Snow time!

We have a lot of snow here now so the children decided to make the best out of this time.
Although everybody had an amazing time so far, it is sad because we just had the last snowball fight with Devin and Lucas.

Newcomers

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am Luca and he is Lucas and we are new.
This week we had:

• HISTORY
• ENGLISH
• MATH
• GYM
• MUSIC
• ART

While all the other kids were in Italy.

Hope they are having a good time.

:) :0 XD ;) :P

Winter Sports

Now that the weather has turned cold, in P.E. we are going ice skating and curling! 3 weeks ago we went curling and since then we have been going ice skating every Wednesday afternoon. It is really fun!!!!

Now I can go really fast, turn around and I look really cool in front of people :)
Although I cannot stop very well I hope I will be able to learn this over the coming weeks. Miss Fish learned to stop this week so I'm pretty jealous of her!

And the best part is that in the changing room there is a big machine with hot chocolate and I had the best one ever... Yummy!

by Mara

Crépe Cooking

The idea of a cooking came up one morning in the computer room. Me and Leon asked if we can do a cooking day. Miss Prendiville said that it would be best to ask Sandra to help us organize it. We went to see the kitchen to look what we have and what we don’t have! We saw it would be easy to do crèpes! So we went to the teachers and asked if we could do crèpes on the following Wednesday - everyone said yes! On the Tuesday Dario, Leon and I brought in some things that are useful to make crèpes. In the afternoon we did the shopping for the ingredients with Sandra. On the next day we all arrived early in the morning to prepare everything, like the batter. So we started to fry the crèpes at 10:10. We were short of time before and ready to give up but then we gave ourselves a kick and we got it ready for break time! Leon did the serving and Dario and I did the frying in the kitchen. So for the whole cooking team was it a big pleasure to do the cooking for the whole class!!

By John Erik

After School Activities

Students at St. George's can't get enough of school! That's why many choose to stay after lessons for extra-curricular activities. Here you can see students enjoying Art and Trampolining.

House day

It’s a new year and with it we usher in changes and new traditions. We observed one of these new traditions yesterday, when all of the students donned their house colors to show school spirit and friendship. Most of the students in Morat, Bienne, and Neuchatal wore red, white, and green respectively, though some chose to sport a combination of the three. By an interesting coincidence, yesterday was also the day designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Peace, a time to celebrate the absence of war and the cooperation of different nations. As we continue into this school year, we shall continue to promote and reflect these ideals through the celebration of both our individuality and our similarities.

Morat - radiant in red

Bienne - wonderful in white

Neuchâtel - great in green

By Elizaveta Uvarova

London Calling

Last week we went to London, we visited Shakespeare's Globe , watched Macbeth and had a wonderful tour around London and visited Shakespeare's historic sites.

We also went shopping in Covent Garden which was very fun and then one day we went to Abercrombie 3 times. On the first day we went on a plane as a school, it was fun :) We also went to Oxford Street once we arrived but Ms. Thompson couldn't find Abercombie and Fitch and we ended up walking so much our feet hurt. (Clara got blisters!) We then had fish and chips but got kicked out at 9, because the restaurant closed.

On Tuesday we went to the Globe Theatre. It was amazing (but boiling, I could boil an egg on Kirsty's back). That evening we went to see Macbeth and it was very gory. Mini witches attacked Lucas and made him run around like a lunatic and get all bloody. (Sounds amazing right?)

On Wednesday we went to the Imperial War Museum. And while we walked around Carla was scoffing her face with sushi. Meanwhile the cool people (Kirsty, Sharon and of course Clara) bought awesome spy glasses. We could see people behind us (cool right?). In the afternoon we went shopping in Convert Garden and had a wonderful shopping trip. We wanted to get big bags.

On Thursday it was time to go home but fate had other plans. Our flight got cancelled because of the French air traffic strikes. We waited at the airport for hours playing with our suitcases and we managed to see Gaga trip over her 7 inch snazzy shoes at the airport. (No we didn't get autographs she was too mad at her shoes.) Guess those shoes weren't made for walking Gaga!

We stayed at a hotel that BA managed to book for us, and left to go back to Switzerland at 6 in the morning. It was a VERY fun trip....

Written by Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi (aka Sharon, Carla and Clara)

Final Week

This week we went to visit 2 museums. The Natural History Museum and the Musée Militaire in Colombier.

In the Natural History Museum we went to visit the Da Vinci exhibition. It was a very well put together exhibition with lots of machines.

In the museum in Colombier we visited an art exposition created by Plonk and Re-Plonk. It was difficult for some people because they needed to speak french to understand the funny phrases. The pictures were great though!

Yesterday we went to the lake for an end of term party and to say goodbye to the people who are leaving. We went to get 2 pedalos in the port so we could swim from the lake-side to the pedalos. We had a good picnic and we ate the cookies we made the day before. It was fun in general (maybe a bit too hot).

Carla, Clara, Sharon and Sebastien nearly got run over by a boat !

By Anne-Gabrielle Dubuis

Bon voyage!

Almost everybody has gone to England, leaving behind just enough people to update the blog. Here are some pics from this morning as they were about to leave for the airport, all looking very excited about getting to sample some real English delights like fish and chips, afternoon tea and, of course, Marmite! We hope they remember to bring some back for us...It promises to be a very interesting and fun-packed week with trips to the Globe Theatre for a Shakespeare workshop, Macbeth in the open air (let's hope they have better weather than us here in Switzerland!), the Imperial War Museum, the Tate Modern, the Trocadero, Covent Garden... the list goes on.We hope you enjoy your trip!

Making Solar Cells

During this topic we had to make 3 solar cells. One of the solar cells would be made of blackberry dye. Another would be made out of raspberry dye and the last one would be made of ruthenium dye which is very expensive. During this investigation we needed gloves, a lab coat and safety glasses had to be worn at all times during the experiment. Mathew was our chemistry teacher for the experiment and he does research on solar cells and what molecules absorb the most light to create more energy. We soaked the glass with titanium alloy on it in the dyes. We left it for around 2 hours and came back to shave some of it off so there was only an area of 1cm² . You would want the square to be closer to one side than the other for a better absorption of energy. Then we took them outside to test them. The raspberry turned out to do better than the blackberry by a couple of millivolts but were close enough to say they both give the same amount of energy absorbed, it was just affected probably the way it was made. The ruthenium beat them both by a long shot and reacts by far more than the berry dyes but is still to expensive to save the Earth! These solar cells are better than the ones you see outside because the ones that outside have to have direct sun light and these can absorb light inside and on cloudy days.

By Devin Marchiondo

Science week review

Hi guys!

Here is what we did in our wonderful science week!

We started that week on Tuesday 27^th April and we finished it on Friday 30^th.

On Tuesday, we, the junior class, first did a lesson about acids and bases with the only woman of the week, Ingrid. I really enjoyed that lesson because I learned quite a lot and I discovered things I would never think of otherwise.

Then, in the afternoon, we had lessons with Peter, the funny one. We learned about colours, more exactly which colours our eye really sees and how they are really called. The prime colours are cyan, yellow and magenta. [Are you sure about this?]

He showed us how you do to make dark blue, which is made by 2 cells of cyan and 1 of magenta. But then, the best part came. We could paint ourselves and we took some cool pictures.

Next day, Wednesday, we had Matthew first to make some solar cells. We did boys vs. girls for the one who makes the most electricity out of the cell.

The total made the boys winner! We also learned how all the colours were made. Black is made out of purple, green....and many other colours!

It was a cool morning!!!

In the afternoon, we had Ingrid to make a special art method where we had to use chemicals. We took some flowers from outside (sorry nature), we put them on our paper, which had been put into the formula, we exposed it to the sun and then the image of our flowers was on the paper because the chemicals react to light. We made many of those!

In the evening, we could watch the science show well made by Peter and the parents were also invited.

Thursday, the juniors went hiking and visited a glacier. It also was a nice day.

Friday, the middles went hiking but the juniors went on with the art thingy (it surely has another name). [developing photographs, perhaps? Maybe someone else can tell us about this activity]

A big thanks to the scientist group for that wonderful week!

Dario

Spectacular Science

Hello,

Today was an almost whole science day!

It was super!

This morning the junior class and I went to the science class to learn about acidic, basic and neutral liquids.

We all had a lot of fun mixing up the different ''ingredients'' to figure out what was what.

(At least I did...)

Then we went to lunch (Yeah!).

During lunch, Miss Fish tried to explain to me how we could know the difference between acidic, basic and neutral things.

I wasn't really receptive (sorry Miss), but the polenta was excellent!
Direction chemistry class!

Also a lot of fun!

Like Miss Fish said, I will never be able to understand people when they have an accent...and (of course) the teacher had a super Welsh accent!!!

We learned about colors in the rainbow and about how blue isn't called ''blue'' but cyan and that pink isn't called ''pink'' but magenta.

Did you know that our eyes (or retinas) can only identify 3 colors (cyan, yellow and magenta)?

*Edit: I think we need to revise this little bit. Who can comment and tell us the three colours we can detect?*

We got presents! Some super bracelets, necklaces, .... that glow in the dark!!!

AND! We were able to facepaint ourselves!

In general a beautiful day!

You're sad you're not in our school huh?

By Anne-Gabrielle

Science Week

We have all been very busy preparing for Science Week next week!
Here are some chemistry book reviews by our senior students to help get you in the mood:

The Molecule and Its Double
Article written by: Sameer Garg

The book titled The Molecule and Its Double, talks about molecules which form mirror images. To understand what this means, we should first know that a molecule is essentially a neutral group of at least two atoms held together by covalent bonds (very strong chemical bonds). Molecules which are asymmetric, meaning they lack an internal plane of symmetry, form mirror images that appear to be the same but in actuality are not. A common example of this phenomenon is seen by looking at your left or right hand in the mirror.

(right hand in mirror) (left hand palm up)

(right hand in left hand glove)

Your left hand is the mirror image of your right hand. Also, a right hand doesn’t fit in a left hand glove.

The left and right hand appear to be symmetrical but a left hand glove doesn’t fit properly on the right hand. The problem however is not with both hands but instead with only one hand. Your hand is asymmetrical and therefore does not produce the same exact image in the mirror. The two hands are “non-superimposable mirror images” meaning that the mirror image cannot be placed on the actual hand.

In the same way at a molecular level, molecules can be “non-superimposable mirror images” also called chiral which comes from the Greek word for hand. The feature that is most often the cause of chirality in molecules is the presence of an asymmetric carbon atom. This is a carbon atom in the shape of a tetrahedral which is bonded to four different groups.

The carbon in alanine, shown below, is asymmetric meaning it is bonded to four different groups. The presence of an asymmetric carbon atom allows a molecule to exist in two forms which are mirror images of each other.

Like left and right handed gloves, the structures are not spatially equivalent to each other even though the bond sequence in these structures is the same. In conclusion, we find that molecules have doubles which are mirror images that have the same arrangement or makeup however, the structures look different.

Gaia. A new look at life on Earth.
Article written by: Elizaveta Uvarova

In my article I'm not going to present you James Lovelock as an independent scientist, environmentalist, author, researcher or Doctor Honoris Causa of several universities throughout the world. I would like to introduce James Lovelock as a creator of theory of Gaia who has a unique perspective on the fate of the earth. The idea that the earth is alive has existed since ancient times. The name Gaia (which means goddess of Earth in ancient Greek) is of a living entity and was used by Greeks two thousand years ago.

The quest for Gaia began more than 30 years ago, when NASA ( the National Aeronatics and Space Administration of the USA) first made plans to look for life on Mars. And Lovelock took part in investigation of Mars. He created a completely new concept of searching for life on other planets. To assert that life on other planets could exist only in the presence of the atmosphere and favorable climatic conditions. However, during long-term studies, he came to the conclusion that life itself affects the environment. It means that to determine the existence of life on other planets, the presence of atmospheric and climatic conditions do not have fundamental significance.

Surprisingly enough, just a search for life on other planets led him to develop a new look at life on earth. Journeys into space did more than present the Earth in a new perspective. They also sent back information about its atmoshpere and its surface which provided a new insight into the interactions between the living and the inorganic parts of the planet. From this has arisen the hypotesis, the model, in which the Earth's living matter such as air, oceans, and land surface form a complex system which can be seen as a single organism and which has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life.

In his book "Gaia", James Lovelok shows how life controls its own environment. For example, by controlling the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, it helps carefully maintain temperature on Earth. With increasing temperature, plants grow faster, consuming the excess CO2, which leads to a decrease in temperature. As the temperature of the Earth decreases, animals eat more plants, and the temperature again rises.

Usually, we can explain the atmospheric and climatic conditions on the planet by studying chemical processes taking place there. At the same time,this is not true on Earth. Earth over millions of years has kept the temperature at the level, conducive to the maintenance of life. Despite the bombardment of meteorites, explosions of volcanic activity and changes in solar radiation, temperature on earth remained virtually unchanged.

James noted that many scientists and other people misunderstand his Gaia hypothesis, believing that he argues that life itself is consciously and intentionally controls the environment. He just wanted to say that life affects the environment - simply acts, not necessarily intentionally.

The presence of the life makes the soil become more fertile, better ventilated and retains water. Without life, the soil eventually turns into sand. Almost all the factors of our environment are closely monitored either locally or across the planet.

All these factors, only proves once again that our planet is a single organism, in which everything is interconnected.

Gaia theory is a rich souce of prediction and in this book it was predicted that Plate tectonics might be biologically driven; that dimethyl sulphide might be the main carrier of sulphur in the natural environment; and that the forests of the humid tropics might be the areas where mankind’s destructive tendencies could do most harm.

Privileged Ape
Article written by: Daniil Levin

To begin with let’s look at the name of the book: Privileged Ape… Ape… We are Apes. Privileged, privilege is a speciality that other don’t have… Positive speciality. It is true - we are privileged. Jack Cohen searches the answers on the next questions: What is this privilege? How did we receive it? How do we keep this privilege in generations? And if there’s something negative in this privilege what is it?

Some words about the author: Jack Cohen, English, is a reproductive biologist for already twenty-five years. In addition, he has a semi-professional interest in science fiction and the myths. He worked in the University of Birmingham and, for a period, at Harvard. He wrote a lot of books on many topics, but surely, scientific, and related to the evolution. This book is not a theory; it is a new scientific viewpoint, which he hopes will generate theories.

So, let’s start with the book. The book is about the evolution, and the future, of the variety of Mankind. It contains authors developed ideas about reproduction and what is it carrying across the generations. It is all about the caring and cultural “investments” that parents make in their children. Jack Cohen intents to provide a biological context for our cultural evolution. He gives to the reader a chance to learn about different cultures, about its transmission across the generations. The book is quite difficult; well, very difficult, because this book is an outcome of biological insights generating sociological statements.

I start from evolution. Evolution is the way we change across the generations. Evolution is carried through the reproduction. We understand that a human is the most intelligent creature on our planet. It means that we have something special, that the other creatures don’t. A kind of a privilege…

So, the first question is what is our privilege? Our privilege, referring to the book, is a capability to keep the experience that we’ve earned, that our previous generations earned and to use it to gain even more experience. Our privilege is, actually, an opportunity to start developing from the place where our ancestors have stopped. We don’t have to start more or less from the beginning, as turtles, for example. Sea turtles are left on the beach in eggs and when they hatch from them, a whole new world is around, and there’s nobody to help. The main point in life is how to survive. Hunger, cold, predators are the only problems to solve out. Food, water and a place for an overnight are everything that is needed. Reproduction is not such an important feature for them.

In opposite, human offspring is born in as good conditions as possible. No hunger, no cold, no predators - no need in survival. The human baby still can’t make its own way but is “carried” through this helpless stage by adults. Why don’t we anymore have fur, claws or fangs? Why we don’t possess whose, but animals do? And instincts? All of them are forgotten, lost in history, cut from DNA. Human’s way in surviving is to think, to ask questions, to learn on our mistakes. A baby, left in deep forest will not stay alive for long.

So, in conclusion, we can say, that DNA is not the only thing that is transmitted across the human’s generations. Cultural capital is transmitted too. We also notice the different levels of organisation of life on this planet. There can be some general rules on which they depend. The bacteria grade of organisation, for example, dominated the first three quarters of Earth’s history, so far, and intelligence of our kind has been here for such a brief moment, that it is much more difficult to pick out “likelihoods” rather then just to accept it as a matter of chance?

Jack Cohen asks himself interesting questions, like “What passes between the generations to reproduce a Frenchman?” The answer is genetic and cultural inputs. Both are required. The middle chapters examine the enormous and apparent, cultural and material success of urban life from this reproductive viewpoint. Cities, for example, are immensely effective accumulators and transmitters of this human cultural capital. New York, for example is balanced by its differences of culture, rather by the lowest-common-denominator philosophy of its political wards or educational establishment. Islam or democracy or communism could each prevent the attainment of a culture, which permits all of them to flourish.

After that, Dr. Cohen slowly moves into different cultures and the relations between them. He gives in example of what happens between them: “The girl growing in an Islamic enclave within a European city is taught to be sexually attractive but not available, while her school-friends in the majority culture take the converse solution to the social equation: they are available but not (in her terms) attractive.”

We love maths homework!

Mangahigh is a cool website that our super teacher, Miss Fish, found for us!

St George's school has its own homepage in it!

There still is the competition between the three different houses (Morat, Bienne & Neuchâtel).

You can get points by playing games (& having good scores), getting medals (gold is good!), & doing extra lessons!!

You can also have a personal competition by trying to beat other people's score (& your own).

The games I like the most are:

• ICE ICE maybe, a game where the player has to estimate the results of several calculations to help the penguins.
• Prodigi, game where we have to work on algebra, numbers, shapes & data

That's it. But it still is quite a lot! :)

Anne-Gabrielle

Grindelwald Ski Week

Hi guys, here is our trip to Grindelwald...

Sunday the 21st February, we went to the world famous and beautiful ski resort Grindelwald. There, we stayed in the Hotel Alpenblick. We had to take all the stuff out the bus but then we had a delicious lunch, pizza! In the afternoon we went skiing with our ski instructors and we had to show our levels which are quite different for everybody. After skiing, we could enter our rooms which were really nice. All the boys shared a room and the girls were put in many rooms.

The next morning, we had breakfast and then could take our lunch packages which they gave us every day. We skied the whole day (free skiing in the morning, lessons in the afternoon) and in the evening Jaqueline and Hannnah organized the daily German lesson with a funny monopoly evening. We went to bed at 22.00 every evening and between dinner and bedtime still had a bit of time to watch TV or even play pool or darts!

On Tuesday we went skiing again and Miss Beubry organized tickets to watch Sherlock Holmes in the cinema after dinner by which some of us fell asleep at the end because we were tired of the day ;p.

The next day, we didn't go skiing but went to the Jungfrau Top of Europe and visited the ice palace and could even see the world famous Eiger Nordwand from the train!!! Then, in the evening, the others went ice skating but I couldn't because I was sick :(.

Thursday, we went skiing again and after dinner we went sledging organized by Mister Clark which was really, really, really, really fun...I loved it!

Friday, second last day, skiing again and then we had the fondue/karaoke evening which was quite funny! Before that, we received some funny certificates and we gave souvenirs to the teachers. After that, we had to pack our stuff which made us really sad because we all enjoyed this wonderful week.

Saturday morning, last bit of skiing and then back to Neuchâtel.

That was our great week in Grindelwald!!!

Bye, Dario

In the last week of February, everyone at St. George's School in Neuchatel gathered to take a week-long ski trip in Grindelwald. From my experience, I had a fantastic time improving my skiing while also engaging in many other activities such as tobogganing and a trip to the top of Europe! I think I can speak for the boys when I say that the living arrangements were quite suitable. I enjoyed staying in the Alpenblick Hotel which catered perfectly to all our needs. We had nice meals including the fondue and we even had access to a pool table in the hotel. As far as skiing goes, this trip was a great chance for me to improve my novice level to a more respectable level. I especially enjoyed the free skiing in the mornings where we could ski at our own pace and take time to relax. Another part of the trip which interested me was the trip to the top of Europe at Jungfraujoch: 3,454 meters high!!! We were literally on top of the world. It was a great feeling being out in the open air at such a high altitude. Out of all the activities however, I would have to say my favorite was the tobogganing which took place at night. It really gave me a rush as I would come close to the edges and possibly be lost in the deep snow but then quickly steer back onto the path. The fact that we did this activity at night made it even more exciting! All in all, I had a great time with the rest of the St. Georgians and now I am left with memories that will last a lifetime.
By Sameer Garg




The trip in Grindelwald was a symbol of school's progress. Surely, I can say that it was the first trip I really liked. It was great, and everything was great: skiing, food, hotel, extra activities. Teachers weren't silly with us. We were as a great family, tobogganing down the slope at night, skiing in snow park, singing on karaoke and playing pool. I was a great pleasure to stay all together and to relax... Skiing was great! But not to forget about learning! I was glad that I gained a lot of knowledge within these days. I learned about the rules on the slope, which I have never met before. It was genuinely the best school trip. Thanks to all the teachers for the great job!
Daniil Levin

Winterthur trip

On the first day (Wednesday) of our fantastic trip to Winterthur, we went to a sports center where we went rock climbing and played indoor beach volleyball (no need for sunglasses and sun cream). The rock climbing was scary but fun and even though we had to wear strange shoes and our hands hurt afterwards, it was really worth it! We had three different difficulties of wall; the first one was easy, the middle one was medium and the last one was hard. We climbed the wall with safety grapples on because the walls were so high. Before you could start climbing, you had to ask someone to be the person that helps you get down and saves you if you fall. Some people went to the top (the professionals) and they are: Annabel, Sharon, Clara, Ms Fish, Anne-Gabrielle.
The beach volleyball was really fun too, even though the sand was really cold. Everyone had a go at it and everyone had fun! After we got tired of playing volleyball, we played in the sand for a bit and buried Ms Fish, Annabel, Devin and Sebastien. We either weren't playing correctly or the ball was too hard because that made our hands hurt too but, again, I don't regret it.
For the rock climbing and the volleyball, we had two teams that took turns on the volleyball court and on the rock climbing walls; they were called Winter and Thur. The place we went to to do all this was HUGE it had a go kart track and a skate park and there were a bunch of games like air hockey and mini basketball to play afterwards.
By Sebastien

Our wonderful trip to Winterthur was mostly about our visit to the super-duper cool science center called Technorama. It is about science in a new scientific world with many optical illusions, explosion of gas demos, magnets, water, nature, chaos, light & vision and of course, magical maths puzzles. It was all a new experience of fun. At first, it might seem all weird and confusing but then you realize it is all in your head. However, we all know that the chemistry lab experiments were fantastic. Of course, it is hard but all you have to have to unscramble the answers is a passion for science and chemical experiments. Only of course, Miss Fish, the scientific fish can tell us all the story of how a balloon with helium explodes (because she is the smartest).

BY MARA