News

It was such a pleasure to see you on Tuesday. Like many of you, I imagine, I had a restless night on Monday – and it wasn’t just the sudden heatwave that kept me awake. For our team, back to school isn’t just about seeing familiar faces again; it is also the moment when our plans become reality: Will the class schedules that look so great on paper flow as they should? Have all the rooms been allocated to the right people? Have we forgotten to order something obvious?

Some of you will remember that last February, our Falcons basketball team had the honor of playing at Madison Square Garden. On the big day, Coach Soden, Andria, and I met the kids and their parents three hours before tip-off, sat courtside to watch the Knicks and the Clippers warm up, and made our way to the dressing room, where we tackled the thorny logistical question of how to make sure the kids looked cool on the court wearing Knicks Jr kits that were three sizes too big for them.

On Monday, I welled up in the middle of my speech during the Kindergarten graduation; I was overcome by emotion at the sight of the children that I had first met three years ago when they were in Nursery – they were masked up, and we were all keeping a social distance of one meter. I would have loved for you to have been at the Maternelle Building on Monday and to have seen how wonderful they were on stage.

More than 10 years ago, I was living a relatively carefree life in Shanghai. During the hot, humid months of fall, I filled my lungs with the scent of street food wafting from the carts dotted around the old town. Andria sat behind me on my knockoff electric Vespa, and we zipped, helmet-free, around the Former French Concession, pinching ourselves at our good luck and relishing our adventurous lives.

This evening an annual tradition is taking place–we are hosting a reception to welcome the parents who will be joining our community in September. Our Director of Admissions Mireille Desalm and I are looking forward to seeing them again–we already met every new child and parent as part of the admissions process–and to giving them a taster of our legendary social gatherings on the rooftop of the Maternelle Building.