During a school break in January, Alec and Claire Mathieson traveled confidently in Paris using the French that they learned at Lincoln Middle School and Alameda High School. Alec is now a music theatre student at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He took along a copy of the Alameda Sun when he visited his sister Claire in Lille, France, where she is spending a year as an English teaching assistant in a public middle school. Claire graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University last year with a degree in Environmental Science and Italian. Both Mathiesons have been lovers of all things European since reading the Harry Potter books and traveling to Europe with Lincoln and Alameda High school groups.