junior program summer site : conversations : first session



	abbie from kenya (7/4) Abbie, a 7th grader, is attending her first year at Explo all the way from Kenya! For Abbie, Explo isn't just a place to discover new things like marine biology or code-cracking, it's also a time to be around a diverse group of happy, friendly people -- so friendly, in fact, that she likens them to the sweetness of candy. How do you like Explo so far? It’s really great. It’s a lot of fun. What have you been up to the last few days? I’ve been doing my courses, hanging out with friends, meeting new people . . . Which courses are you taking? I’m taking “Killer Instincts”, which is marine biology, and “Code Breaker”, where we learn a lot about different codes and try to break them and stuff. They’ve both been a lot of fun so far. I’m learning a lot of stuff. What types of things have you been learning? In marine biology we’ve been learning a lot about the food chain. And we play games to go along with the lessons, so it’s really fun. We learned that, of course, we’re at the top of the food chain, and I’ve also learned about some new animals that I didn’t know much about -- like a barracuda. Today we’re playing “sharks and minnows” and we also played another game that’s similar to rock, paper, scissors. I think it’s called “mosquitoes, a type of bird, and a type of fish”. Basically, there are two different groups. One group picks either bird, fish, or mosquito. The other groups do too. The mosquito beats the bird, the bird beats the fish, and the fish beats the mosquito. It’s a lot of fun and it helps us learn about the way the food chain works. Sounds interesting. What have you been doing in your other course? In “Mission: Code Breaker” we do a lot of games with our assignments. We’ve been learning about what type of codes there are and also how to crack some codes. What types of codes are there? Oh, there’s one where you take a big piece of paper and then you wrap in into, like, an oval. Then you take another piece of paper and write all these types of letters. But then when you wrap it around the oval piece of paper, you get a message! Cool. How were your mini-courses yesterday? They were great. I’m taking improv comedy and fantasy writing. In improv we learned different games to help teach us how to do improvisational acting, and we learned some rules about improv. What games did you play? We played “cookie cutter”, which we just made up, and we played “storyteller”. In “storyteller” the entire group sits down and someone starts the story. Like, maybe they would say, “Once upon a time,” and then they point to someone else and that person carries the story on with another sentence, like, “. . . a bird was talking.” But you have to be careful, because if the first person says “once upon a time” and the second person starts off with “time” again, they’re out. Had you ever done improv comedy before coming to Explo? A little bit, but mostly I’ve only done regular acting. I wanted to try something a little different. How was fantasy writing? It went well. We were introduced to a few books that had fantasy stories, and then we made our own short story. We were introduced to Lord of the Rings and then we were introduced to some of Roald Dahl’s books. And then you made our own story? Yeah, it was pretty short. It was about monsters and humans, and how they were in a fight. Why were they in a fight? The humans thought that the monsters were trying to destroy their town, but they weren’t. Then the monsters started fighting too. We also illustrate some of our writing in that class. We made, like, two or three pictures for the story. How do you like being a residential student? It’s so much fun. You get to meet a lot of different people and talk about your lives. We like to play games and get to know each other. We dance, we have fun. What is it like being an international student at Explo? It’s fun. It’s been easy really easy to make friends. I’ve meet a few other international students, too. One of my friends is from China, but I’ve also met some people from Boston, too. How do you like the main events? They’ve all been really cool. My favorite was the Airborne Comedians. They juggled chairs, balls, pins, and all this other stuff. They cracked some really funny jokes and we all laughed. They actually lit some things on fire before they juggled them! What do you hope to accomplish this summer? I’d really like to learn new things, make new friends, and become independent. I’m excited to try being somewhere new without my parents for awhile and be okay. It might be a little hard, but so far I’m doing really well. What are the people at Explo like? The staff is funny, nice, and very spontaneous. They’re all crazy and fun to be around. The other students are so nice, too. Everyone is always smiling and it’s just good to be around them. One of the reasons I like Explo is because there’s a real variety of people here. Explo is different in a really cool way. It’s great to meet people from all different parts of the world. What has been your favorite part about Explo so far? I love when the whole Program dances during assembly sometimes. We love to do the “Numa”, which is a song that Explo made cool dance moves to. It’s a really fun dance; it’s wild. If Explo were a type of food, what would it be? Hmm . . . I think Explo would be candy, because the people are sweet and they’re always smiling. You always smile when you eat candy. more conversations > first session \| second session