My great-uncle Arthur

My great-uncle Arthur worked many years in a factory. They produced umbrellas; just a single type of umbrella, the classic long one. Although you might think his life was really boring, it was not at all.

He was born in Munroe Falls —a little village in the North of Ohio— in 1919. He dropped out of school at an early age in order to work in their family business. But soon he realized that he was too lively to stay in the same place and left to Chicago. There he worked as a paper boy delivering the Tribune.

One day, in December 1941, he read in one of his newspapers a huge headline with only three letters: «War!». He threw the papers down and went to a recruitment point to enlist in the Marine Corps. His regiment was sent to the Pacific and during several months fought in the tiny islands of the Coral Sea. Southeastern Asia is a very rainy region, and rain was a reality he had to learn to live with.

After the war he created a little workshop introducing all the materials he had learnt in the Army to make the most resistant and innovative umbrellas and other rain clothes. A little time later, an important corporation bought his patents.

With the money he had earned, he travelled through Europe and South America learning about many countries and cultures. When he was 31, he fell in love with a Parisian painter in Montmartre. They got married and left to San Francisco (California) where my great-uncle started working in the umbrella factory as a production manager. He retired when I was born and started writing children's stories telling all his personal experience around the world.

My great-uncle passed away when I was 10 years old. Everybody in our family was sad, but still today we remember him and we are happy about the full life he had.



[Composition #1, 4th Level]

Comparing adult life and teenager life

At first glance, adult life may lead to more difficulties compared to the teenager one, but if we analize it deeply we can say that nowadays to be a teenager is not easy.

To begin with, adolescence is a critical period that includes not only the preadult's personality formation, but also it carries acne, glasses, body odors, brackets...

In the technology era, getting the latest mobile is not possible for everyone, and that may create frustrations. To get a job is not easy either. This issues can be multiplied if you live in the middle of a problematic family, like unemployed or divorced parents. And finally, if you study at an American high school maybe you should wear a bulletproof jacket...

So in conlusion, I love my adult life and I don't miss when I was a teenager.


[Composition #3, 2nd Level]

Like every summer, a group of friends went to a lake house for the weekend

Like every summer, a group of friends went to a lake house for the weekend. The first morning they went to town to buy food supplies and live bait for fishing. In the afternoon they carried their bags and fishing rods towards the lake, following the stream down the hill where they had the cabin.

While the boys were preparing fishing stuff, Jack needed to use the toilet; but they were in the middle of woods so he looked for a quite far away zone. That place was quiet but when he got ready to return to the lake, he realized that only a few meters from where he was there was a strange hole in the ground. Jack joked to himself “in a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit” and called his friends. They lit the opening of the hole with their torches. Although the entry hole was small, the cavity was much larger. Hearing the call of adventure, they decided to go ahead.

After a while inside, they heard voices. Surprised, they hid behind a rock. They saw two people left inside the gallery. They decided to investigate this mysterious cave. Finally, they found a metal door and a corridor lit with electricity. How could there be signs of civilization in the middle of an underground cave? Jack and his friends went through that corridor and discovered a clandestine methamphetamine laboratory.

They took photos and recorded it on their smartphones. Thanks to this discovery, the DEA could catch a dangerous gang that controlled the business of the blue crystal in the city for several months.



[Composition #2, 2nd Level]