Some friendship roles are universal: the jokester, the listener, the leader. Not so common is a friend group that also has the forwards, the point guard and the captains. For best friends and senior varsity basketball players Morgan Chase, Adrienne Jackson, Johanna Lopez, Olivia Nono and Myla Sapp, friendship and basketball are inseparable.

At her boarding school in the Central Province of Kenya, Eunice Muchemi’s English teacher often moved the lesson to a field in the wildlife reserve just outside campus where monkeys, giraffes and antelopes mingled.

Bertha Garcia walked in the door on the first day of school and was shocked by the number of students she saw and intimidated by the size of Blair. Although she tried her hardest, she got lost several times. She took wrong turns here and there, and walked into stairwell hallways instead of real ones. This may sound like a typical first day for freshman Blazers, but Garcia is a transfer student and this is her senior year.

The ventures of most third graders end up abandoned with gobs of Elmer’s glue and a few bucks to serve as mementos of far flung dreams of greatness. When now freshmen Zeke Wapner, Ben Miller, Michael Untereiner and Ian Askew decided to start a band in the third grade, not much more was expected of them.

Exchange student compares his time in Eritrea, Germany and the United State