Allison is a young rock climber, physics student, and Explo fan. Even though this is her first time away from home, Explo has made it easy for this outgoing student to abolish her homesickness.
I wouldn’t say I’m a pro, but as a hobby, me, my mom, and my cousin will all go rock climbing together. We do it as family bonding. It’s the kind of rock climbing that we just did on the trip where you are indoors in a gym. But my cousin wants to take me to an outdoor rock-climbing place so we could climb real rocks!
I like it here a lot. The first few days were a little hard because this is my first time at a sleep away program and away from my family, but I’ve already made a bunch of new friends from all over the world. I think that’s the best part about Explo: the incredible friends you make. I’m closer with some of the friends I’ve just met here already than I am with my good friends at home, which is so cool! I think it’s really unique to Explo. We don’t have our phones to constantly be on while we’re here, so we actually sit down with the people around us and talk. And then there are all these activities and classes and events for you to meet even more people.
I like all of the people here and all of my classes. The instructors are so nice and helpful. There’s no homework here or anything. Sometimes at school, it feels like teachers hand you something and just make you learn it for the test on Monday or something. Here, they give you a much more practical purpose and everything we learn seems less abstract.
I think there are a lot of really important and special parts about Explo for me, but I really enjoy the Community Meetings. We all get together and talk and laugh. We can relate to a lot of the things that they show us or talk about. It’s just one of the really cool things that happen here at Explo.
Ally Marcino