Circée Novick, a sophomore at Appleton North, was 14 when she moved from Provins, France to the United States. “(Provins) is a medieval city,” she said, “Also it’s a Unesco world heritage site, so it’s protected.”  The historic town was once a major center of trading in France, a power almost as great as Paris. “The core of the town was up on a hill and was walled by ramparts and all the buildings in the top town were either original or made to look like they were from the 14th Century.” She elaborated and talked about how the “Top Town” was the historic, medieval part of the town within the ramparts, while the “Lower Town” was the more modern part of the city surrounding the ramparts.

When asked about her favorite part of living in Provins, Circée describes the annual medieval festival, an anticipated event that the town put on every year. Vendors lined up along streets and sold handcrafted medieval goods and people dressed up in elaborate medieval costumes. She went on to describe a specific memory that particularly stood out: “It was one of my first festivals, I was maybe 10, and I was walking around in the moat (really just a dried narrow channel surrounding the ramparts at this point). There was an arrow fletcher (a person who makes arrows) there, and he gave me one of his arrows for free. And it was a real arrow, with a real tip and everything.”

Circée also mentioned her old home, recalling that her house was the only one made of wood in the whole town. “The property actually used to be a cherry orchard, when we bought it, it had these two strange, kind of run down houses on it, so we ended up tearing them down and rebuilding, then our house was the only one like it, the rest were stone.”