Every summer, sophomore Sophia Wood travels to the Philippines, staying with her mother’s side of the family for most of the season. When they arrive, Wood and her family hold a days-long party as a “celebration of reuniting,” she said. 

They have sleepovers, lots of sweets, and plenty of good food like pancit and chicken cacciatore. Recently, Wood’s extended family got a new pool table, but they also enjoy more “simple” games like tag and just running around.

The annual party following the COVID-19 lockdown was especially spirited for Wood and her cousins, as they were unable to see each other or speak regularly during the shutdown.

“We can only connect through our parents,” she said. “So it’s really emotional seeing them again.”

One of Wood’s favorite memories growing up happened with her family in the Philippines, when she and some of her cousins were “freaking out” over a massive moth. As the oldest of the group, Wood had to comfort all of her cousins, even though she was scared as well.

“It was the most harmless thing ever, but it’s hilarious to look back on,” she said.

The best part of going to the Philippines every year for her is seeing her family again. “It’s always really fun, because everybody has such a different life,” she said, mentioning her uncle, an architect, and her aunties Lee and Yang, who run a corner store and a candy store, respectively.

Although the recipe is forbidden to Wood until she’s living on her own and able to cook it for herself, her favorite dish is her mother’s beef and broccoli. 

“It’s a secret recipe,” Wood said. “She swears it’s only with love, but we all know that’s not true.”

Living in two different countries means that Wood has two separate groups of pets.

In the Philippines, she has Biter, a farm dog who she named when she was six — not quite understanding that nipping is just what puppies do. He is both a frequent terrorizer of her family’s chickens and a natural dancer, according to Wood.

“If you hold your hands out, he puts a paw in each hand, and you can spin around with him multiple times until he gets sick of it,” she said. “It’s literally the coolest thing because I didn’t even teach him to do that.”

In America, she has Winston, a West Highland white terrier who she described both as the “most affectionate” Westie she’s ever met and the “most stupid.”

“I can’t let him outside at night … He would just not come back,” Wood said. “And then when I give up [and] shut the door, he starts whining and howling. I can never understand the mind of a dog.”

Here at La Salle, she’s involved in several clubs, such as the Baking Club, Asian American Pacific Islanders Club, Makers Club, Femme STEM, and the Creative Writing Club. Making time to be more active in her extracurriculars is one of Wood’s goals this year.

“There’s something so fascinating about learning something that you didn’t know,” she said. “It’s just fun to be curious and just develop skills like, for example, baking and cooking.”

As far as academics, history is her favorite subject for its insights into human behavior and how people can learn from the past.

“I like to learn about the world — of what it was before, about what our ancestors had to face,” Wood said. “There’s just something about history that just makes me so grateful for what I have today.”

She also listed Spanish among her favorite subjects, noting in particular that Spanish teacher Ms. Amy Gantt has the biggest impact on her learning and high school experience as a whole.

“Last year, she showed me lots of compassion when I was really struggling,” Wood said. “She was so kind about it, but she was also like … You’ve got to keep moving forward, and sometimes you’ve just got to do the work.’”

In class, Wood is drawing  “24/7,” she said, and is completely self-taught in both art and animation. When she was younger, she went down a “rabbit hole,” following inspiration to inspiration and eventually growing into the artist she is today.

“I started off with Disney classics — my first ever animated movie that I saw was ‘Sleeping Beauty,’” she said. “There was just something so magical about it that I just had to get into art.”

She takes inspiration both from movies she’s seen and from the internet, with animators like minbitt and OFF SCRIPT and artists like Nirami, SamDoesArts, and colehairlesscat.

“I’ve been drawing for a very, very long time, and a lot of people have encouraged me to just keep going,” she said. “I think I’ve definitely improved.”

Wood has always had an affinity for art, and that passion takes form in her interest in architecture — the form of it and fusion of different styles. In the future, she doesn’t want to do something similar, but instead “create something new and unique and beautiful,” she said.

“In third grade, I had this dream where I was like, ‘I’m going to build all these houses, and I’m going to sell them to everybody for a penny,’” Wood said. “Poor me, I was so generous. But I want to keep living that third-grade dream.”