Category: nature

Camping

uwucutiepatootieLeave a comment

I went on a camping trip and the whole experience was very upsetting. It was my first backpacking trip and my trip was supposed to be from Wednesday to Friday. We left Wednesday morning and made it to the beginning of the trail. I assumed the hike to the campsite would take about an hour and a half. Twenty minutes into the walk, my shoes were completely wet because we had to walk through four rivers with our heavy backpacks. Then, I face-planted two times in two minutes, so I was already injured and filthy. It was boiling and I was losing circulation in my arms because of my bag’s weight. There were so many bugs and I got so many bites. After about five hours, we finally made it to our campsite. It was still so hot and I was exhausted. The next day, we had a little breakfast and then went on a quick walk to a river. We stayed there basically all day and once we came back to our campsite we noticed that there was a forest fire smell. Twenty minutes later, the teachers on our camping trip told us that we had to leave because there was a fire. Quickly, all of us had to pack up our stuff and we left the campsite by 5:30. We were terrified that we weren’t going to leave the trail until 10:30 because it took us five hours to the day before. We walked fast and made it by 7:30. Once I got back to my dorm room, I was exhausted and so drained. My body had bruises, mosquito bites, and cuts. This camping trip was an extremely draining experience and I’m so glad that it’s over.

“Tent Camping” by Ben Duchac/ CC0 1.0

Eyes closed blog

progstenLeave a comment

I’m typing this blog with my eyes closed the entire time. grammerly is also helping me but i don;t think that this will be perfect regurdless. i was curious to see what type of thoughts went throgh my brain while mt eyes were closed compare to when i see all the distractions both visually and audibly. while

I decided to take a second and listne and feel mt surroundings around me. I gear a cricket in the background and the celling creaking. However the thigns i have noticed most is mt other senses that are often masked by sight and sounf. I am noticing my breath more and the way my closes feel while wearing them. I am feelingmy hair fall on my face and the way my bacj feels against the couch. I also feel the weight of my eye lids wishing that they could fall asleep.

I hear my sister coming back from upper campus as she slams the car door shit like its not 11 oclock at night.

However I think the most intresting this about his blog is me attempting to learn where each key on the key board is bt feel alone rather than realining on both sight and muscle memory to type i am using the little dots on the F and J key to understand where my hands are on the board and where each letter is.

This blog is merely a idea i thought of with no real meaning or reson behinf it bedes to take away one of and my biggest sense in the human body being y sighy. It makes me wonder what being blind woulf feel like or what its like to have another one of my senses taken away from me.

I hope you have enjoured this blog as much as i have and i hope it can serve as a reminder to disconnnect yourself from things somtimes to appritce the others that might not stand out as much.

(I will not be fixing the grammar or spelling as it is part of the blog idea and its cool to see the trend/ habits i have when typing)

PC https://i0.wp.com/post.healthline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/blind-child-in-school-1296-728-header.jpg?w=1155&h=1528

flower

graypenguinLeave a comment

Flowers make me feel good about myself. One drawback, however, is that flowers in the U.S. are very expensive. If it were true, I would buy flowers every weekend when I go to town and put them in my room. Also, considering the temperature and the fact that they are placed in a room, fresh flowers don’t last very long, so I am a little reluctant to buy them. However, I feel better when I put flowers in my room. The other day a friend of mine gave me a dried rose. Just by placing them in the room, they brighten up the room at once. Another reason I like flower bouquets is that they are made from various kinds of flowers. It is nice to receive a bouquet from someone, but another good thing about flowers is that you can arrange them with the recipient in mind. Another interesting point is that each flower has its own meaning in the language of flowers. Gerbera as a whole means “mystery and sublime beauty” in the language of flowers. The language of flowers also changes depending on the color, and in the case of roses, there is a meaning depending on the number of roses. These may be small romances for us as well. My mother’s birthday and Mother’s Day are coming up soon, so I want to give her a bouquet of pink flowers.

pc;https://hanajiro.myshopify.com/products/bq-g0035-s

Sitting on the rock under the oak tree

poofypuffyLeave a comment

I just noticed how nice the air smells. I think it is the smell of orange blossoms from outside the school gate. The wind is bringing the sweet flowery smell up the hill. I can hear the creek flowing. It is the sound of a hundred little crashing splashes overlapping into a constant white noise. I thought to write a thousand, but I feel the creek is small to be thrashing that much. The rock I’m sitting on is cold, but my cheeks are warm. As I write this, a wind is blowing across my face as if to cool it down. I am grateful for all this sweetness. The wind silently moves the leaves in the trees in a way that the trees don’t move so much as breathe, change. 

I don’t often appreciate things this way, but I wish I did. For some reason, I can only see the things in front of my face when I’m forced to consciously decide to. So many things in our modern lives are made to tune things out, and when the smothering noise fades, it’s easier to stuff our ears with cotton or pick up cymbals than to process the unpredictable or unpleasant.

Picture Credit: The Editorial Board of the University Society Boys and Girls Bookshelf (New York, NY: The University Society, 1920)

Moon

graypenguinLeave a comment

The night sky seen from the city of Ojai is very beautiful. The fact that the moon is the same no matter where in the world you look at it is very strange. I think it is mysterious that we share the same thing no matter how far apart we are. I never get tired of looking at the moon, which has a different face every day. Also, the moon that hides behind clouds or lights up the dark streets with faint lights at night is always fascinating to see. In my home country, we use such a moon as an expression for confession. When we express our feelings to others, we sometimes feel embarrassed to say the words directly. Japanese people in the past had such words as well: The moon is beautiful. When Soseki Natsume, a famous writer of the Meiji era , was an English teacher, he was asked how to translate “I love you,” and he replied, “Japanese people don’t say that. You should translate it as ‘The moon is beautiful.” In the past, Japanese men were embarrassed to say “I love you” to the woman they liked, so they said, “The moon is beautiful, isn’t it? Some of those words were, “I want to watch the moon with you.” or “The moon and you are both beautiful.”These are very romantic and can probably only be expressed by referring to the moon.

pc;me

Dawn patrol

progstenLeave a comment

As you lie there in bed in the midst of some of your deepest sleep, lying comfortable and in contempt, you let your body rest and recover when the alarm you set mere hours ago at 12pm goes off 5 hours later. As you lay there in your dream, being bombarded by the “by the seaside” alarm, when you find the strength to roll over and turn off your alarm, you lay there, your body begging you to go back to sleep and get a good night’s rest for the first time in months, you remember why you wake up in the first place. With barely enough energy how, you get out of your bed still in your pajamas. You go outside into your garage, grab your cold and wet wetsuit and your board, load up the car, head inside for a muffin and a Diet Coke, brush your teeth and finally head out at 5am. The car drive is quiet one. Trying your best to not fall asleep at the wheel, you pop the Diet Coke can open and make the drive to venture. Rolling into the parking lot, you start to feel the energy of the ocean. Stepping out of the car into the cold, opening the trunk to grad the coldest and wettest wetsuit known to man, and forcing yourself to put it on. Despite the cold, you hike out to the beach prepare your body with some light stretches and head out to the water. The first wave hits your feet as you tread amongst the slippery rocks, trying your best not to fall and ding your board. After walking the most painful and annoying walk of your life on the rocks, you manage to get to waist-deep water, where you can start the paddle. As you hear and barely see the first wave coming, you perform a duck dive; as the water submerges your entire body for the first time, the cold hits you like an avalanche, cold and almost breathtaking. As you emerge from the depth under the wave, still in shock, you continue the paddle as the next wave rolls towards you. After repeating the process of duck diving and paddling and getting pushed back you finally make it past the break. Sitting out there on your board, ready for a wave to appear from the darkness, is a feeling unlike another. After time passes and waves roll by, the first light appears, and with it, the waves truly emerge from the dark. As light comes to the sky, if the clouds are just right, some of the most amazing colors emerge, and the sky looks like a fake painting you see in a art gallery. Sitting there on the smooth water with the waves rolling is really the best feeling of your life.

This is my perspective on surfing in the morning. Also, I imagine this being said while talking to someone who has never gone surfing before and telling them about what surfing is like, but the speaker is too excited to really describe it exactly how they want to. Also after they would say something like “you just have to exspeince it to get it”

PC: https://res.cloudinary.com/manawa/image/upload/f_auto,c_limit,w_3840,q_auto/articles/3104/surfing-wipeout

Miami

baka228Leave a comment

Miami was a surprise to me. It’s a city I hadn’t thought much about before, but it amazed me. I didn’t expect to see such clean and pleasant streets and city atmosphere. For some reason, I always thought of Miami as some kind of village or something similar. However, the city turned out to be very pleasant to me. Being there reminded me of the years when I lived in Cyprus. I think all resort cities have such a serene flair. I really liked the beach near which we stayed. The sand was clean, and the water had warmed up to a state where I could swim in it. The only thing that disappointed me was the condition of my skin in Miami. Usually, when I’m at home, I have a diet routine and all the skin care products. While traveling, I just ate everything, as if the rules set by my dermatologist didn’t exist at all. I ate sweets and fatty foods, drank sodas and juices which make my skin break out lol. Now, I need to quickly restore my skin, eating rhythm, and workouts. I wish myself luck.

pc: me

Usually i try to write

baka228Leave a comment

Usually, I try to write about something worthwhile, about my thoughts, feelings, or events that happened to me, and which would be interesting to share. But today is not that day; today, I want to talk about all sorts of nonsense that has been on my mind lately.

47 days. After precise calculations, I realized that I have exactly 47 days left to go to school. It seems like this number should be much larger, but definitely not in my case. I am the most vivid case of senioritis you can find on planet Earth. Immediately after receiving the acceptance letter from the university I wanted, unexpectedly even to myself, I just stopped worrying about what happens at school. I am absolutely calm about not doing homework, and it doesn’t bother me much. I won’t lie, I never really liked the process of studying in an American school, and the only reason why I truly strived and learned subjects was my admission to the university; now that the goal is achieved, the motivation is completely gone. In my case, trying to find opportunities to reduce my days spent in school buildings, I discovered that some camps take away as much as 5 days! I signed up for many, which significantly reduced my time spent at school this semester. I am glad that I have very little time left until the end of school. I won’t lie, I will be the happiest person on graduation day, during the ceremony I will definitely be crying, but not out of sadness but from overwhelming happiness.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is my sleep. Lately, I’ve been having terrible problems with sleep. I wake up every hour at night, and if I’m unlucky enough to start thinking about something that bothers me, then I can’t sleep for a couple of hours simply because I can’t stop thinking. It bothers me, but I can’t do anything about it.

PC: me

weeding

poofypuffyLeave a comment

I had field studies today. I hadn’t been on one yet, so I thought I had eluded field studies, but I was wrong. Yesterday, I got an email telling me I had field studies today. I walked down the hill to the creek today, thinking about how silly it is that we replace real classes with field studies. However, we got there and I pulled weeds for the entire time, and I really appreciated it. It was mindless work, but I enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if there were no ants and strange bugs, but I worked around them. I also saw a snail! It was green. So the “wildlife” canceled out I guess, because the ants and weird bugs made it worse, but the green snail and the worms made it better. I was happy to have weeded and gotten my hands dirty instead of having a long block of English, not that English is bad but weeding is better because I really like weeding.

Picture credit: Marina Grynykha

My Galentines

justthatonegirllLeave a comment

Over the weekend I hosted a Galentines Day. It was supposed to be in my backyard but the weather was soooooo cold. With the weather being so cold I decided to switch the party to inside. It was a smaller group with about 11 or 12 girls. I decorated the table in hues of pink and white. I put together big and small bouquets of pink and white flowers. I am pretty happy with the outcome of the party too. I set up and practically put the party together myself. I am super proud. There would have been more stuff I would have liked to add but overall it was a success. The dinner was the definition of girl hood. Something I do wish might have happened differently is my chocolate fountain. I accidentally used the wrong type of chocolate so it hardened when it was supposed to fountain out. I love pink so much. And I love flowers so much. #PERF

PC:Karin