senior program summer site : conversations : first session



	rianne from holland (7/23) Rianne comes from Holland and is entering the twelfth grade. She's new to Explo and the United States, but she's already fallen in love with the area, the people, and Starbucks, and she's looking forward to seeing New York! So, Rianna, I hear you have some nicknames. Yeah, my second name, Caroline, and my living group came up with this "Bob" thing. Tamar, my Resident Advisor, said, "Her name is so hard, let's call her 'Bob.'" And you don't mind Bob or Caroline? No, I don't, because I've seen that nobody can pronounce Rianne correctly, so just call me Bob or Caroline [laughs]. Where are you from? I'm from Holland. Holland, that's cool. Ah, everybody says that, that it's cool, but I just think . . . well . . . it's a little, flat, green country, what's cool about it? Green is nice. I guess it's nice, but to me it's just normal -- a normal, flat, green, little country. But it's cool [laughs]. And what do you think about Connecticut, USA? I love it! It's so different. The Yale campus is so amazing, I just love it. It's beautiful. The architecture, the facilities . . . it's great. Do you have a favorite aspect of the area, a favorite place? I fell in love with Starbucks. In Holland we've got, like, one Starbucks at the airport and I didn't have a chance to go there. So I came here and some American girls took me to Starbucks and I'm just already addicted to it. And I've been here for, like, two days [laughs]! How did you hear about Explo? It's a funny story: I didn't actually hear about it. I was in Paris for one week with my family and we were driving back home. I've got two little brothers and they were arguing and yelling and shouting, and my parents had already decided to go to Italy by car, which is 16 hours. And I said, "I can't do this for 16 hours, I'll probably go mad or something." So I said, "I'm going to do a summer program," and my dad said, "No, you won't. You won't." Two days later I put the papers on his desk and said, "Please sign here." So it was really spontaneous actually. I Googled "summer program" and Explo is one of the first that appears. Is this your first time in America? Yeah, it is. I wanted to go to America for years but my parents just said, "You can go when you've got your own life. Right now, we decide where we want to go, and you can go with us." But I said, "I'm going on my own," just like that. Is this your first time away from your family, being on your own? No, I did an exchange program with an Italian school with my class. But you have your friends then, right? So, it's actually not "on your own" . . . so this is the first time really on my own. It feels great. I just love the people here, I've made so many friends already in two days, and it feels like I've known them for months. If you're open-minded, you can basically find prospective friends on every corner of the street, you know? Just be open-minded. Do you have any other techniques for meeting friends? No, not really. I met some people from my living group on the plane, so we knew each other already. And then we went to our living group and met other people there. It's a really natural thing; they're all so nice. What about your classes? I'm taking investment methods and globalization. I was taking public speaking for my first class, but that's kind of not my thing . . . I thought, well, I'm going to be here for three weeks, and I want to choose something I actually like doing, with numbers, so that's investment methods. How is investment methods going? Today was my first day, and I loved it. We did a game with poker chips. We had all these companies you could invest in, and each chip color represented a company you could invest in. The teacher threw dice to decide if they were going to multiply or add or divide or subtract, you know? So it was pretty cool. What else do you expect to get out of that class? The teacher said we're going to do, like, an interactive investment game with teams and computers, so I expect that to be fun. I'm excited for that. Is that something you'd like to study in college? I don't know yet. I would like to do something in either economics or law or business, something like that, but I just don't know yet. I also don't know if I want to study abroad or in Holland, so I'm just trying to figure that out. I'm getting more and more excited about studying abroad if it's not too difficult to arrange. If you had to describe Explo as an object, what object would it be? I think it would be a blender. All the different, great ingredients are already here, you know, but you just throw them in the blender and you get out a shake, and the shake is, like, delicious. Or it would be my shoes, because they've got people on them holding hands, and I think that's pretty close -- you meet a lot of people here from all over the world. What are you looking forward to most in the rest of your time at Explo? Just everything. I mean, I think the trips will be great; I want to see New York. And the classes, because my classes are fun. The investment methods, globalization, and my mini-course, "Ethics of International Relations" -- so that's a fun one too. I love it. I'm just looking forward to everything. more conversations > first session \| second session