Congratulations for completing the first week of the virtual learning experience!

You rock Girls!

‘Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women.’ – Maya Angelou
#collegeduleman #internationalschool #switzerland #internationalwomensday

During these weeks, we have started a new topic from our Wellbeing program. Pillar 4 making safe and responsible choices.  Extremely important topic, especially as they grow older and head towards college to become fully-fledged adults.

In this last session, we have to talk about Peer pressure, that represents both a challenge and decision for teens, as they struggle to choose between what they know is right and what their friends are doing.

Not only we have discussed about right choices but we have talked about how to say NO.  As a part of the session, we did a role-play putting in practice refusal skills with body language and assertive communication.

Thank you, girls, for your honest talk about teens challenges.

Some pictures of last weekend in Crans Montana!

Rikka and Gabriela  (first picture) and all of our boarding students had a great time in the slopes 🙂

Have a lovely day! We are proud of you girl! All the best! Lots of love! <3

Anyone else craving a hot chocolate with this weather?
#collegeduleman #internationalschool #snow

Many of our students spent February break in the amazing resort of Crans Montana! Among them, it was Helen who snowboarded 6 days, notably improving her level!

Kids enjoyed tremendously with also many activities as bowling, escape room, cinema, skating, swimming pool…..

Have a look at these wonderful pictures 🙂

  Getting ready for the new week at school after the break…Good luck girls!

Friendly folks are not the same as folks who are your friends.  It’s nice to feel welcomed when you attend an activity, but it’s much more valuable to have relationships that thrive outside of the meetings. But how do we build those relationships?. Sometimes relationships will grow quickly on their own, but if they don’t, how do you encourage them to grow? Fortunately, making friends is a skill that we can develop.

In the last session of the Wellbeing programme -third Pillar: Building positive friendships, we have talked about tools and strategies that can take us to fulfiling friendships and, through an acting game, Terray girls have represented some of these social skills. We can practice them every day and will help in almost any situation.: smiling, making eye contact, finding common interest, empathize…

Thank you girls, for such a wonderful session 🙂  !

Watch this video with Natalina picking up this Style dance Choreography

Each of our monthly assemblies begins with a brilliant interpretation of our students.

In our February assembly, we have been able to count on Gabriel who, with only his voice and creating loops, has achieved this wonderful melody.

Please listen carefully……….

Fascinating picture took by Jasmine tonight. Simply beautiful!

As we approach some exams of the second Marking Period, students thoughts have turned to revision.  The importance of revision is twofold. Firstly, it helps you to remember what the students covered some time ago. Secondly, If done correctly it will help increase your confidence and reduce anxiety.

Keep revising girls, you will be well prepared!

This week in our Well-Being session we have explored the benefits of making friends from around the world in School.

Internationalism is a cornerstone at CDL, a school with more than 110 nationalities. Only in Villa Terray, we count with 8 different and this is going to lead to many international friends.

Terray girls came up with many benefits such as the cultural exchange, learning languages or a greater sense of empathy for the world. After this discussion, we played a quiz about international food which made us laugh out loud!

This Sunday Terray went to the cinema to watch Greta Gerwig’s newest film, Little Women.

Based on the classic American novel by Louisa May Alcott, the movie tells the story of the March sisters and their family. The sisters are all living their lives in their own way and bucking conventions all the while.

It’s a story with no real villain and a lot of love, friendship and compassion. We are glad you enjoyed it!

One of the extracurricular activities that Rikka enjoy the most is cooking.  With our chef students learnt tasty recipes from all over the world. So far Rikka has cooked churros, lasagna, cupcakes and this week…. an amazing Rissotto.

Keep learning to cook beautiful and delicious meals, Rikka!   🙂

Last night we continued with Pillar 3 of our Wellbeing program, Building positive friendship. 

We watched a very inspirational video from a Harvard University researcher, about the longest study on human happiness. For over 75 years, they did interviews, medical tests, and checked up on people to see how they were doing. And what they found about happiness surprised them.

The fourth director of the study, in his TED talk video, “What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness” says that while many young people tend to think that fame, fortune, and hard work will bring them happiness, it’s actually our social connections that are most important for our well being.

Waldinger explains the three lessons the researchers learned. First, having social connections is better for our health and well being—and conversely, loneliness kills. Second, having higher-quality close connections is more important for our well-being than the number of connections. Third, having good relationships is not only good for our bodies but also for our brains.

The girls were really interested in knowing about this study and all together discussed what implies a good friendship.

Thank you, girls, for your thoughtful words.

We wish you a super great day Ana Sofia!

Teenagers learn when adults act as good role models. But when it comes to developing great communication and social skills, practise with other kids can be invaluable. Building strong social skills can help teens make friends and feel better equipped to deal with stress and other issues as they develop and grow knowing there is support from the people around them.
One of the best ways for kids to learn to communicate well is to have them interact in a group and use the teachable moments which are created. Board games are fun and one of the easiest ways for kids to engage with one another. Playing a game requires patience, being able to take turns, agreeing to and sticking to the rules, and being a good friend – whether you win or lose.

Tonight to introduce Pillar 3 of our wellbeing program: Building positive friendship we have played Jenga,  a game of coordination where players take turns removing one block at a time from a tower constructed of blocks. Each block removed is then placed on top of the tower, creating an increasingly taller and more unstable structure. May not be ground-breaking or new, but, with a few simple tweaks, it can be used to teach valuable communication skill.

Jenga is a great game for building decision-making skills and improving hand-to-eye coordination.  But, most importantly, the aim of this game is to teach kids the importance of being patient, how to be a good friend under pressure, and how to contain their excitement when a friend knocks the tower over!

It was a great start for a great topic! 🙂

Tonight’s assembly started with a brilliant interpretation of   ‘O sole mio from our Boarding trio the Three Tenors!… followed by the many upcoming events for this new year :

• CDL TALKS, inspiring new leaders-  with Ismael Fernandez the 28th of January
• Mountain weekend + Winter camps
• Wellbeing – pillar 3:  ” Building positive friendship”

We also had Sofia, Miss Cristina, Mr Usher and Mr Salva talking about important matters as Healthy habits, Environment or friendship.

Thanks everybody for a great assembly 🙂

Thank you Natalina for this wonderful speech!! <3

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In our Wellbeing latest conversations  (Pillar 2 Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity) we focused on Charity, “providing for those in need; generosity and giving”  finding that even small actions can make a significant difference.

As previous years Boarding students have been very enthusiastic participating in the Christmas Action Project where presents are prepared and delivered to foster homes with children.

Terray girls decide to do their bit. They bought a personalised gift,  wrapped it nicely and attached a meaningful message. Natalina and Olivia were one of the lucky students who accompanied the delivery of the presents with Mr Usher and Mr Salva and they couldn’t be happier seeing the smile of the kids receiving their present 🙂

During yesterday’s Boarding Assembly Olivia, Natalina and Johannes shared their experience with all the Boarding students and expressed the positive impact of this action.

Thank you for your generosity!

The CDL group including Ana S., Maeva and Louise travelled to Germany’s biggest amusement park.  Europa Park is situated in the town of Rust near Freiburg and has beaten the global competition to win the award for the best amusement park in the world several times in a row. Europa Park is first and so far the only park in Europe to be given this award!

Also, the students played a visit to the traditional Freiburg Christmas Market in the heart of the beautiful old quarter.

That was a great weekend!

One of the highlights of this week has been the participation of Aya and Helen in the art exhibition held by Webster University. Congratulation girls for your participation!

“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein

In our weekly wellbeing meeting, we have talked about the important role Community service plays at Collège du Léman. How can we participate, what are the positive effects of our actions in favour of the community and what kind of sense and fulfilment we can find.  These are some of the questions we have talked through in our meeting discovering very positive answers.

Our school encourages all students to connect with the greater community, giving them the opportunity to engage with a variety of activities. Terray girls have helped to mentor students, cleaning up lake Geneva, helping staff in our everyday tasks, teaching younger students, etc..  Some of our girls started really early! like Ana Sofia who helped to clean up the beaches of her hometown with her family as you can see in the picture below 🙂

Wonderful to see your kind spirit girls!

Congratulations to ……
Ana Sofia for her Boarding life award, Rikka for the Activities commitment award and Jasmine, Jialin and Helen special mention in academics.

Well done Terray girls!

Wishing you a beautiful day and happy eighteenth Jialin!  Also to our lovely Louise.

We had a double bday celebration at home tonight!

During last weekend in Paris…..

On Saturday CDL students visited iconic places as the Louvre Museum, Montmartre or Champs Elysées, finishing the day at the Arc de Triomphe with amazing views from the top.

On Sunday they went to the famous Eiffel Tower, climbing to the top of the tower where they had an incredible panoramic of Paris. Afterwards, they enjoyed a nice excursion by boat through the Seine River where they could see how is now the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Thank you for the pictures Rikka!

Today Jasmine had an amazing time in Aquatis, the largest freshwater aquariun -vivarium in Europe!

Respect is on the cornerstone principles of our School ( RISE: Respect, internationalism, spirit and excellence). It denotes both a positive feeling of esteem for a person and also specific actions and conducts representative of that esteem. Respect can be defined as allowing yourself and others to do and be their best.

But “How does respect look? How does respect sound? How does respect feel?”

We have revised this concept with the help of a very personal Aya’s presentation.  She has shown a lot of gratitude to the ones who work closer with students, Teachers and House Parents and has displayed very meaningful reasons to respect them.

Most of us had a special teacher that had a lasting effect on us so, last but not least, Aya encouraged us to talk about a teacher who was important in our life’s 🙂

Thank you Aya for your thoughtful words!

A great language and culture diversity is represented at CDL. Promoting this diversity is everyone’s business — students, teachers, Leadership and parents.  Join us to celebrate!

You choose 2 first places. Congratulations!!

Dear girls thank you for your participation, for your effort, your vote and for all these wonderful photos you took yourself!

Good bye Autumn!

2nd place:

3rd place:

Welcome Winter!

Today we have continued with the second pillar of the Well-being program: Protecting against bullying & respecting diversity with an excellent Olivia’s presentation about Bullying .

We have learnt about it; what is , people affected: those who are bullied, those who bully, those who witness bullying and their negative effects in all of them. Olivia did a fantastic job not only preparing this presentation but sharing her own experience and facilitating that everyone in the house shared their experience too.

Thanks Olivia, brilliant work!

Terray girls took the masterchef competition to another level with this incredible Terray Cake!

Ana Sofia’s creation has Austro-Hungarian roots, it is a light sponge with the main ingredient being almonds and hazelnuts. It is filled with homemade raspberry/strawberry jam, as well as crème pâtissière and chocolate cream. On the top it has 11 choux craquelin, covered in caramel filled with vanilla crème chantille or crème pâtissière. The piping is meant to resemble the very classic gâteau St-Honoré.

Very proud of your effort!

Check out the pictures of our Saturday trip to Lyon  !!!

It is the third largest city in France, after Paris and Marseille and is set on a hilly site at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers.

We wandered the streets of the old town, Vieux Lyon and around the nice squares of Presqu’île. We climbed the hill to to arrive to the Ancient Theatre of Fourvière. We visited Lyon Cathedral and we had a french lunch just next to its door. Not forgeting we crossed some of the many Lyon’s bridges and discovered the lively street markets.   🙂

Nous avons fait un bon voyage!

Such a great time yesteday in our House dinner!  We cook a delicious homemade menu with pumpkin soup, spaghettis au pesto, tuna empanada, Spanish omelette and a churros dessert!

Thank you girls for such an amaizing time together and for your cooking skills !

Prefects are students that have proven they can be trustworthy and responsible. They have an interest in obtaining a leadership role in the House amongst their peers and they help bridge the gap in a number of areas between our Boarding community at large and the staff.

We are very lucky to count with two Prefects in Villa Terray, Ana Sofia and Natalina!  They were helping in our last Boarding assembly. Also, Natalina went on stage to talk about the hidden reality of “brands”.

Thank you girls for your active collaboration!

Last week we started the second pillar of our well being Program: Protecting against bullying & respecting diversity.

During two sessions we have explored the term Stereotype. Studying in such a diverse School community, it is important that we challenge many stereotypes around us in order to respect each other.

With different games and discussions we have been looking about gender, looks and nationality stereotypes. Our discussion focused on identify them, think about their origin and their negative impact on our community.

Often when we begin to interact with people who are different from us, our experience of the “other” expands. It’s important to surface these general ideas about others that plays in our head. Once stereotypes are challenged repeatedly, it makes it harder to stereotype in the future.

https://www.nordangliaeducation.com/en/our-schools/switzerland/cdl/students/international-diversity

We hope that our wonderful Miss Henar spent a great Birthday on the 28th October and we all wish her lots of happiness and love!! Thank you for everything you do, for being so caring, kind and dedicated! Lots of love!! Sofia and the girls <3

Great work from Ana Sofia and Rikka carving our Villa Terray Jack-O-Lantern, Pepito! Fingers crossed for a good result in this Boarding House competition.

Thank you Aya and Natalina for participating in the The 4th edition of Hooping for a Cure that took place at the end of this month in Collège du Léman.  All proceeds will be donated to ESCA Cancer Support!

https://www.cancersupport.ch/

We hope you had a relaxing week girls 🙂  We can’t wait to welcome back to Villa Terray and continue with more adventures!

Have a safe flight! Enjoy your holidays!

Congratulations Jasmine for becoming a new member of the National Honor Society!

We are very proud you!   🙂

https://www.nhs.us/about/

Following our last session in Healthy nutrition, this week we have talked about sugar in our diet.
Teenagers have the highest intake of sugar among all population and, as any food, can be harmful if taken in excess. Especially sugars added during processing foods such as sodas, candies, pastries and snacks.

With a quiz game we have checked the daily intake recommended for teenagers and the surprising amount of sugar in some of our favourite drinks and foods!

Thank you girls for helping with the shopping and Villa Terray decoration.

You make this house a home!

Thank you girls! # Team Terray

Great battle between  Team Jialin- Helen and  Team Jasmine – Yida.   #AboutlastSunday

4th Session of # Wellbeing at Terray’s

Mission –> Nutrition

This weekend we talked about balanced food, cooking ideas and methods of cooking, as well as we discussed about the budget and the healthy products/essential nutrients.

Bon appétit! Source of the pictures on the Power point: Google

Thank you Rikka for opening our Boarding assembly playing a beautiful violin piece.

We are very proud of you!

While some of the girls went adventurous and played Paintball other were playing tennis, Trivial Pursuit or eating dinner with friends 🙂

A basic in the kitchen, very healthy and versatile.  With a few apples from our nearby farm https://www.fermecourtois.ch/

Enjoying fruits at Villa Terray 🙂

Mont Blanc…Just contemplate and admire… La vie est belle!

This week we have discussed the importance of sleeping well. We started taking a questionaire about our routines and the scores showed that almost all of us should improve the cuantity and quality of sleep!

The disccussion after was interesting. Everybody shared the reasons that can make us go late to bed: social media, homework, stress, etc.. and we compared them with the one’s from the teens of the following video

Finally, after expolring ways to improve our sleep, we took a challenge …No phones or computers in our beedroom during the night. How was it?… Some of them read a book, others were chatting before bedtime but all of us saw that is possible to disconnect earlier from our phones and find ways to get better rest 🙂

Thank you girls. It was great to hear your ideas!

We would like to dedicate you one of your favourite songs for your Birthday, dancing queen!

In our third session we have talked about meditation and the ways we quiet our mind down.

We have also listened to a guided meditation podcast. The theme was accepting change.  As a senior high students there are many changes to be faced and sometimes we have desperately tried to prevent and stop change from happening.
Instead of resisting, it is better to allow change to unfold and try to understand what’s transforming and why.

The girls enjoyed of this calmed session and took some time after to relax before coming back to study.

Thank you girls for your ideas and your willingness to participate 🙂

Villa Terray girls did their very best along with the boys of Concha and the girls of Louis Yung 7 team. It was a terrfic afternoon where they battled it out across a whole field events, including badmintong shooting, tug of war, three legs race, ping pong race, keep the ball up and basket.

Thank you girls for your energy!

This week we had the visit of Yuna, a very friendly Yorkshire terrier. The girls were playing with her and enjoying of her sweet company.

No long after….. Olivia was walking our neighbour Dixie, a cute cocker spaniel.  They went for a stroll and came back very cheerful after their first walk  together 🙂

Last Tuesday we had our second Wellbeign session and we focused on the benefits of nature. We went for a walk in the nearby forest, part of Les Douves nature reserve.

We did this activity because just a walk in the woods can awaken the innermost feelings of happiness and peace.

After our walk we shared how we were feeling and noticing we were much happier and relaxed.

Studies show benefits of walking in nature like reducing stress, helping with depression, helping brain fuction or increasing positivity. A great discovery to realise how such a simple action can help us so much boosting our wellbeing.

Thank you for an amazing walk girls!

https://www.ge.ch/document/nature-petits-guides-reserves-bois-versoix/telecharger

Wonderful activities, fresh mountain air, great new friends…what more ?? 🙂

Not only respectful and motivated but very well organised and positive!! Thank you and well done girls!!

As a firts step in our Wellbeing programme, today, we have discussed what it means Wellbeing with the girls of Villa Terray.

It is important that we identify what can make us happy, healthy and confident and keep a balance with our achivements or academic skills.

To identify the wholeness of this concept we have created a Wellbeing wheel and we have chosen 6 values:

Sleep, Nutrition, Mood, Physical activity, Leisure time and managing School.

We have measured them in a scale from 1 to 10 reflecting how we are currently doing and we conected the dots linking one to the next so that all of the spokes on the Wellbeing Wheels.

It helped us to think where is our balance or what are the consecuences of choosing bad habits, how is all connected and the most important… how can all we find opportunities to improve our wellbeing with small changes 🙂

It was a great excursion and a beautiful day !

Mango smoothies to start followed by Indian food…..  Yummy!

After a summer full of adventures our Villa Terray girls have returned full of energy and enthusiasm!

This is our walk on the first day of School 🙂

Today Jialin and Rikka had the chance to meet other new and returning students!  There were games, activities and a welcome barbecue where we enjoyed the summer weather.

A warm welcome from the whole boarding team  🙂