the boys (and from your little friend in this picture!)