intermediate program summer site : conversations : first session



	sophie from south carolina (7/24) Sophie is getting ready to enter 8th grade. Its her first yearat the intermediate program and is surprised she has made so many close frinds in such a short period of time. I met her on the quad when her and her best friend here introduced themselves and asaid "we just met eachother a few days ago but we're already best friends, meant to be together!" Is this your first year at Explo? Well I went the junior program two years ago… So you took a year off? Welcome back! What made you decide to do that? I really liked the program. The first time I got kinds homesick and I went home early but I felt a lot better about going this year and haven’t been homesick at all. How have you found meeting people this year? I’ve met a lot of friends. I thought I was going to have a lot of friends just o n my hall but I even have a lot of friends outside of my hall than I thought I would. . That’s great! And that’s awesome that you came back after being homesick. How do you like your RAs? Both of them are really nice so that’s really cool. What classes are you taking? I’m taking Havana nights and “Welcome to the World Stage” but I just switched into “Welcome to the World Stage” so I haven’t been to it yet. How do you like “Havana Nights?” Oh, it’s really fun. I’m taking it with this girl on my hall who’s like my best friend here so its really fun. Have you done that before? Um, no it’s actually a new thing for me. Are you enjoying it? Yeah, it’s a really fun thing to do. It’s just dancing. Were learning three types of dance; right now we’re doing meringue. What mini-course did you have this morning? I did Mexican culture and cooking this morning. It was so yummy. We ate so much I couldn’t eat lunch. What did you cook? Today we were given ingredients to kind of experiment with the cooking and make really, really good burritos with that. What sort of cultural aspects did you cover? We talked about the food and how they use different ingredients. How have the activities been? Well I did have fun doing the swim test even though it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t k now we had to tread for five minutes! I also did “drawing to music” yesterday so I made some things to hang on my wall. Is there something you’re really looking forward to this session? Actually, I’m really looking forward to Friday because we get to go to the “vil”, we get access to the computers, access to calling people and then a dance at night so its going to be really fun the entire day. Going on any trips this weekend? We haven’t found them out yet but I know on Sunday my first choice was Blue-Man Group and I don’t remember my first choice for Saturday. Thursday though I’m going to see “Journey to the Center of the Earth” for Movie night. What are you expecting from Expo this year? I wasn’t sure what I was expecting; I’ve already had a lot of fun and met so many people. I didn’t think I was going to make this many friends. I was a lot more nervous a couple years ago at Explo, really shy. This year, I don’t know why, I have a totally different personality here than I do at home. A lot more relaxed and happy to talk to people I don’t know yet. Do you think Explo is preparing you for high school? Well the real reason I came here, other than it being a good program, was that I was thinking about going to boarding school so I really needed to now if I could stay somewhere for while without being homesick. I think. Well it’s been fine so far, I haven’t even thought about being homesick. My first year at Explo I was really homesick from the start. Other than not being homesick, has any thing surprised you about being here? Well I thought I was going to just hang out with a lot of girls here but I’ve made a lot of guys friends too which is pretty cool. If Explo had a mascot what would it be? I like cats a lot but I’m not sure how well that would go over (laughs)…like an orange and purple cat or something. Complete this sentence: Explo makes me want to… (Laughs) um the first thing that came to mind was just jump (laughs) I don’t know why it (musically said as if she was singing “Shout!”) just makes me want to jump! more conversations > first session \| second session