Miscellaneous

SOPHIE'S SPLENDID SUMMER

Hey Everyone!

     As you can tell, IB Survivalists are back! We thought we'd individually update you on what we got up to over the summer. I'll jump right in!

     The first thing I did to get myself hyped for the summer was......take the SAT and ACT tests. Amazing, huh? Not really. But, I did get them over with and am pleased with my results! To celebrate, fellow IB Survivalist Melissa, Giselle and I took a trip to a lake house to wind down for a weekend. You can read about it in more detail on Melissa's summer post!

     I had the entire month of June to kill before I would actually begin my summer vacationing. I spent my June completing the final draft of my Geography fieldwork! It was less stressful than I had anticipated - getting feedback from teachers for a rough draft is definitely helpful. I also took several trips to my local library to pick up some materials to finalize the research phase of my Extended Essay. I'll talk more about that in a separate post.

     Once July 4th rolled around, I didn't celebrate the holiday in the typical American fashion. Instead, my mom and I boarded a plane and made our way over to England. We spent about 5 days in London where we did shopping, visited several World War II museums for my Extended Essay, and relaxed! After meeting up with my dad and brother, we all boarded the Eurostar and made our way to PARIS! It was such a surreal experience to visit Paris, as it has always been a dream of mine and I have been studying French for a few years now. We did some seriously tourist-y stuff, and I loved it the whole time :) After Paris, we took the Eurostar back to England and drove down to Exeter, which is in the south of England. There, we attended my brothers graduation ceremony from the University of Exeter. It was interesting to compare the American and British graduation ceremonies. After graduation, we drove back up to London where we visited family over the weekend. Then, we made our way back to the US as a family. If you're interested in the details of my trip, I actually made a video for every day that I was there. You can access them by clicking here.

     I had about a week in Louisiana until I was to go on my next trip. Last spring, I got accepted to attend a program called NSLC for International Diplomacy - something Melissa attended last year. The program was based in DC but we also got to visit New York. Here's what we got to do/see while in DC:

1. Visit the US State Department
2. Visit the Saudi Arabian Embassy
3. Visit the United Nations
4. Interview the Malaysian Embassador
5. Live on the American University campus
6. Tour Capitol Hill
7. Visit the monuments of Washington DC at night
8. Go shopping in Times Square
9. Climb a ropes course
10. Visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty

     Of course, those are the highlights of my trip. In between, we got to take part in a model United Nations, create our own "country", and attend college lectures on International Diplomacy. I won't bore you with details, but it was an amazing and life-changing experience.

     That's a short summary of what  did during the summer. What did you guys get up to??

- Sophie F.