Writer's Notebook
Today I had a memory from my childhood come back to me, and it made me smile. My father thought it would be funny when we were little to buy Tigger and Eeyore ears to make us wear during breakfast. The child who came downstairs happy in the morning wore the Tigger ears. The grumpiest child was stuck with the Eeyore ears. This was very annoying at the time, but now I can laugh to myself when I think back on it.
If I could go back and do any trip over again, I would have to choose Alaska from my summer of 2015. I have heard before that people tend to look back on a trip or event and remember only the good times- making it seem better than it actually was at the time. This trip around Alaska was truly a trip that I never wanted to end. There is something special about life there, being surrounded by beautiful scenery and wild animals. I was like a little kid each night not wanting to go to sleep because that meant another day was coming to a close and the trip was that much closer to being over. (There's also the fact that it doesn't get very dark there at night and I could never get the curtains to stay fully closed).
In a couple weeks I will be moving to another house that is less than 10 minutes from where I currently live. The short distance will make it an easier move, but nonetheless the process is still hectic and stressful. I have been packing up my things, and I always worry that something I love will become lost in the transfer. This new house will be an upgrade to me because it has a pond directly in the backyard with a dock. I spent my whole childhood admiring the sunsets in my backyard, with the way the colorful pink and orange sky are mirrored in the still water. I look forward to being able to experience those moments again from the back porch of this new house. It's nice having that place of peace hidden within the busy life of the city around it.
Fable:
One dark and cloudy evening, Moose was hurrying through the forest to get back to his family before the big storm rolls in. He was going so quickly that he wasn’t being careful about where he was stepping, and he accidently got his back hoof jammed under a tree root. He tugged and kicked his leg, but he could not get it free. He then heard another animal rustling the leaves nearby.
“Who’s there?”, asked the Moose.
“It’s me, Mouse”, said the mouse hesitantly. She had met Moose before in the forest and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant encounter.
“Oh drat”, said Moose, “I was hoping for a stronger, larger animal to help me get my hoof free from this root. I have no use for you, go away from me at once”.
Mouse scampered off, afraid of Moose. Just then, the rain began to fall heavily into the forest and a crackling bolt of lightning struck a tree near Moose. Now he really wished he was not all alone, and he hung his head feeling scared and helpless.
Suddenly Mouse appeared again before Moose, but this time he was not alone! Mouse had brought a friend to help him quickly chew through the tree root that was trapping Moose’s hoof. In no time, he was free again.
“Now you can get back to your family! They will feel safer with you there during this storm”, the Mouse said kindly.
“Thank you so much Mouse”, said the Moose. “I am sorry that I ever mistreated you. Please, you and your friend follow me to share my family’s shelter that is nearby”.
Moral: Treat everyone with kindness because you never know when you will end up needing a friend.
One of the exciting trips that my French family took me on included a two-day horseback riding trip across a rural area outside of Angers. This started out as an activity that I was really looking forward to, but I was surprised to find out that part of the trip consisted of galloping on the horses. I do not have any background or experiences with riding horses in this way, and I was receiving instructions in French. I had no idea what our leader way saying, and next thing I knew I was galloping full speed on a horse just hanging on for dear life. To make things more embarrassing, a saddle pack on my horse came loose and the whole group had to stop because parts of our picnic lunch were flying out onto the ground. Everyone just found it amusing though, and we took it as a chance to take a little break.
^ this was still a great experience though because I love horses in general...
Other parts of France I had to get used to- soup for appetizer before every dinner... having strange men kissing both my cheeks to greet me
I went on this trip to France because of a program called Junior Diplomat came and spoke to my high school class. I remember listening and thinking it sounded interesting of course, but I did not know that putting my name down on their passed around sheet would result in my traveling to France alone for a month.
In Mrs. Sowell's third grade class, each student got to create a fancy scrapbook throughout the year filled with writings about school, holidays, and interviews of people around our school. It wasn't something that every third grade class did. We knew that if we got Mrs. Sowell as our teacher then we would be creating one just like all our siblings did before us in her class. It was the same writing process for each entry: create your first draft, edit it with a partner, writing a final draft in cursive with a pencil on your scrapbook page, and then copy over that writing with a skinny permanent pen. Aside from all the practice with writing and cursive, we also got to practice interviewing people around our school whether it was our class intern, the principal, our librarian, a guest author visiting the school, or another teacher. We always enjoyed creating questions as a class and conducting the interview as everyone wrote down their own records to use later. As a third grader, the long drafting process could get a little tedious, but that scrapbook is something that many of my friends and I still have lying around our houses to this day.