Earth Camp has really shown me and taught me that our environment is very special, important, and very fragile. We need to learn how to treat our environment and learn how to make the right decisions so that we do not end up ruining our precious and delicate environment.

Because of the many wonderful experiences I had at Earth Camp I have a new view of our environment and I now have new plans and different patterns that I am going to start doing on a daily basis. For example, during Earth Camp we went to a working landfill and I got to see and experience the amount of waste we as humans produce each and every day. Because of this I am now going to start finding ways to reduce trash not only in my home, but in my community and in my schools. I will talk with school officials to put up numerous recycling and compost bins up around school to encourage students to not throw everything away in the trash and to see if it is actually recyclable or compostable. This will drastically decrease the amount of trash that my school will produce. This in turn will help the environment.

At Earth Camp we also had a challenge where each team had to go to a different restaurant for lunch and produce the least amount of waste for lunch. This was a very fun and interesting challenge because it showed me how much waste someone can produce in just one meal. Ever since I did that challenge I have had many ideas and plans that I want to use. One plan that I have is to use cloth napkins at home instead of paper ones when eating or cleaning so that I can reuse them instead of having to just throw then away. Another plan that I have is to either take cloth napkins with me to restaurants or ask then to not give me napkins if they are paper ones. Also, I will ask when ordering food to leave out any non-essential things such as food wrapping or paper holders.

So in conclusion, Earth Camp has taught me a lot and has influenced me to change my regular patterns to help the environment. The places we went, the challenges we did, and all the wonderful experiences we had had a very positive way.

During Earth Camp  I had many fun, exciting, and memorable experiences.  But I think that one of the best experiences I had was going staying at the Paradiso Resort in San Carlos.

    During our stay at the Paradiso we had the chance to engage in many exciting activities.  One of these activities was snorkeling. I had been waiting to go snorkeling in Mexico ever since I heard about Earth Camp.  We got up SUPER early.  Well, at about the time we get up every day, which was 5 am. After we got up we got our breakfasts and immediately got in the car.  After we arrived to the docks we got on the boat and Glenn, the captain of the boat, showed us around and told us what to expect. Then we took off! The boat went very fast and sitting on the front with your feet hanging off the side while the warm ocean waves slammed into your feet felt so nice.

    About fifteen minutes later we arrived at the first spot where we were going snorkeling.  We all got in our snorkel gear and then we jumped in! It was so interesting and exciting seeing all of the fish swimming around on the ocean floor.  We got to see a variety of fish and the water was so clear that you could see up to 25 feet under water! I loved being underwater and seeing what the fish do in their natural habitat.  

    After we were swimming for a while we got back onto the boat where we sat for a while.  While we were sitting at the front of the boat we saw a jelly fish floating in the water!  We went to the back of the boat to get a net and then caught the jelly fish.  After putting it in a bucket filled with water we went searching for more.  In about 5 minutes we had caught two more.  It was very interesting looking at them close up and seeing all the different parts of them.  

    After we were done it was time to head back to shore and start our next adventure.  

We had lots of fun at Earth Camp, and one of the things we did to have fun was playing practical jokes on each other.  

    On day 4 of earth camp we camped out on Mt. Lemon.  At about 9:30 at night the boys decided that they wanted to prank the girls. They then quickly realized that they only had 30 minutes till we had to be asleep.  But we knew that the girls had already gone to sleep.  They then spent fifteen minutes brain storming but could not come up with any good ideas. But they decided that they had to go do the prank now and so they decided to sneak up to the girls camp sight and throw pinecones at them.  We snuck down the trail to the girls camp sight and got down on the floor.  Then we started throwing pinecones.  After throwing about 20 pinecones and hitting about 5 people we heard someone get up.  Well all got low to the ground.  A bright beam of light shined across our area. Even though our leader, Andrew, was in clear sight and the light shinned right on him, the light turned off, and every thing was quiet again.  Then we opened fire again! But after only a few other pinecones were thrown the light shinned right on Andrew and we knew that we were caught.  We threw our remaining pinecones and ran as fast as we could back to our camp site.  

    After we got back we had a suspicion that the girls were going to retaliate.  We saw a light from our camp sight so we shinned our lights. No one was there.  Every time we heard a sound, or saw something move we would shine our lights and keep quiet.  After about thirty minutes of talking and shining lights we went to sleep.  But what we didn’t know was that there was going to be a surprise waiting for us the next morning…..

     The next morning we got up bright and early and assumed that the girls and just admitted defeat because it seemed as though nothing had be done to us or our camp sight.  But then we had spotted what terrible deed they had done.  We looked over and saw that all of our shoes were locked together with pad locks! We couldn’t believe it. But there was something strange about it.  There were two groups of shoes that were pad locked separately that each had four shoes on it.  That is only four pairs of shoes but there were five guys that we knew the boys would prank.  Who’s didn’t they take?  Well before we went to bed I remember that Amy told us that there were bears on these mountains and that we should lock up all of our smelly stuff.  Well I decided to use the bag my sleeping bag came in and lock up my shoes.  Since I put this bag under a sheet by accident, the girls could not find my shoes.  But I did feel bad for the other guys, so after Andrew gave us a little pep talk we decided to break the locks and get our shoes back!

    After we figured out our very complicated and sophisticated system we started hitting the lock against a rock with another rock. After we hit it a couple of times we heard Amy shout up to us, “ Don’t break private property”.  We then knew that the locks were actually Amy’s and that she let the girls use them.  We realized that the lock could not be unlocked by the combination any more because it was already to damaged.  We had to continue with breaking it.  After a while the girls told us that if we wanted our shoes unlocked we would have to take their bags to the car.  So we did, and even though thy didn’t get my shoes, I decided to help out.  After that they unlocked one half of the shoes but couldn’t unlock the other set because the lock was already too damaged.  

    During breakfast the guys continued breaking the lock.  One person held the shoes against the floor while the other person hit the lock with another rock.  It was breaking very slowly and we were running out of time.  Eventually we had to start packing up everything and everyone needed to help, but Amy allowed me to finish breaking the lock.  Since it was only me I had to use a different plan.  So I decided to come up with a very complicated plan.  I held the shoes and smacked the lock repeatedly against a rock.  After only about thirty seconds the lock broke free.  OUR SHOES WERE FREE!!!!!