journal - 18

Autumn is my favorite season. There are so many qualities of Autumn that make it the best season, in my opinion. The perfect Autumn day for me would be one where I wake to the feeling of crisp autumn air on my face, as my body is snuggled up in a soft quilt. I would then take my time getting up, and eventually mosey my way down the stairs. There, I would smell a delicious smell of my mom making breakfast, and hear the sizzling bacon in the pan on the stove. I would also smell the bitter and fresh coffee that my grandma would be brewing in the coffee pot. There, I would eat breakfast and socialize with my family. I would then spend the day in Missouri at my brother's football game. Our family would watched the game all day and have fun! We would eat nachos and hot dogs, while enjoying watching Missouri's win against KU, their rival team. After the game, my brother and I would walk back to his dorm by the dim light of the setting sun. There, we would hang out and rest until our family would go out to dinner. After a delicious dinner and dessert, we would have warm hot chocolate and chai tea lattes, as the steam from them was rising up into the cool autumn air. After dinner, our family would go to church with my brother, and there I would get to meet socialize with many of his friends. After church, we would walk around campus as the dead, brown leaves crunch under our winter boots and tennis shoes. My family would hang out and watch a movie in our hotel, and spend time together laughing and talking. After that, we would go to sleep and leave the next day. That would be the perfect autumn day.

journal - 17

I am not quite sure how to depict bonding with nature, but in my own terms I believe it is something I have done before. Bonding with nature sounds like some sort of weird and creepy hippie thing, however I don't take it like that. I actually do not currently have a good way to define bonding with nature, but I can give some examples that might help show what I believe to be true about bonding with nature.

I have been in nature many times in my life. When I was young, I lived in a Suburb, and did not have very many interactions with nature. There was a small pond behind a neighboring house, I once saw a raccoon, and saw a deer there once, and that is about the extent of nature that I knew. However, when I was young I used to go to a summer camp in Wisconsin. It was at that camp that I experienced nature the most in my whole childhood. I spent the summer at that camp in a cabin, played games in the woods, swam in the lake, went horseback riding in the pasture, went camping, went rock climbing, and so much more. It was also there that I would go sit in hidden places in nature to reflect. I would read my Bible, pray, and think while in God's beautiful nature. Those were the times that I bonded with nature the most.

journal - 15

I think there will definitely be many challenges in working together with Farmington High School to work on a project. All of us will most likely have many similar ideas and opinions, but the trouble with that is that we are so far away. We will have to do things differently than we are used to for this project. I think it will be fairly difficult to accomplish the project efficiently while working with students who we are not directly involved with. Firstly, whenever working on a group project you always have to sacrifice things that you want to happen, in order to incorporate ideas of other students. I believe we will definitely have to cooperate well with the students from Farmington High School and will need to take charge of the project, but still involve ideas and thoughts of the students from Farmington High School as well as the other Pleasant Plains High School students. Also, we are going to have to use many means of technology to accomplish this project. I believe that e-mail will be very helpful in this project because it is an almost instant way of communicating through technology. Also, I think that texting and talking on our cell phones is also another way of communicating sufficiently. Another challenge may arise if the students from Farmington High School do not do their part of the project. That could be very unfortunate. Luckily there will be other Pleasant Plains students in my group other than me, so hopefully we will all be able to work together. However, if students from the other school do not do their part, we will end up having to do their work, since they are not here for us to directly talk to. Although there will be many challenges in accomplishing this project, hopefully it will all go smoothly.