There were places like that where you're from? [she wasn't expecting for him to relate to anything she said so his words come as a bit of a surprise to her and it does make her curious about his world as well.

clarke pauses for a moment, taking into consideration how much she should divulge because she knows that the more details she gives the more questions will be thrown back her way but eventually she settles on something]

The council took a gamble to send a group of us down to determine if Earth was habitable again. [she never had a choice in the matter, she was considered expendable just like the rest of the delinquents in the skybox. the council didn't care what happened to them because the actuality of it was that regardless of the outcome, staying on the ark wasn't a viable option either when they were looking for any possible way to cull the population even more so after her father was silenced for finding that the oxygen system was failing and only had a year or two remaining before everything shut down] We got lucky finding out that it was so once it was confirmed then everyone else followed.