3 4 VIOLINS FOR SALE

Tracy Saunders
Notre Dame High School

Tracy Saunders, a senior at Notre Dame High School, is a lover of foreign languages and cultures. She has taken several service trips to Tijuana, Mexico and spent two months in Nicaragua. She started a pen pal program between her Spanish class and her former bilingual elementary school, River Glen, and now tutors Spanish for the California Scholarship Federation of Notre Dame.

Saunders also makes speeches with her school's speech and debate team, competes in dramatic interpretatoin, maintains a 4.0 GPA, and has played piano for 10 years. She plans to attend a liberal arts college.

Ariadne Smith
Prospect High School

Ariadne Smith, a senior at Prospect High School, is ranked first in her class, and in 2005 was one of two students selected to represent Prospect in the National Council of Teachers in English writing competition.

Outside of school, Smith has participated in mock trials for two years; swims competitively at De Anza Cupertino Aquatics and for her varsity team; and attends the San Francisco Concervatory of Music, where she studies voice, musicianship, chamber music, and classical guitar. She also performed on the national radio show, From the Top.

At college, Smith plans to double major in mechanical engineering and classical guitar.

august 22, 2009 - i have to teach one kindergarten general music class this year. since april has nearly every other kindergarten class (tracy also has one), i'm pretty much just going along with her plans. which means lots of guitar playing. which is something i could not do AT ALL a few days ago. tracy is letting me borrow her very first guitar (a 3/4 size, because 17 years of classical violin playing have ruined my hands for the guitar) and i've been plucking away ever since. i "officially" know how to play four chords (to get me through my first few hello songs and the modified doors song i'm doing with my 5th/6th graders), but i've been teaching myself to play the beatles' "blackbird" and john mayer's "comfortable" (and iron & wine's cover of "such great heights") ever since i got the instrument. every bit of teacher knowledge/instinct in me is screaming NO because this is so not the correct way how to learn to play a new instrument, but i don't even care. I AM SO HOOKED.