Fina's life!!

The story of this Scallop Shell took place in this very town: Shellstown.

Our story begins on a dark, cold night. Steve the Shell was hungry, so he went to the Coral Restaurant of The Sea.
“Hey Steve,” said Johnny Shish-kebab. “I haven’t seen you at the pub lately. What’s up with ya, mate?”
Steve shrugged. He had a secret he didn’t want anybody knowing about. You see, he was a very ugly scallop. He had always longed for beauty, but never got it. So when the chance was waved in front of his face, he took it.
A star named Sapphira had appeared in his backyard. “Hi, Steve!” she’d laughed.
Steve was overwhelmed with her prettiness. “Hi,” he replied, desperately in love.
“I can grant all of your wishes in a single second,” said the star unexpectedly.
Steve was even more overwhelmed than before. “Wha-what?” he asked stupidly.
“I, can, grant, all, your, wishes, in, a, single, second!” the star said impatiently.
“Oh.”
“So? What’s the deal?? Aren’t you going to ask for, like, endless riches and power like they all do?”
“Wha-what?”
“Ugh,” the star sighed. “Why do I always get the stupid ones?”
“Wha-what?”
“Shut up,” the star yelled, and disappeared.
For the rest of his life, Steve the Scallop wandered about, endlessly hoping to stumble upon something like the star. He was very stupid. The star, of course, had been his imagination, he concluded.
But when Steve was growing old, the star reappeared. She was wearing purple sunglasses with sequins.
“Hi,” Steve mumbled.
“So, this is your last chance,” the star said. “By the way, you can still wish. And don’t say wha-what.”
“Wha-what?”
“Help!” the star cried. “You’re hopeless!”
Steve pulled himself together. “I wish that I could be very famous and be endlessly rich like you said and so beautiful all the ladies would drop dead and have a ginormous house and eat caviar and drink cocktails and…wha-what?”
The star nodded and quick as a flash, snapped her fingers and Steve was transported onto a purple cushion. It had caviar and cocktails on a silver platter and looking down at himself, he saw that he was no longer a scallop, but an amazingly pretty flat shell with shades of dark green, light green, turquoise and purple.
This surprisingly made Steve sad. So he went outside and saw lots of ladies, who glanced his way. This is an example of a lady:
“Ohhh, Fifi darling, have a chocolate. (Fifi was her dog). Ahh, la la, how nice, a man! Oopsies—“ and then she dropped dead.
Another lady looked at Steve and said, “Stevie Sam George Nicholas?” and fell over dead along with every other female shell there.
Oh dear, Steve thought.
“Wha-what?” he said, looking at the ladies. “They dropped dead!”
He fell over.
Dead.
Of old age.
And the moral of this story is: Be careful what you wish for!

The end
By Aoife Dooley and Fina Short of the Shell School

Today had a lazy start. We lounged around at the house, Aine, Aoife and Nessa bravely trekked down to the pool for 15 minutes, Emer and Fina went to French bookstore Fnac and invited the others for lunch at Le Que Bec, Fina's favorite restaurant. The 4 kids got spagetti bolognaise while Rob chowed down on a bucket of muscles.
Then we strode down the Prom to the 'Aero Jump' which us 4 kids immensely enjoyed! Nessa, Fina and Aoife could all do a back-flip. But yet Aine (even being 13) couldn't.
After wading in the refreshing Mediterranean, the group trudged across to the tourist train and chugged all the way up to the top of the Parc du Chateau mountain, where the kiddies played their own version of Happy Families.
Soon we got tired, the sun bearing down onto our worn out backs, and hitched a ride with Rob.
After sweets we retreived enough energy to hop around the car like maniacs, but we couldn't do that because there was a police car behind us!
When we arrived at the house Aoife and Aine relaxed in the pool...until Nessa came in and made us take our leech test! We passed! After we washed up, we had dinner.
This amount of activity tired the Shorts and Dooleys, so we played Electric Cheeseboard, a great game!, and Rummikub, which got everybody thinking and stressed out, especially Rob, who lost to a seven-year-old. That seven-year-old (Nessa) did her own crazy victory dance and of course, Fina and Aoife had to copy.

***NO PICTURES. WE FORGOT THE CAMERA! =]***

We got everyone up and out by 8:30 am!! to take the train up into the mountains.
The idea was to spend the day somewhere cool, see some spectacular gorges and visit the petroglyph museum in Tende.

The train trip takes about an hour and three quarters and goes through the gorges of the Peillon and Roya, through tunnels (one is 6km long!) and over viaducts. The route climbs 1000m, past perched villages clinging to the sides of mountains, veering over canyons and ends in Tende, close to the Italian border.
http://www.tendemerveilles.com/en/Tourism-information/Vallee-des-Merveilles.html

We got home about 7:30pm and everyone jumped in the pool.
After an evening frog hunt -it's important to check that there are no frogs in the pool for the night, people finally went to bed.

We had lunch on the roof of the aquarium in Monaco and went to see the polar exhibit afterwards.
Next piece by Aoife!!!!!!

When we got to the polar exhibit, Fina and I went on ahead while the others waited for Nessa.
Have you ever realised how cute penguins are? Well, I didn't but I found out today!
Fina and I were walking around when we spotted 3-D glasses. There were TV's in front of them, so we checked it out. ...Everything looked SO real! It was actually a bit funny!

We also saw one of the boats Cristopher Columbus sailed on his journey to America: Santa Maria. It was a very detailed model.
On the opposite side there was the very first sumbarine made in 1774 by an American. It squeaked a lot when we turned the propellors.

Other than the scorching hot weather, we had a pretty good day. Lounging around at the pool at home was great fun too.

This day was equipped with unusual weather for Nice--a thunder storm! Seeing the weather, Mom decided that it would be better not to go on a mountain train ride as planned but stay at home until conditions improved. They did.
Instead, the group trudged out to visit the amazing and wonderful Monaco Aquarium. Colorful fish of all shapes and sizes darted in front of us. Upstairs at the new Polar exhibit we (or I) tried to kiss Emperor Penguins. But soon, we got bored. So we headed back to France...and jumped in the pool.

As a Short, I have a lot of first cousins. To be exact, 20. And two of them arrived at our Nice home yesterday.
Aine and Aoife Dooley come from Limerick, Ireland, which means that summer is rainy, winter is rainy, fall is rainy, and spring is rainy. Nice was not exactly normal for them with its 90-degree heat!
We spent most of the day exploring around the place. At our pool we made rival hotels and one person checked in between resorts. That person was the one person that both hotels wanted desperately, so we spent most of our time yelling at her.