intermediate program summer site : conversations : first session



	tori from new york (7/29) Tori is a swimmer from New York getting ready to enter 8th grade. After a week of an intense swim camp, she is happy to be trying new activities and meeting new people at Explo. In fact, after only a week here, she already refers to her living group as a second family! So, tell me a little bit about your classes. . . I like them; they’re a lot of fun. I’m taking “Blowing the Gaskets” and “Explobotics”. Oh, cool. What are you doing in "Explobotics"? We built a robot. We were given a manual and all the parts to build robots in groups. Every group builds the same robot, but you can make it do different things. We’re going to plug it into a computer and plug in codes. When we unplug the robot, it will go and do whatever we programmed it to. What about in “Blowing the Gaskets"? Today we made different types of dams in a box and put them in water to see if they were stable enough. None of them were, but it showed what happens in a real flood. What made you choose those classes? Um, well, robotics seemed interesting. My school has something with robots as a course, but during school it's hard to do it ‘cuz everyone wants to do that one. So I thought here I could do it without having everyone do it, and it might be more interesting. At school, you don’t get to build the robot; you just learn how to program it. But here you can build it and learn how to work it. Is that something you did as a hobby before Explo? No, not really. I’m a swimmer, which is why I did “Blowing the Gaskets”, because I like water. Are you doing any water-related mini-courses? Yeah, I’m doing kayaking and swimming. What’s involved in the swimming mini-course? Is it water games or. . . No, it’s competitive swimming. Very cool. I used to do swimming a long time ago. Do you have a favorite stroke? Yeah, the butterfly. That’s awesome. Did you go on any trips this weekend? I went to the Salem Witch Trial Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum. It was awesome; I would recommend it to everybody. What did you do on that? Some of the art at the Peabody Essex Museum was nice, but it wasn’t my favorite part of the trip. The Salem Witch Trial Museum -- it was really cool. You go into this dark scary room that's cold with a red glowing thing. It actually explained to you how the witch trials happened. Then we went to a reenactment of a trial where we played the jury and could ask questions if we wanted to. What was the verdict? She was guilty . . . and in real life she was guilty, put into jail, and hung. What made you choose Explo over other programs? My dad found this and thought it would be a good experience, and I thought it looked like a lot of fun. It’s very different than all the other sleep-away programs. Most of them are based around just sports. You can make Explo a sports program, if that’s what you like. You can also make it a million other things. That's what's great about Explo. What activities have you enjoyed so far? I like all the little activity periods. You can pick whatever you want to do and just do that one thing. It gives you a chance to try new things and do new things. Like, they had cheese drawing and eating last week; some of my friends made superheroes out of cucumbers; I went to a duct-tape thing last week and made this bracelet I’m wearing. There's just lots of stuff. Is there something you’re really looking forward to trying or doing at Explo or something you’ve tried already that you’ve really enjoyed? Kayaking. We didn’t get to do that last week because of the rain. I’m going to go to the activity today to make up for the rain, though. And then yesterday I went paintballing for the first time, and that was a lot of fun. I would definitely do that again. So what’s the strangest thing you packed? (Laughs) The strangest thing. . . I don’t know. I packed a box of string for bracelets. I made all these (showing me the bracelets on her wrists). Wow! Those look great! And really intricate. What else do you like to do in your spare time? Well, here we have hall parties. We get ice cream and bring it up to our halls and stash it in our freezer. We all go into the empty room on our hall and eat ice cream at night. We’re always goofing off and doing crazy stuff, having fun in our hall. I find it really fun that our hall has gotten so close in such a short amount of time. Everyone in our hall has something different about them, something unique that no one has or is except them. If Explo had a mascot what would it be? I think it would probably be Edward (one of Explo Film Festival’s characters, that is currently trying to take over Explo). more conversations > first session \| second session