Community Voices: Meet the Chapelon Family
Meet the Chapelon family! Originally from France, the Chapelon is anything but. Living in Wales, then Sweden before eventually settling down in China, the family has a unique definition of what home is. After four years at SCIS, Remi, Celine, Amelia, and Eudoxie are now off to their next adventure as they prepare to head back ‘home’ to France.
Hear from those who experience SCIS first-hand, our Community Voices, as we celebrate their success stories, learning journeys, and the struggles in between.
Where do you call home?
Celine & Remi: Home is where we settle down. Home is where we work, where we live, and where we love. Home can be a hotel room in Greece for a week, an aunt's home where we stay for a few weeks. It is where we feel safe, loved, and comfortable. Home is wherever we decide it is going to be. If that makes any sense :-) we don’t need to own our house or apartment to have a home and feel at home. Home is where our heart is :-)
Is China the first country where you have lived outside of France?
Celine: Before coming to China we lived in Wales for nine years, then France for one, followed by Sweden for ten.
If you could go back in time, would you change anything? (Before moving here)
Celine: Nope! If I was to change anything in my past, then I most likely would not be here today so I would not change anything!
What does SCIS mean to you?
Celine: SCIS was our safe place when we first arrived. It was a familiar setting for our daughters who attended an IB school in Sweden. A place where they knew the rules and could just fit in. Then it became a place of community - we met some of our dearest friends at SCIS!
Celine & Remi: SCIS is like a home to our children therefore to us. SCIS is a place where our kids feel safe and happy, where they make friends, live, laugh, and cry. SCIS is a safe haven, a place we knew, as soon as we visited, the kids would feel “at home” because SCIS is an IB school so it is very similar to the school Amelie and Eudoxie attended back in Sweden. They both knew how it worked and that they would fit in. SCIS is another tool for us to feel at home in Shanghai. It is our normality.
Celine, how would you describe your time working with PAFA?
PAFA has been an exhilarating experience! Very challenging as well as we had to think out of the box and try on new ideas to pull our parent community together as the regular activities PAFA used to run were not possible anymore. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a great team of volunteers who stayed positive and motivated, regardless of the challenges we faced! I will greatly miss the friends I met at PAFA.
What does it mean to you to be so involved within the school community?
Celine: I always have been involved in my children’s school community: setting up a library, funding PTA, subbing, organizing winter markets, Dragon Fair, or Teacher Appreciation Week. As I am not working, the school community allows me to have a social life and challenge myself. It allowed me to meet many other parents from different experiences and backgrounds, learning a lot about the world and myself.
What will you miss most about Shanghai? And SCIS?
Celine: I will greatly miss my Shanghai urban explorations and architectural wanderings. I am passionate about Art Deco architecture and the history of the city's old town, having spent many hours roaming the streets and likings of Shanghai. I will miss the craziness of Shanghai, its contrasts, its people, and walking through the streets of this vibrant and mesmerizing city.
Amelie: I will miss my friends, but I know that we will keep in touch through social media, and by the time we can all travel again I know we will have Shanghai reunions! I am already looking forward to these days!
All: We will miss meeting those exciting and open-minded people from all over the world. I will miss the hot sticky summers that we enjoyed thoroughly. We will miss the dance of the SCIS buses when school breaks, the PAFA Wine Club.
Celine: I will miss the SCIS uniform hidden under the baggy hoodies!
All: Most of all we will miss the extraordinary people we got to meet and who became our friends, our Shanghai friends…
If you had one piece of advice for someone starting a new life in a new city/school, what would it be?
Celine: Don’t wait to meet people, embrace the new life, the new experience. Get out there and make friends!
What is next for you? Where is the next chapter of the Chapelon family taking you?
Celine: We are moving to France. We are not going back, but rather moving to France as my kids have never lived in France even though they hold French passports. Their experience of France is that of a holiday place where family and friends gather to greet us. For the first time in a very long time, we will be living in a French environment. French language and culture will take over our lives. Which is very alien to us. It is overwhelming! We take it as a new adventure … until the next one… because there will be a next one!
SCIS. Self-Directed Learners.
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