Two of my granddaughters are now teenagers, not children any more but young ladies in the making. I suppose every grandmother thinks her grandchildren are special but no grandmother was ever blessed with two like mine.
Claudia is the eldest, almost 18 now and in her last year of school. At the moment she is on a school trip to Borneo. Goodness only knows why Borneo? All I could remember about the place was that many years ago David Attenborourgh went on a “Quest for a Dragon” in the rain forests of Borneo and as kids we would talk about the “Wild Man of Borneo” but I had forgotten what that was all about so I did a Google search and found that it should have been the “Wild Men of Borneo” who were a pair of exceptionally strong dwarfs who travelled with the Barnem freak show but that’s another story. I don’t expect Claudia will meet any Wild Men there.
This will be Claudia’s last year of school as she will go into Year 12 when school resumes at the end of the month. She will be doing her High School Certificate and she has been selected to be the School Captain (Head Girl to all you non Australians). School Captains are chosen by a rather complicated process that involves both the staff and the pupils of the school so the one who is chosen must be popular with the other girls and also be bright and hard working to find favour in the eyes of the staff. Claudia had a very good year in the class room as she came first in five of the six subjects that she was taking. The one subject she did not do so well in was Chemistry, she ONLY came SIXTH in that. She hopes next year to go to university and do a general science course. She has not made up her mind yet what she wants to do but she knows it will be in the science world. This will be a great loss to the literary and artistic worlds as she has also always got high marks for English and Art.
Lauren, her younger sister turned 15 last October and also is bright and beautiful. In 2012 she was among the finalist in the Junior Tropfest. Tropfest is the world’s largest short film festival. The junior section for contestants under sixteen has approximately 200 entrants. Shortly before the closing date Lauren decided to put in an entry. She produced her film all on her own, with no input from her family or friends. We were all very impressed when she was shortlisted, after all 40? out of 200 entrants is an achievement. We had to wait about two weeks for the 12 finalists to be announced. The rules of the competition require that the entrants make a brand new short film. To ensure that the entry is brand new each year a new code word is issued. The code word for 2012 was Juice. The film did not have to be about Juice it just needed for the word Juice to have been used at least once in the production. This was just to ensure that the production was new and made especially for the 2012 Junior Tropfest. When the 12 finalists were announced and Lauren was amongst them the family were all very thrilled and eagerly awaited the finals. None of us had seen Laurens film yet and she had been asked by the competition committee not to make it public until after the results were announced so she would not show it to us. On the night of the finals the 12 films were screened on a large open air screen at the Domain in Sydney and sadly Lauren was not among the three prize winners. But if you go to http://tropfest.com/tropjr/ and look for Freshly Squeezed you will be able to see Lauren film. I am sure you will agree that maybe some of the other films were more ambitious than hers, they were mostly made by a team of youngsters whereas Laurens was done completely on her own. The idea, the animation, sound effects, filming, directing and producing were all her own so we think she did a great job and we are very proud of her. As sure as her sister is that she is going into the science world Lauren is sure that she is going the artistic route. She would like to study fashion design. I think she will do well at this as she already sews beautifully and is very artistic and imaginative.
Yes they are both very bright and talented, doing well at all their school subject and at sport too but more importantly they are both thoroughly nice girls. Well-mannered, polite, caring and beautiful. One day I will watch as Claudia is honoured for some great scientific work and Lauren is holding a fashion show to introduce her latest collection.
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