Senior Survivor                     The American Experience

“I am only in America for a total of 10 months. I've tried my best to try and experience every opportunity I get," said Madalena Gomes. 

Senior Survivor is an opportunity seniors get the chance to partake in every year, where a pair of students raise money for a charity of their choice. 

Madalena is an exchange student from Portugal. When she heard about Senior Survivor she wanted to give it a try with her partner Daniel Adams. Her goal for her time here is to get the “full American high school experience”.

“It was a very fun experience, and I made so many great memories. I actually made a list of all of the funny memories including our talent show, making raps, and talks with Grace Zorich,” said Madalena. 

She thought it was fun just messing around with her friends. 

“Since we were all just so tired, we were just doing dumb stuff. That is what made it so much fun,” said Madalena. 

Madalena felt like spending that much time with the others made them become closer. Spending that much time together it can also have some hiccups. 

“For the most part there weren't any big problems, but since we were spending so much time together me and Daniel got into little arguments,” said Madalena. 

The people in Senior Survivor had to stay at the school all week. They indured hard physical and mental challenges while getting little to no sleep. They had many challenges throughout the week but Madalena’s favorites were the community challenges. She liked that the whole community could get involved and support their favorite team. 

“Although there were a lot of fun challenges there were also a lot of hard ones. We woke up at 3:30 am and it was hard to do a quadrathlon where we had to run, swim, bike, and row. It was definitely the most physically draining challenge,” said Madalena. But they still had a fun time doing it.

Overall the participants had a great week even with the hardships they endured. Madalena made some awesome memories that she can take home with her. 

“I definitely got to go through the full American experience this week!”