junior program summer site : conversations : first session



	nathan from massachusetts (7/8) Nathan is a Voyager day student here for his first summer at Exploration. He loves the sports activities at Explo, as well as the opportunity for day students to stay late and (sometimes) overnight. What made you come to Explo? I thought I’d try something new, and it has turned out to be really fun! What have you been up to? Well, every day, Voyagers have activity periods in the morning. We’re given ten or so choices of activities. Typically I’ll pick a lot of the games, like kickball and tennis and stuff like that. We did “Build The Highest Block Tower” out of Jenga blocks, and that was really interesting. We built the highest one: it was about 4’10. What have you been doing in your classes? Well, my first class is “Mission Code Breaker” and we are trying to catch this car thief. We had this clue today that said, “Jack has bought the mole; Jack decides the fates.” Then we found this codebook and we used the codes to substitute some words for other words. Like, “Jack” became “I,” so when it became normal plain text again, which is the un-coded message, it read, “I have caught the agent; I decide the secrets.” What about your other class? I’m also taking Medieval Mayhem. For the first week we built some smaller catapults and on Friday we started firing off big ones. We’re going to have a mock battle later this week, and starting next week we’re going to have a real battle. We’re learning about the forces that make them fire so powerfully, like pressure for the catapults and mangonels, and gravity for the trebuchets. Have you been enjoying your classes? Yeah, they’ve been a lot of fun. How is Explo different than school? Well, in school, it’s kind of like a lot of big-time lecturing, but at Explo they explain the lesson and then you do activities to help you figure it out yourself. How do you like being a day student? It’s a lot of fun. I’m friends with students in both the day and residential programs. I’ve stayed late for a few of the main events and some of them are really good. I’m staying late tonight, which is “Carnival Night.” Explo is having a small carnival here and there will be games and stuff with tickets where we can get prizes. I’ve also stayed late for “Game Show Night” and the staff-vs-staff speedball game. How were they? Game show night was really interesting and pretty funny at some points, too. We were given the topic “what Explo students like to do on the quad,” and we had to guess those six things. One team got four of the six things right, but neither of the teams could get the other two. The first thing was wall ball, the second thing was four square, and another thing was kickball. Each answer was worth a certain amount of points. You get three strikes before the other team gets to guess once, and if they get it right they get all the points from that round. What about the Speedball main event? Staff-vs.-staff speedball was also cool. Speedball is a game that is a combination of handball and soccer. You can pick the ball up and run with it, but you have to kick the ball up in the air and catch it first. If you get tagged with two hands, you have to give the ball up to the other team. But [if the ball is] on the ground, you’re sort of just playing soccer. I was cheering on the blue team. Did you go on any trips this weekend? Yeah. On Saturday I went on the whale watch trip and that was pretty interesting. We saw, like, eight whales. We went on a boat out of Boston Harbor, then we reached our destination, which was the middle of the water. There were a whole lot of whales around us. We saw three whales right away. They came up right beside the boat. Before they left, the three of them came out of the water all together and then they went away. Did you see all the same kind of whale or different kinds? All the whales we saw were humpback whales. Then what did you do? Then we came back and watched an IMAX movie about whales. It showed the skeletons of the different types of whales and it gave us the regular and scientific names for each type. The movie was in 3-D, so some parts of it were kind of creepy and scary. At one point the whale came up and it looked like it was going to hit us with the fin. It was a lot of fun. What did you do after the trip? I slept over at Explo that night, which was awesome! We had lights out at 9:30, and up until then we played dominoes. We woke up in the morning, had breakfast, and then went off on the second day of trips. I went on “Fenway and Pharaohs.” I had already been on a Fenway Park tour before, but this one was a little different. They showed us the historic 1934 seats, talked about the history of the Green Monster, and then we even got to go into the press box. Then we went to see the luxury seats. There are three ways that you can tell they’re luxury seats: the cushion, the foot room, and the cup holders. Then we got to go on top of the Green Monster. Our tour guide said that if you’re up there when a ball is hit up there, you have about two seconds of reaction time before it’s there. She said that sometimes spectators leave the game with bloody, broken noses! How was the “Pharaohs” part of the trip? When we got to the tomb, we had to find a hidden button to open the tomb. When we got inside it was dark, but we had our flashlights. Then the door shut behind us and the flashlights died. Waterfalls were coming down and you could see the face of the Pharaoh in the light. Since he was feeling charitable he gave us some light, but then we had to find some more hidden buttons. Then he played us this melody and we had to play the melody back. Once we did it successfully, his statue moved back and we could go through the next door. It was very cool. Do you have any advice for someone that might be thinking about coming to Explo? I would say absolutely come; it’s fabulous. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a combination of fun and school. You get to learn new stuff, and you get to do fun things to help you learn. Describe Explo in one word. Amazing! If Explo were an animal, what would it be? I think it would be a Lion because it’s supposed to be a fun-loving animal. They enjoy doing fun things, and when they’re growing up they’re always taught things by older lions. Explo is similar. People should come; it’s a lot of fun. more conversations > first session \| second session