Booster: The Places We Love

Even though we can't travel, we can still remember the places near and far that are special to us.

For this edition of Booster, everyone had to think of a place that they love and write down what it is and why it is special to them. Some of us also illustrated our descriptions.

Most of our favorite places are "relaxing." We learned how to properly write a sentence about things that relax us, or are relaxING :)

These places need not be a place we can get to easily ... sometimes a place that is special to us is already a place from our past that we might not be able to visit anymore. Or sometimes it is imaginary! Edo for example learned a new word for his favorite most fascinating place: a "shipwreck" under the sea!

Our Short Stories: Year 5

To end our unit of study on short stories, we wrote some of our own inspired by an image. Take a look at our best work from the students in Year 5:

I'm Out

by Giulio Marradini, Eleonora Nuti, Neri Raspanti

I do not feel comfortable in my life anymore. My routine kills me day after day and I cannot stand my girlfriend any longer. Hi, my name is Matthew, I am 28 years old and I’m in a crisis. 

Let’s start from the beginning. I am an accountant, I hate my job, it is repetitive, overwhelming, stressful. I work up to ten hours a day and oh my God, my colleagues are so irritating I won’t even waste a word on them. 

At home the matter is awful as well. My girlfriend Susie (even her name disgusts me now) makes me go crazy. She claims she needs a baby, she wants to experience motherhood, but what the heck, I’m not ready for it! Who on earth would ever wish a baby human to control his life? Not me!! 

It has been for quite some time that I have been feeling this way, but now, thank God, I found the solution: I quit, I’m out, goodbye everyone! I have decided that I am going to work from the beach of a forgotten island (thanks for existing technology!). All I am going to need is my desk, my computer and a roof over my head. 

I have just packed my things and left a message for Susie on which I wrote that she must never try to  reach me again for the rest of her life. It’s official: I am leaving, I leave the life I hate.  

I have just got on my new island; I love it! I feel more as free than I have ever felt in my life! My first month here has been amazing. I was able to manage my existence the way I always wished: stress is gone, I no longer hate my job, and I eat, listen, watch and do whatever I want. However, after having arrived on this island a while ago, my happiness has already vanished. I am an insatiable human being. I realized I am always looking for pleasure and calm, but apparently nothing indulges my needs. I believe I am not right for this world, neither company nor loneliness is what I desire. I am out again, I don’t even know where I will end up. I hope somewhere... nowhere.  

Several weeks have passed and no one has received Matthew’s news. That was bizarre since he would  usually respond to his mother and his boss, but yet both of them were newsless. What happened? Rescuers were sent to the island, though Matthew was not found. All they saw were footprints on the sand disappearing into thin air. 

FAUST

by Freddi, Graffia, Santini

Faust had never been so happy since he was a child. He forgot his loneliness when he saw that beautiful sunset. He felt less lonely even if he was alone on that beach than when he was surrounded by a lot of people in chaotic London. He left his family and parents because he felt oppressed by that frenetic life in a metropolis. Now, in that little paradise on a small island in Oceania, he felt like he was connected with nature. He discovered his origins when he deleted all the superficial things in life.

Since Faust was a child, he thought he was not like the others; he wasn’t attracted by what his classmates liked, and didn’t aspire to have a good job. He just wanted to find his place in the world. He had always been seen as a bad kid, because his classmates thought he was very weird and too quiet. Paradoxically, he felt happy when he was alone and that was the reason why as an adult he decided to leave everything, even his job, buy a boat and sail to Oceania. Because of a failure on his boat, he was forced to stay on a deserted island with nothing but animals and plants; he needed to survive there. Finally, he understood his place in the world and he felt ecstatic, and lived there forever.

Our Short Stories: Year 4

To end our unit of study on short stories, we wrote some of our own inspired by an image. Take a look at our best work from the students in Year 4:

BLACK or WHITE? “GREY”

by Ginevra Vannuzzi & Beatrice Iodice

It was a good day for our Juliette. In the small city of Wales, she was adopted by an excessively big family, and her life would be so difficult … It was another rainy day when some politicians imposed new laws to limit black people's rights. 

Juliette was an 18-year-old, sensitive, creative and kind girl who was born in Africa. She had long curly hair, green eyes and she was quite tall. Although she had suffered a lot during her childhood for the her color of her the skin, one day something changed.                        

In an old dusty library worked Matthew, a 20-year-old white man, very open minded, clever and honourable, maybe because he loved to read books. There, Juliette went to find a Harper Lee’s novel called To Kill a Mockingbird about the fight against racism. There were a few moments of silence when their eyes peered into each other. In a muffled, hesitant voice, the girl said: “Do you have any Harper Lee novels?” and Matthew showed her some books. At that moment they fell in love, but they didn’t know that their love would be very difficult… Juliette started to secretly meet Matthew because her father, Rob, didn’t want her to! Rob was a selfish, cruel and insensitive man, who always wanted to “protect” his daughter, but she didn’t need it. He was a 50-year-old fat man, very possessive toward his daughter Juliette and certainly not very informed about youth. 

On a sunny day, Matthew and Juliette met, and while he was pushing her hood back, revealing her curly black hair, Rob arrived and said angrily, "Juliette, what are you doing here with this boy?" He waited for a response from her, but she didn’t raise her head. Rob continued: “You are grounded, go home!” and she ran away. 

Thoughts began to run through Juliette’s mind. She wanted to fight for her love, for her true feelings and so, as an act of rebellion, she created a dress with the pages of Harper Lee’s novel and she escaped from her room wearing it. She went to the city center, and she started screaming loudly - while cameras were recording- that she had the same rights of white people, that she was free. Juliette said: “Why are black people, like me, treated differently from others? I say BLACK or WHITE? “GREY!” She continued:” We have the same dignity and we can decide who we want to love!”Suddenly Matthew appeared and a smile began to spread on her face. Matthew asked her to marry him and she accepted, in the name of her freedom. 

THE END.

Letter to My Sister

by Agostini, Cammi, Doni

Dear Susan,  

I miss you. 

I miss your presence here with me. Everyone misses you but you don’t have to worry about me because I'm starting to feel better and  better. I think this is also due to a very unique event. I think it’s something spectacular, even if apparently insignificant. 

Every day I see two young  people walking in front of my terrace. I don’t know their names and they are not even engaged. Yet I cannot explain how I look forward to their everyday meeting. They don’t exchange any words and barely look at each other, but in that split second I feel a spark, and I'm not even an acquaintance of theirs. Ironically, I call them “the boy with the hat” and “the girl with dogs” just to give you an idea. You would not believe it, but I have also bought binoculars to better observe them. The man’s style is charming, and as you may have guessed he always wears a hat while the woman is well-dressed and colourful. She always walks her dogs, so joyfully that I become happy just looking at her.  

By now I am practically obsessed with the two of them. Every  afternoon at 16.30 I look out the window hoping to see them again because I fell madly in love with their looks, the same ones that mum and dad had when they looked into each other's eyes, don’t you remember? You can't understand how much I miss them, but the two of them make me want to smile again. As you know by now they have never said a single word to one another, but from my window I can observe their shadows from above, which is as if they were speaking to each other. While they observe each other, the world around them stops for a few  moments, and it is as if by magic they were catapulted into one of Isabel Allende’s books. 

One day I was at the window while they were there walking on the sidewalk, without even looking at each other. Then I decided at a certain point to scream: “Talk to each other!” Without understanding where the voice was coming from, they turned around and it was love at first sight. Despite the distance that separates us, I still have a little hope. 

Goodbye and see you soon,  

Sophie

The equivocal sense of the words

by Emma Giannelli, Giovanni Fazzi, Elena Veccia

He had just gotten home after a hard day at work and so, he went as usual to the kitchen to get some  water.  As he turned on the tap, he looked at the dirty dishes  messily arranged in the sink. His children were are probably  having fun somewhere in the house while his wife was talking loudly on the phone in the living room. The glass filled with water, and the water spilled over the rim, wetting his whole hand. He immediately turned off the tap, and he turned toward the table, dripping down the floor with his overflowing glass of water in his right hand.  While he was sipping water he looked at the clock on the opposite wall, it was 7:22 p.m.

The door closed behind her, the sun was about to set over the west coast.  She often went for walks that way to the place where she regularly meets her friends. She really likes it there because during the summer it’s always full of people looking at the stalls, creating a festive atmosphere. She really needs to be distracted this afternoon.

He’s thinking of his family in Camargo. Since he left for the United States, he had not seen them again, maybe that was the price he had to pay for a life he found fulfilling. When he was only 19 years old, he ran away from home taking his current wife with him. He  was employed in a shoe factory, and for 20 years he did  nothing but polishing, cutting and lacing shoes. Despite his menial job, he managed to afford a modest house and feed his two children. He remembered the birth of Andrew, a moment full of joy, and his little Elias making two toy cars collide. For a while he reconstructed  every happy moment  that crossed his mind, but when he got closer to the present, his mood slowly changed. Now he’s thinking  about himself as if he were looking at a mirror in front of him, and all those pleasant times had vanished. He never did anything so important in his life despite his efforts, and nothing he dreamed of really materialized.  If he had stayed in Camargo he would probably have enjoyed a little more time spent with his grandparents, but he actually didn’t care about that so much, and also the memory of his hometown had faded. He imagined his parents in their desolate garden. It looks like a graveyard.

The world was falling upon her; never before had she suffered like that. She had broken up with her boyfriend, but she believed that it wasn’t the relationship with him that made her feel so bad. She had high expectations for her future. She wanted to study and graduate with honours, and then find a respectable job and have a peaceful and balanced life. With these ideas in her head she had been busy with books, eating healthfully, and practicing yoga regularly. Now, the appearance of a fault in her  almost perfect life has crushed her plans. Although she was trying hard to keep everything under control, her heart was getting heavier and heavier. The structure assiduously built in her mind was inexorably collapsing and what remained was just the desperate action of quickening her pace. She was on the verge of bursting with emotion when as soon as she turned the corner, those anguished thoughts began to ease at the dazzling sight of the red sun setting fabulously over the sea. She was so engrossed in herself that she hadn’t even noticed the lively atmosphere that passers by were making from afar and the hubbub of the stalls.

The gentle rising and falling of the waves made him forget for a little while what 10 seconds ago disturbed him. Faced with the spectacle that the port held in store, the people around him became ghosts, but he also felt that he was not alone among all those shadows. There was someone else present. He turned his head as if he had a magnet attached to his left temple. A girl was staring at him in the middle of the flow of the people. She was very young,  probably she was 18 years old, and she was also very beautiful, with long straight brown hair and an elegant upright posture. Her shining eyes looked into his pupils, but she didn’t seem to have any interest in investigating him. She seemed to be there more by chance. Even though her lips were making a soft smile her expression was the opposite of being happy. Surely, she was also in difficulty. He really wanted to console her as a father would console his daughter.

How strange, she stopped thinking about her boyfriend and now she was thinking about that man who, for some mysterious reason, had felt close to  her more than anything else. She thought to herself, "Maybe he has broken up with someone, too."  She was trying to figure out what could perturb his soul, but she couldn’t can’t come up with an explanation. The sun disappeared under the horizon and she finally got home. She went into the kitchen; she’s very thirsty.

Our Short Stories: Year 3

To end our unit of study on short stories, we wrote some of our own inspired by an image. Take a look at our best work from the students in Year 3:

The tale of the hotel of Life

by Baggio, Riscaris, Minervini

There was once a tale that when your life comes to an end, you have to check into a mysterious hotel. Miles and miles of hallways with doors to choose from. These doors show you all the memories and experiences you have been through in your life.

Every person who passes on has a choice. Some of the doors could lead to the most beautiful moments they have lived, or to someone’s worst tragedies.This is a story about a man for whom, once his life ended, another unexpected adventure began.

Edgar Pinto died at 78 years old. He woke up and realized that the Tale of the Hotel of Life was true, and he found himself prepared to re-watch all of his memories. Edgar checked-in and started wandering in the hallways. He started noticing that he wasn’t familiar with some of the doors. When he opened them, he saw some incredible adventures being played out in different places in the world. This was very strange to Edgar, because in his life he had never left his little town just outside of Lima, Peru.

Edgar soon realized that there was a mistake, he noticed that all the doors lead to every scenario except for ones he had actually lived himself. He was curious, so he started exploring these different moments. He saw deserts, snowy mountains, busy cities, and golden skies. But reality soon caught up with him as he had to make a decision that would determine his eternity. Which door would he choose to stay in?

Edgar unexpectedly found himself missing his own memories of life. As extravagant as these other memories were, he was ultimately looking for his own.

This tells us that as incredible and beautiful as another life can be, your memories and the people you have met will always be even more special to you.

A strange story

by Maggiani, Parisi, Brogelli

The strangest case they ever gave me was that of an apparent murder of a night guard in a museum in California. My name is Stephen Kolinsky and I am a police detective, and that was my seventieth case.

As soon as I arrived at the crime scene, my boss stopped me to tell me about what had happened. “This body was found this morning. From the analysis, he died around 3 a.m. last night, and from the corpse you will surely notice that he died from a gunshot wound. We're sure the gun was is not his, since his gun still has all the bullets in the magazine,” my boss said. 

I rushed right on the spot, still holding my sandwich with egg, ham, and ranch sauce in my mouth, and as soon as I arrived, I saw the corpse with bullet holes piercing the nape of its neck.

I immediately found the bullet, and looking at it better I understood that it had been shot from a 9mm. I quickly ran to give it to my boss to have it analyzed, however he told me that the results would be available only the next day since it was already 12 pm. However, I decided to stay there for the night and I sat down in front of the corpse. Looking up I noticed a painting, a portrait of a robot. 

To better concentrate I said aloud, “how would the killer have entered, and who is he?" I started cursing the saints since when I he heard a voice coming from in front of me; it was the picture! It came down from the painting and revealed itself alive! At that moment I wondered what they had put in my sandwich, and after a while I fell off my chair and hit my head. I recovered, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a group of figures beside me. There was "Liberty Leading the People," the "Gioconda" and the painting of the robot, but the only one that seemed to speak to me was the latter, who asked me how I was doing. 

Stammering, I replied that I was fine and that I was a detective, and then I asked him who had killed the guard. He looked me for 10 seconds, and then he turned to the lifeless body of the guard and he replied, "I know who killed him." I told him to tell me who it was, and he pointed out the girl in "Liberty Leading the People." I gasped, and I asked for explanations, so he told me that the guard was actually a thief, and he had tried to steal the painting and in response she shot him. At that moment, I started laughing, and after that my vision began to fade until I fainted.

As soon as I opened my eyes I found myself in a cell with a bed nearby and a poster of the robot painting. Then I  heard the sound of a door opening, I turned around, and I saw a lady dressed in white who said to me, "It's time for Kolinsky's medicine."

Back to Reality

by Giulio Boggetti, Matteo Iuculano and Federico Pica

9:00 am 

It was the 8th of January, the weather was very cold and a famous journalist from Forbes magazine, named John Smith, was interviewing Mr. Wilson, one of the richest people on earth.

"Good morning Mr. Wilson, I am glad to be with you today, how are you feeling about this  interview?" 

"Surprisingly, I am not feeling nervous because I already know what you are going to ask me."  

"Oh really?" 

"Yeah. When you are going to reach my level you will understand that common people are  repetitive."

"Okay, that was expected. In fact, when coming here I asked many people about your attitude and their feedback wasn't positive at all! They described you as an extroverted VIP  who doesn't care about peoples’ lives. The most surprising thing is that everyone agrees with the fact that you make your decisions superficially. Does this description represent you?" 

"Yeah, I don't like to overthink when making a decision. Usually, I flip a coin and then I decide!" 

"Oh wow! Anyway, let's get back to the main point of the interview because we're running out of time. How do you feel about the recent crisis the world is facing?"

 "As you probably already know, I am not affected much by the crisis, but I think everyone struggles in life sometimes so there is no need to worry."

 "Thank you for your time. I would like to say it was a pleasure, but I have mixed feelings about this interview. Would you come to my studio for the photo shoot since we need to  make the front page of the magazine?" 

"Okay." 

In the evening Mr. Wilson arrived at the studio late, and he was greeted by John in a very strange way: it seemed like John was very rude and anxious. As soon as Mr. Wilson entered he was  dragged into a dark room. At first, Mr Wilson started screaming for help as loud as he could, but  nobody answered. He was shaking in fear and all he could see were three doors, so he started figuring out a solution, and the first thing that came to his mind was to take one of those paths. 

Mr. Wilson quietly entered into the first door, and he was immediately teleported to a primary school. After a few seconds of confusion, Mr. Wilson recognized the school... it was the one where he studied when he was younger! He tried to talk to the people around him, but it was useless because they couldn't see him. He saw a child he recognized at once. It was himself! Mr. Wilson was frightened, he looked around, he was screaming, but no one could  hear him. The only thing Mr. Wilson could think about was following himself. He entered the school, where he saw, squinting his eyes behind a pillar, the young boy making fun of a thin, four-eyed child who started crying desperately, but Mr. Wilson jr. and his friends began to laugh at him loudly. After school, the bullied boy went home to his parents crying, but they didn't care about his broken feelings and instead of comforting him, they started scolding him. Mr. Wilson felt guilty about what he had done and tried to interact with the child, but he  couldn't.

At this point, Mr. Wilson was teleported back to the obscure room where the second door opened. Mr. Wilson immediately entered into the second door intrigued by what the first door had shown him so far. He was teleported to a company which he recognised as his own. Indeed, with its huge dimensions, this industry was looking like a huge construction surrounded by little houses. After a few seconds, Mr. Wilson entered the lobby of the building and in front of him he saw two people arguing about something. He made a few steps forward and he identified a rich man talking to an old lady. Quickly, he recognised himself in the businessman and the pretty woman was his secretary. She was giving the other person a one-week leave request made to process the death of the employee’s mother, but Mr. Wilson (the one from the past) outraged by the request at first lowered the employee’s wage, and then he decided to fire him.

Mr. Wilson found himself back in the dark room where there was the third and last door unlocked. Without thinking too much, he entered into the door in despair because of what the two previous doors had already shown him. Surprisingly, he was transported to in a white room where a large table adorned with precious stones dominated the entire area. John Smith was sitting there. Mr. Wilson was surprised and asked him:

"What are you doing here?" 

"Have you ever asked yourself who was the kind, calm, and polite person that you  mistreated? Well, that was me!" 

"No... that can't be!" 

"The interview was just an excuse to show you the doors, I was sent here by all the people that you have mistreated over the years. We gathered together to make you change! Do you  know what we all have in common?" 

"...No." 

"We all have doors!" 

"I am truly sorry, I could have never imagined that... Can you tell me the names of the other people in the group?" 

"They are too many..." 

"I don't care, I will spend the rest of my life helping not only those people but everyone! I know now that all my actions have consequences on other peoples’ lives."

[back to reality] 

9:00 am 

It was the 8th of January, the weather was very cold and a famous journalist from Forbes magazine, named John Smith, was interviewing Mr. Wilson, one of the richest people on earth: 

"Good morning Mr. Wilson, I am glad to be with you today, how are you feeling about this  interview?" 

"I am very happy to be doing this interview with an old friend… "

A Road

by Lorenzo Crucitti, Leonardo Benvenuti, Niccolò Terrazzi

Every night for the past few weeks, Joe had woken up at the same time in a sweat. He opened his eyes and looked at his clock on his bedside table. It was 3 o’clock in the morning yet again. He tried to remember what had woken him up. After a while, he started to have visions of doors.

 

Joe had always been a good sleeper; he got a lot of exercise, and had a busy timetable at school. He usually relied on his alarm clock to wake him up. However, recently a recurring dream had been waking him up in the middle of the night. At first, he wasn’t worried; he spoke to his parents about it. They thought it was just a passing phase. After a few weeks, Joe became nervous and started losing weight. His parents decided to send him to a therapist. They thought by talking about his dream it could help him come to a resolution. 

 

Dr. Leonard was a therapist who specialised in young people. Joe was not sure whether this would be a solution to his problem or not. He felt uneasy talking about his dreams to a stranger. When Joe arrived at the office he was greeted by a lovely young woman. “Hello Joe , I’m Dr. Leonard. Nice to meet you.” Joe was surprised, he thought Dr. Leonard would be an old man with white hair and glasses. Dr. Leonard showed him her brightly coloured room where she told him to make himself at home. She asked him what was bothering him. Joe replied that it was a strange dream night after night that was starting to torment him. Dr. Leonard asked him to explain his dream. Joe said: “ Every night I dream that there are numerous doors in a hallway, I stand before the doors, and I can’t make up my mind which door to open. When I finally decide and I put my hand on the door handle, I wake up.”

Dr. Leonard asked Joe how long he had been having the dream, Joe said for about the last couple of months. Dr. Leonard asked Joe what year he was in at school. Joe said  “I’m in my final year of high school.”  Dr. Leonard asked him if he had decided what he was going to do the next year. He said that he still didn’t know. His parents wanted him to go to university. His maths teacher encouraged him to study maths, his English teacher told him to study literature, the P.E. teacher said he should try out for a sports scholarship. Dr. Leonard told him to relax and not to worry about the dream any longer and to come back next week at the same time.

 

The following week, when Joe returned to Dr. Leonard’s office, he looked relaxed and well rested. “How is it going Joe?” she asked. “Great," he replied, “I finally decided what I’m going to do next year.”

“Oh really?!”

“Yes," he said, “ I’m taking a gap year, I’m going to travel around the world.” Dr. Leonard said, “How did you decide on that?” and I answered,  “Last week after our meeting, I dreamt about the doors again. Finally, when I decided which door to open I didn’t wake up, I opened the door and went right through.”

Then she said, “What was on the other side?” and I said, “There was a road.”