Ni hao! This is Derek and the commitment I made at the end of Earth Camp HS2010 is to watch less television for years to come. Because watching tv is so easy to do, within days or weeks the amount of energy it takes to power your tv comes to become a massive amount. Watching less tv will not only lessen your impact on the earth but will also improve your health and lower your electric bill. The bundles of joy at earthcamp I had without electricity taught me that living without electronics is not only possible but can be enjoyable as well. If I were at home instead of earthcamp I could not have learned and enjoyed all the fun games and activities that are possible while making almost no impact on the earth. This kind of fun can be done almost anywhere anytime, so the use of a tv is not needed.

This is day 9, which began with a chill and relaxed morning. Todays first special event was a no waste lunch challenge where the goal is to try and produce the least waste possible. The teams for the challenge were divided into your own color group, so my group was Emily, Dakota, Katie, Lynn, and I. At the beginning of the waste free challenge we had a clear vision of total victory with no waste. As my team set off in search of a great place to eat, we took numerous breaks at various gift shops and such. When we finally came upon a small cafe type restuarant called Mcstiffs, we began our short quest to produce no waste during our lunch, which later turned out to be a total epic failure. What happened was as we prepared to order we had told the cashier/cook person about our waste free situation. At first we thought he knew what we were talking about but when the food was brought out, it had paper carrying the food and paper plates as well. At that moment we got sad, because they had not used the ceramic plates they had promised earlier. As a result we failed epically and thus we ate in shame and guilt. Once we finished we headed back to camp to have an hour of free time. Later we headed to arches to discover how they were created and there significance in this world. As we headed towards Arches we took a pit stop at a camp site to have dinner and celebrate Emily's birthday. we got to celebrate it by giving her big snuggly hugs and eating cheesecake with candles on it so she could make a wish. Once we reached Arches, on the hike up we got the chance to meet people from all around the world. One of them was a German guy by the name of Chris who helped us take our group pictures. Later that night we slept around 11pm and got to chill and talk alittle before bed with the bugs, ehh!

Day 8 was by far the best day among the many wonderful earthcamp days. It was the best because in the morning as we took off on the last part of our journey, I took a ducky on my own. As we went down for a few minutes I decided it would be fun to splash people so as I splashed the other duckies, a splashing war began. It was tiring because as I attacked everyone, everyone else went for me. After being exhausted I took a short break and decided to attack the big boats, the rafts, mainly Danny's raft. As I approached his raft I threw a couple of hard splashes and he grew a big grin and pounced on my ducky flipping me, causing me to sink into the depths of the river for a few seconds until my life jacket shot me back to the surface. It was  fun, but the process repeated 4 more times until getting back in the ducky was hard to do. After taking a small break, Ulises hopped on my ducky and the second part of the war had began as everyone was splashing one another and the fun didn't stop until we reached our final destination to depart from the river. That day was one to be remembered for a long time.