In her fourth year at EXPLO, rising ninth grader Julia has found her niche with Coffee House, a community of students that gather to play instruments and connect through music.
I love Coffee House. It’s an evening activity where students come together to play instruments, sing, relax... just play music and listen to each other. I’ve found a big community of musical people here who play all kinds of instruments. The other day I started learning a few chords on the ukulele, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Kevin, the instructor in charge of Coffee House, taught me. He really took the time to help us individually, which is something special about EXPLO instructors.
I’ve been able to make friends through music, too. I found out that a lot of girls on my floor do music and that’s helped me become closer to them. This is now my fourth year at EXPLO and I’ve made so many friends from around the world that I would never get to see except for here, and that’s not common — especially coming from a small town like I do. At EXPLO there’s always somebody new to meet. Just on my floor there are two girls from Thailand and one from China. At school I’m never going to meet these types of people. Sometimes we’ll all sing along to songs, so even though we’re from different places, you could say music kind of connected us.
Casey Kim