Ever since another TPSer family told Anna Brane about the school, she has enjoyed two years of enrollment at TPS. This school year, she is taking English 4/5/6 College American Lit, French 4, Worldviews Through Movies, Precalculus (Honors), Physics, and AP Psychology on TPS. On top of all her courses, she has decided to join clay as our Cooking and Baking columnist. 16-year-old Anna has lived an adventurous life as a missionary kid in Western Africa for more than half of her life. She now resides in Mbour, Senegal, where for the past couple of years she has enjoyed reading clay articles as her favorite procrastination tactic. This has led her to combine her interests of baking and writing “into one and use both to glorify God and his creativity.”
Growing up, Anna never had a big passion for baking and only ever utilized the kitchen to wash dishes. But eventually the tastiness of pancakes slowly drew her to form a new hobby, causing her to expand her interest in baking all kinds of desserts. She especially loves to bake cookies, which she proclaims, “obviously are the dominant dessert group.” Over the years, Anna has had many successes and failures when it comes to baking, but she decides that French macarons have been her most memorable struggle: “Fickle ovens that you have to babysit, and African weather doesn’t always provide the best conditions for working with meringue. Most of my attempts failed, resulting in some pretty ugly and yucky macarons, and the whole thing was very discouraging. But I decided to try one more time at my aunt’s house in the U.S. where the weather wasn’t so weird and she had a nice predictable oven. When I pulled the macarons out, and they looked almost picture-perfect, I literally screamed and ran out to the garage where everyone was to tell them the great news.”
On top of baking and writing, Anna juggles many other interests. Whenever she has spare time, she spends it reading, playing her two recorders, and helping her dad, who works at the agricultural center in Senegal. Moreover, her bucket list consists of visiting her grandparents in India, writing a novel, and learning a third language (French being her second). Although she doesn’t play many sports, her top three favorite sport-related activities are gaga ball, foursquare, and floor hockey. As a book lover, her favorite books are Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, and the Wingfeather Saga. Lastly, Anna, upon being asked the question of her favorite Bible verse, asserts that her favorite Bible story is the healing of the lame man at the pool in John 5: 1- 15, and she can’t just choose a single verse.
It was really fun meeting and interviewing Anna, and I believe she’ll be an amazing columnist.