Drew's Essay

I kind enjoy Drew’s station island, because the most impressive and attractive paragraph for me is his description about jazz music. And the descriptions of surroundings are vivid; I can easily imagine the scene clearly in my mind.

Question: Is it necessary to write so many singer’s name? One person can represent the music style.

Final essay with pictures

Melissa Ambrosch

Bicycles, Kayaks, Snowshoes

Carol Severino

11/10/15

As we loaded the bus to Chicago, I could feel the butterflies in my stomach.  I had gone abroad without my parents before, but this time I would be gone for an entire month and be living with a foreign family.  Once we got to O’hare, everything became real.  I had to lug around my suitcase by myself while carrying a backpack and a purse.  I prepared for a long nine hour flight.  The traveling was exhausting and we ended up landing around five in the afternoon, Germany time.

            A little while later, we found our exchange students.  My exchange student, Dina, and I had gotten along so well when she was in America so we were so excited to see each other.  Her boyfriend was with her as well and he drove us back.  I immediately noticed how reckless and crazy the drivers in Germany were.  There were times when I thought we were going to crash into the car ahead of us.  I also noticed that the car we were in was stick shift.  All of my friends in America drive an automatic so riding in a stick shift was a new experience for me.  As we pulled onto her street, I started to get a little nervous about meeting her family.  The street itself looked exactly how I would picture a small German village.  The roads were all cobblestone and the houses were colorful and much taller than wide.  Once we pulled into the driveway, her family ran out to greet us.  Her mother rapped me in her arms and her father stood nearby with a big smile on his face.  Her three brothers seemed shy but also uttered a “hallo”.  Behind them stood her sister Helen and their dog.  I was in awe of how sweet they were to me.  They asked me how my trip was and assured me that if I needed anything, to be sure to ask.  About an hour later we sat down to dinner.  Her mother had a large garden in their backyard where she grew many vegetables.  The salad she had made did not contain any greens, but all different kinds of vegetables, including raw tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots.  Her father had decided to grill that night as well and there was an array of meat to choose from.  Despite the different language being spoken, the bubbly family chatter made it feel just like home. 

The next morning, I did not go with Dina to school as I was recovering from jetlag.  Her sister woke me up at ten however, so that my body could try and get used to the time change.  We went downstairs to have breakfast.  Her father had gone to the bakery earlier in the morning and bought every kind of bread that they sold.  The smell of freshly baked bread filled my nostrils.  There were warm fluffy croissants, rolls filled with ham, and kasebrotchen, cheese bread.  Helen called her friend to take us to school.  She told me that normally they rode bikes to school, but she did not want me to ride by myself.  Again, I witnessed the crazy driving that these German kids engaged inh.  Helen told me that in Germany, one does not get their license until they are eighteen and that it costs nearly $2000.  They also must go through a rigorous test that includes physically driving and a written test.  This was crazy to me as it was only $20 dollars in the United States and we just had to pass a short written test along with a short driving test. 

Around noon I joined Dina at school.  I met her friends Annelie, Nora, Nadine and Lotte.  Her high school was much different than mine as they had long breaks in between classes, different classes every day, and an open campus.  A few minutes later they told me they were leaving campus to take a smoke break.  This was different because none of my friends at home smoked.  One of her friends was only 14, yet she smoked.  We walked to an area about a half mile away in a creepy looking alley.  They brought spray deodorant with them to mask the smell.  I had also never seen this before as most people use stick deodorant in the United States.

As the week went on, I got used to riding a bike to school every morning at 6:30, eating sandwiches for breakfast, taking smoke breaks, and going to class in German.  At first, I had a hard time riding the bike as it was too big for me and the other girls were quite fast on their bikes.  However, I soon learned to love the early morning bike rides as they got me energized for school.  Dina would always run into someone she knew on the way to school, so I would get to meet more people every day.  The ride was through their downtown, which had all cobblestone streets surrounded by little shops and restaurants.  There were always birds chirping in the morning and these street cleaners.  I had never witnessed someone cleaning the street.  Somedays we would stop in the little boutiques and look around.  Going to class in German every day made the transition from speaking English to German much easier.  I was always surrounded by it and learned new words, like all the slang my German teacher would not teach us.

At the end of the first week, I went to my first World Cup viewing party.  There were so many people in one square.  At the front, there were two large screens featuring the Germany team and whoever they were playing in the first round.  People wore red, black and yellow necklaces and tattoos.  There were German flags everywhere and people chanting.  Dina told me this was the only time that the German flag was allowed to be flown, as the only other time the flag had been flown this freely was during the reign of Hitler.  After his reign, Germany banned people from flying the flag to avoid being associated with Hitler and the Nazis.  In the front and back of the square there were tents of beer and people dancing merrily.  Every time Germany scored a goal, the crowd would launch into a chant and hug each other.  It was so exciting and the atmosphere was crazy.  The party seemed to continue all night.  When we left, cars were out in the street honking as people leaned out the window waving flags.  Afterwards, we went to one of Dina’s friend’s houses.  One of the most peculiar things I had noticed since I had been in Germany is how much they seemed to like President Obama.  While I was at her friend’s house and used the bathroom, I noticed the face of Obama on the toilet seat.  When I went back out into the living room, I brought this up and they told me that they liked him because he had many ideas that were similar to their leader Angela Merkel.  They told me that they think he is sympathetic towards all people, mostly because of his nationwide health insurance idea. 

The weeks went on and I experienced many new things and people.  Although their school and culture were so different, Dina’s friends still hung out together like I did with my own friends. A few days we went swimming, on the weekends we would go to parties and on our downtime, I would get to hear all the gossip that was going on in their school.  The river where we swam seemed to be a local hangout.  All around the beach, people were grilling food and tanning themselves.  Every time we went, the beach always seemed to be teeming with people.  One night we went to a cook out with some of her closest friends.  A big difference I noticed is that parents at these hang outs seemed to be nonexistent.  The drinking age was also sixteen in Germany so Dina’s mom would always send her off with a bottle of champagne.  When we got there, the boys were cooking meat over an open fire.  This was different, as we always just ordered pizza at home.  It took a very long time for the meet to be cooked, but it was very good tasting.  Later that night we played a drinking game that was very different than anything I had ever played before.  We stood out in the street trying to knock a water bottle over with a bottle.  Whenever one would knock the bottle over, the team would try to drink as much beer as they could.  Whichever team drank all their beer first, won.  The Germans drank out of beer bottles instead of cans, and I remember it tasting almost exactly like American beer.  Playing in the street was odd because cars would come every so often and we would have to run off the street with our bottles.  Weed was also something the Germans seemed to smoke on a regular basis.  That night I saw someone roll a joint and got to experience the thrill of passing a joint around.  They made it seem like a big social event as they turned on music and would dance while passing the joint.  Unfortunately, we had to ride our bikes about four miles back to Dina’s house.  I did not really make the connection against drinking, smoking and driving.  This led to running into a bush, but somehow I ended up home in one piece. 

Another night we took the train, which was surprisingly big and comfortable, into Cologne.  In America, one normally “pre-games” in their house before going out.  In Germany, I learned that they take bottles onto the trains and literally drink out of them.  We finally got to Cologne and the club where we met up with Dina’s brother and some of his friends.  The club was dark and noisy, but played music by American artists such as Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber.  Later that night when we left the club, we found out the trains had stopped running due to “umwetter,” the German word for a windstorm.  We later found out that four people had been killed from falling trees.  We all stuffed into a tiny car that resembled a clown car, and drove back into Dina’s town.  We stayed at her brother’s house for a while until the trains started running again.  The entire time we were at her brother’s apartment, we sang Beatles songs such as “Hey Jude” and “Yellow Submarine” and drank vodka.  How very European I thought to myself.  We almost ended up missing the train but finally got on one at 3 in the morning.  It was surprising how many other people were also on the train.  After this weekend, I realized everyone stayed up quite late and that their parents did not really enforce curfews.  This was a new sense of freedom that I had never experienced.  This freedom ultimately helped me to grow up and think for myself. 

The next weekend we took the train into Cologne again to go shopping and see the city.   Preimarkt, one of the stores we went to, had three floors of cheap accessories, clothing and shoes.  This was just about every girl’s dream, and we ended up spending about three hours there.  We had lunch at one of Dina’s favorite restaurants.  This was where I first had a freshly made German beer.  The beer there is served in pints and is lukewarm.  It was much stronger than anything I had ever tasted but was by far the best beer I have ever had.  For dessert, we had a traditional German dessert called spaghetti eis.  It was a type of ice cream that was shaved into strings like spaghetti.  It was covered in fruit and syrup but was less sweet than typical American ice cream.

About a week later I had to say goodbye to Dina and her family.  It was incredibly sad as I had gotten so close with her family.  We vowed to stay in touch and visit each other soon.  To this day we are still in touch and share our lives with each other.  She is a special person and will always have a place in my heart. 

Final Travel Essay

Lilly Corrigan

Terror from the Sea

Imagine yourself with a flexible sheet of plastic conformed to your nose and mouth, a cloudy white window in front of your eyes, and a thin tube covered in salt and sand shoved into your mouth that you’re intended to breathe from. Now imagine that you’re plopped out in 40 foot deep water a 20-minute swim away from salvation with no means of flotation besides some old worn out ducks’ feet strapped to the bottoms of your legs. This is how I feel about snorkeling.

            In my family, when you graduated from high school, you got to pick a place to go on vacation that summer. My older sister chose to go to Ireland--absolutely beautiful, but a bit cold and rainy. When my time came to choose a vacation spot, I wanted a place that was more tropical. I ended up choosing the US Virgin Islands, a group of three islands in the Caribbean Sea. We planned out our trip in the months leading up to my graduation; we would stay a couple of days on St. Thomas, the more popular island, and then spend most of our time on the quiet and tranquil St. John.

We were very excited about snorkeling. All of the travel books my mom looked at talked about how it was some of the best in the world, “The Virgin Islands offer some particularly outstanding sites.” They raved about different allegedly spectacular places to snorkel. My parents and sister had all snorkeled in the past and had really enjoyed it. I had tried it once, but was unsuccessful. I figured that now that I was a little older, I would do just fine. I mean, people talk all the time about how amazing snorkeling is; wouldn’t I love it just as much as them? I would come to find out that the answer is no, no I wouldn’t.

After months of planning and the hustle and bustle of graduation, the time finally came to get all packed up and get on a plane. Three planes actually; the trip took about eight hours of flying altogether. We arrived in St. Thomas on a beautiful June day, surrounded by water, cruise ships, and native islanders. Our first couple of days on St. Thomas were very enjoyable; but the most memorable parts of the trip came after a ferry ride over to the smaller and more secluded island of St. John.

In St. John we rented a small cottage on a hillside. It was called Mountain Haven, a little place my mom had found online at VacationRentalsByOwner. It was absolutely gorgeous; very small, but we didn’t need much room. It was owned by a couple of very interesting people indeed. Thom (pronounced “Tom”) and Jackie were the owners, two Americans who had divorced their first spouses and moved here together to “get away.” They lived in another cottage down the street, made a living keeping up rental houses, and hadn’t been to a doctor in years because “it’s a scam.” Regardless, they were very helpful. They too told us about the wonders of snorkeling, and directed us to where we could rent our snorkeling gear.

We went to the local rental place the next day. It was at the bottom of the hill, a short drive from the cottage. It was a brightly colored and haphazardly built shack, with a sign on the front that read “Crabby’s.” There was another sign on the door with their hours: 9ish to 5ish. As it turns out, 9ish is 10:45 and 5ish is 4:30. We drove around a lot on our first day waiting for them to open. But that’s good old Island Time for you.

When they finally did open, we went in to get four snorkeling masks and four sets of flippers. The flippers were in bins with labels like “Bigfoot” and “Cinderella.” The masks were kept in the back, where a rather crotchety man had to fumble around to get them for us, his attitude fitting the name of his place of employment. We got our gear, some basic instructions, and a couple recommendations for good snorkeling sites and we were off.

We went to a snorkeling spot that was supposed to be one of the best. It was called Waterlemon Cay and was a part of Leinster Bay. According to my mom’s Fodor’s Caribbean travel book, “Although just about every beach has nice snorkeling—Trunk Bay, Cinnamon Bay, and Waterlemon Cay at Leinster Bay get the most praise.” We decided to try it out. I got my mask fitted on and jammed my feet into my “Cinderella” sized flippers. I was ready to learn how to snorkel; I mean, how hard could it be? My dad proceeded to show me the proper snorkeling technique in shallow water; breathe through your mouth, let the flippers hold you up. Once I felt pretty comfortable with this, I started to paddle farther out. At first it was fun; I could see everything underneath me, fish came and swam around me, and all of the equipment seemed to be working. There was a whole other world below me, a world of multicolored parrot fish, purple fan plants, and little schools of fish that ebbed and flowed around my fingers. Hey, I think I’m getting the hang of this!

After a few minutes though, my mask started getting cloudy. Drops of water started dripping in around my eyes. What if my mask is broken!? I stopped to tread water as I looked at my mask. My dad swam over too. Nothing was wrong with it; it was caught on my hair and water was getting in. I adjusted the mask placement and tried tightening it, just like the crabby guy from Crabby’s had told me to do, but nothing seemed to work. I tried again and again, but water kept getting into my eyes. Not only that, but I started getting nervous. With my head covered in plastic and my face down in the water I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like the salty sea would suffocate me. I called it quits before the rest of my family that day. They stopped soon after. I would try it again, the sides of the mask were probably just wet and wouldn’t stay on well. I’d get the hang of it eventually.

 It only got worse from there. Every time we went snorkeling I had to stop multiple times because my mask was cloudy or I had salt water in my eyes. I would get so anxious that I would start crying while I was in the water, which really didn’t help the water dripping into my mask situation. Not only was I uncomfortable and freaking out, but I was getting frustrated. Isn’t this supposed to be fun? Why don’t I like this as much as people said I would?

My parents didn’t get my dislike of snorkeling at all. I explained it to them as well as I could: As they knew all too well, I’ve had reactive airway disease ever since I was little. It’s similar to asthma; it causes me to wheeze and have tightness in my chest when I’m around certain triggers like dust. I figured that because of my condition, I’m just scared that my mask will malfunction and I’ll suffocate.

“It’s that fear-of-not-breathing thing,” I said to them. “I just feel like if anything goes wrong, I’ll drown or something!”

“I know, Lil. You’ve been quite a trooper just trying this with us,” my dad responded. I thought that was promising; maybe it meant no more snorkeling! But alas, it did not.

My parents acted like they understood, but didn’t do anything about it. Every day they wanted to go snorkeling. So we did. I tried to go, each time with a ridiculous attack of nervousness and tears and stopping early. Eventually I just started walking along the beach by myself while the rest of my family went out in the water.

I confronted my parents again about halfway through the trip. This vacation was allegedly my gift, why did we have to spend a good portion of it doing something that I hated?

“I just sit there and do nothing while you’re out in the water. Why can’t we do something that we all actually enjoy?” I asked.

“This is probably our last chance to go snorkeling in a place like this, so we’re going to do it. If you come to an island, you snorkel. It’s what you do,” was their reply. I allowed that to sink in; they’re snorkeling no matter what and I’m going to have to deal with it.

The last day of the trip, I didn’t even try snorkeling. I told my family to go in the water without me, which they did a little more readily than I was hoping. Still, I made up my mind to somehow enjoy myself. I walked carefully along the rocky beach we had come to; rocky beaches are better for snorkeling, another reason to avoid it. I made my way to a large red-orange rock.

I climbed up the rough side of the rock and looked out over the sea. We were in a small inlet, a place that travel books and locals raved about. It was called Haulover Bay, a place right off the highway but hidden by trees. According to Frommer’s, “The snorkeling is dramatic, with ledges, walls, nooks, and sandy areas set close together. At this spot, only about 180m (591 ft.) of land separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea.” I looked over the water stretching out in front of me, clear blue-green that got darker as it got deeper. Impeccably clear, and teeming with life. Spiky purple sea urchins crowded the water around me. I had to be careful not to step on them. As I looked closer, I saw purple fans, salt water plants, little snails and fish. I could have seen a lot of these things while snorkeling underwater, but not with the same tranquility and clarity as I did above the surface. All of them lived quietly around me as the ocean water swelled in and out with each wave. If I sat just so I could let the water swirl up over my feet without disturbing the sea life around me. It was breathtaking.

The sunlight poured over the water and illuminated the world underneath. I pulled off my T-shirt and let the warmth soak into my skin, basking in the glow of the scene around me. The calming sound of the water put me at ease, the smell of the sea reminded me of the exotic location, and the beauty of it all made me realize how lucky I was. If I had my face pressed into the water right now I would have missed all this; the sun, the sea swell, the calmness.

A scuttling sound to my right jolted me out of my calm. A palm sized crab had decided to share my rock. It was about the same color as the rocks around me; it could very well have been there the whole time. As soon as I looked at it, it scurried away. It hadn’t been scared of me before I moved. That more than anything else made me feel at one with that rocky beach.

 Soon after that my family came in from their final snorkeling adventure. “Did you have fun?” my mom asked.

I realized that I had enjoyed sitting on a rock alone far more than I had enjoyed suffering through snorkeling with them. “Yes, yes I did.” That was our last day on the beaches of St. John.

Even at the end of the trip, my parents and I hadn’t come to an agreement on the snorkeling subject. They were still hardcore advocates, and I hadn’t budged on my position either. But that experience did teach me something. I was able to have fun by myself; I didn’t have to do what everyone else wanted to do. The travel books weren’t right about me, I didn’t get lost in the beautiful escape of the undersea world, or whatever flowery description they gave about the “Best Snorkeling in St. John.” I sat on a quiet rock, and that was more fun for me, believe it or not. I suppose that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And sometimes you only find that beauty if you choose to behold it instead of going snorkeling.

Lilly Corrigan

Terror from the Sea

Imagine yourself with a flexible sheet of plastic conformed to your nose and mouth, a cloudy white window in front of your eyes, and a thin tube covered in salt and sand shoved into your mouth that you’re intended to breathe from. Now imagine that you’re plopped out in 40 foot deep water a 20-minute swim away from salvation with no means of flotation besides some old worn out ducks’ feet strapped to the bottoms of your legs. This is how I feel about snorkeling.

            Let me take you back a bit. In my family, when you graduated from high school, you got to pick a place to go on vacation that summer. My older sister chose to go to Ireland--absolutely beautiful, but a bit cold and rainy. When my time came to choose a vacation spot, I wanted a place that was more tropical. I ended up choosing the US Virgin Islands, a group of three islands in the Caribbean Sea. We planned out our trip in the months leading up to my graduation; we would stay a couple of days on St. Thomas, the more popular island, and then spend most of our time on the quiet and tranquil St. John.

We were very excited about snorkeling. All of the travel books my mom looked at talked about how it was some of the best in the world, “The Virgin Islands offer some particularly outstanding sites.” They raved about places “where fish swim around the reefs as you float downward,” and “fish dart about in colorful schools.” My parents and sister had all snorkeled in the past and really enjoyed it. I had tried it once, but was unsuccessful. I figured that now that I was a little older, I would do just fine. I mean, people talk all the time about how amazing snorkeling is; wouldn’t I love it just as much as them? I would come to find out that the answer is no, no I wouldn’t.

After months of planning and the hustle and bustle of graduation, the time finally came to get all packed up and get on a plane. Three planes actually; the trip took about eight hours of flying altogether. We arrived in St. Thomas on a beautiful June day, surrounded by water and cruise ships and native islanders. Our first couple of days on St. Thomas were very enjoyable; but the most memorable parts of the trip came after a ferry ride over to the smaller and more secluded island of St. John.

In St. John we rented a small cottage on a hillside. It was called Mountain Haven, a little place my mom had found online at VacationRentalsByOwner. It was absolutely gorgeous; very small, but we didn’t need much room. It was owned by a couple of very interesting people indeed. Thom (pronounced “Tom”) and Jackie were the owners, two Americans who had divorced their first spouses and moved here together to “get away.” They lived in another cottage down the street, made a living keeping up rental houses, and hadn’t been to a doctor in years because “it’s a scam.” Regardless, they were very helpful. They too told us about the wonders of snorkeling, and directed us to where we could rent our snorkeling gear.

We went to the local rental place the next day. It was at the bottom of the hill, a short drive from the cottage. It was a brightly colored and haphazardly built shack, with a sign on the front that read “Crabby’s.” There was also a sign on the door with their hours: 9ish to 5ish. As it turns out, 9ish is 10:45 and 5ish is 4:30. We drove around a lot on our first day waiting for them to open. But that’s good old Island Time for you.

When they finally did open, we went in to get four snorkeling masks and four sets of flippers. The flippers were in bins with labels like “Bigfoot” and “Cinderella.” The masks were kept in the back, where a rather crotchety man had to fumble around to get them for us, his attitude fitting the name of his place of employment. We got our gear, some basic instructions, and a couple recommendations for good snorkeling sites and we were off.

We went to a snorkeling spot that was supposed to be one of the best. It was called Waterlemon Cay and was a part of Leinster Bay. According to my mom’s Fodor’s Caribbean travel book, “Although just about every beach has nice snorkeling—Trunk Bay, Cinnamon Bay, and Waterlemon Cay at Leinster Bay get the most praise.” We decided to try it out. I got my mask fitted on and jammed my feet into my “Cinderella” sized flippers. I was ready to learn how to snorkel; I mean, how hard could it be? My dad proceeded to show me the proper snorkeling technique in shallow water; breathe through your mouth, let the flippers hold you up on the water. Once I felt pretty comfortable with this, I started to paddle farther out. At first it was fun; I could see everything underneath me, fish came and swam around me, and all of the equipment seemed to be working. There was a whole other world underneath me, a world of multicolored parrot fish, purple fan plants, and little schools of fish that ebbed and flowed around my fingers. Hey, I think I’m getting the hang of this!

After a few minutes though, my mask started getting cloudy. Drops of water started dripping in around my eyes. What if my mask is broken!? I stopped to tread water as I looked at my mask. My dad swam over too. Nothing was wrong with it; it was caught on my hair and water was getting in. I adjusted the mask placement and I tried tightening it, just like the crabby guy from Crabby’s had told me to do, but nothing seemed to work. I tried again and again, but water kept getting into my eyes. Not only that, but I started getting nervous. With my head covered in plastic and my face down in the water I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like the salty sea would suffocate me. I called it quits before the rest of my family that day. They stopped soon after. I would try it again, the sides of the mask were probably just wet and wouldn’t stay on well. I’d get the hang of it eventually.

 It only got worse from there. Every time we went snorkeling I had to stop multiple times because my mask was cloudy or I had salt water in my eyes. I would get so anxious that I would start crying while I was in the water, which really didn’t help the water dripping into my mask situation. Not only was I uncomfortable and freaking out, but I was getting frustrated. Isn’t this supposed to be fun? Why don’t I like this as much as people said I would?

My parents didn’t get my dislike of snorkeling at all. I explained it to them as well as I could: As they knew all too well, I’ve had reactive airway disease ever since I was little. It’s similar to asthma; it causes me to wheeze and have tightness in my chest when I’m around certain triggers like dust. I figured that since I’ve struggled to breathe before, I’m just scared that my mask will malfunction and I won’t be able to breathe.

“It’s that fear of not being able to breathe thing,” I said to them. “I just feel like if anything goes wrong, I’ll drown or something!”

“I know, Lil. You’ve been quite a trooper just trying this with us,” my dad responded. I thought that was promising; maybe it meant no more snorkeling! But alas, it did not.

My parents acted like they understood, but didn’t do anything about it. Every day they wanted to go snorkeling. So we did. I tried to go, each time with a ridiculous attack of nervousness and tears and having to stop early. Eventually I just started walking along the beach by myself while the rest of my family went out in the water.

I confronted my parents again about halfway through the trip. This vacation was allegedly my gift, why did we have to spend a good portion of it doing something that I hated?

“I just sit there and do nothing while you’re out in the water. Why can’t we do something that we all actually enjoy?” I asked.

“This is probably our last chance to go snorkeling in a place like this, so we’re going to do it. If you come to an island, you snorkel. It’s what you do,” was their reply. I allowed that to sink in; they were snorkeling no matter what and I was going to have to deal with it.

The last day of the trip, I didn’t even try snorkeling. I told my family to go in the water without me, which they did a little more readily than I was hoping. Still, I made up my mind to somehow enjoy myself. I walked carefully along the rocky beach we had come to; rocky beaches are better for snorkeling, another reason to avoid it. I made my way to a large red-orange rock.

I climbed up the rough side of the rock and looked out over the sea. We were in a small inlet, a place that travel books and locals raved about. It was called Haulover Bay, a place right off the highway but hidden by trees. According to the Frommer’s travel book, “The snorkeling is dramatic, with ledges, walls, nooks, and sandy areas set close together. At this spot, only about 180m (591 ft.) of land separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea.” I looked over the water stretching out in front of me, clear blue-green that got darker as it got deeper. Impeccably clear, and teeming with life. Spiky purple sea urchins crowded the water around me. I had to be careful not to step on them. As I looked closer, I saw purple fans, salt water plants, little snails and fish. I could have seen a lot of these things while snorkeling underwater, but not with the same tranquility and clarity as I did above the surface. All of them lived quietly around me as the ocean water swelled in and out with each wave. If I sat just so I could let the water swirl up over my feet without disturbing the sea life around me. It was breathtaking.

The sunlight poured over the water and illuminated the world underneath. I pulled off my T-shirt and let its warmth soak into my skin, basking in the glow of the scene around me. The calming sound of the water put me at ease, the smell of the sea reminded me of the exotic location, and the beauty of it all made me realize how lucky I was. If I had my face pressed into the water right now I would have missed all this; the sun, the sea swell, the calmness.

A scuttling sound to my right jolted me out of my calm. A palm sized crab had decided to share my rock. It was about the same color as the rocks around me; it could very well have been there the whole time. As soon as I looked at it, it scurried away. It hadn’t been scared of me before I moved. That more than anything else made me feel at one with that rocky beach.

 Soon after that my family came in from their final snorkeling adventure. “Did you have fun?” my mom asked.

I realized that I had enjoyed sitting on a rock alone far more than I had enjoyed suffering through snorkeling with them. “Yes, yes I did.” That was our last day on the beaches of St. John.

Even at the end of the trip, my parents and I hadn’t come to an agreement on the snorkeling subject. They were still hardcore advocates, and I hadn’t budged on my position either. But that experience did teach me something. I was able to have fun by myself; I didn’t have to do what everyone else wanted to do. The travel books weren’t right about me, I didn’t get lost in the beautiful escape of the undersea world, or whatever flowery description of snorkeling they gave about the “Best Snorkeling in St. John.” I sat on a quiet rock, and that was more fun for me, believe it or not. I’ll leave you with a cliché: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And sometimes you only find that beauty if you choose to behold it instead of going snorkeling.

Final essay

For my final essay, I will be describing the month I spent in Europe.  It was only the 2nd time I went overseas without my parents so I will talk about the confidence I gained by traveling without them and what I learned by having to advocate for myself.  I also want to discuss the differences among teenagers of different cultures and how I discovered that despite these differences, we all have similar problems and desires.  To do this, I will talk about specific experiences within the trip that made me come to these conclusions.  I will use characters such as my exchange student, her family, and random but other meaningful characters I met throughout the trip, to further the explanation of these experiences.

Final Proposal

For my final piece, I plan to expand my snapshot story. My family traveled to Grayton Beach, Florida, a frequent vacation spot for us. I will go into more detail about our adventures and use the snapshot story as one of many memories I describe. I plan to talk about parasailing, the jellyfish, and other beach activities we did chronologically, but I'm unsure about whether I'll begin telling the story right when we arrived or a little ways into the trip. The characters will be my immediate family, my mom, my dad, my siblings, and me. I plan to keep the same general theme as my snapshot story which is that the memories you make with your family stay with you long after they are made and everyone grows up.

Final Travel Essay Proposal - Becc

For my final travel essay, I would like to expand on my short write, "Hamilton." I would like to write about the entire trip, my dad and I as the main characters. I would touch on each of the following events: dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant in Albany; Hamilton; the B&B in Ithaca; my dad getting food poisoning; Taughannock Falls; and our final stop at Cornell. At different points in my life I've viewed this trip either as a failure or as a success, but I don't want to view it as either/or anymore.  Finally writing it as a cohesive essay, I think it's important to touch on both the disappointing/upsetting moments and on the uplifting ones. The theme is really going to be about my dad and I's relationship at that point in time, as when we went on the trip we weren't really getting along very well. I want my readers to take away that our relationship isn't about always agreeing, but that we can still have little moments of insight into why we're so different, which can help us appreciate each other. On our trip, our differences and similarities are highlighted more than in day to day life, simply because we were forced to spend so much time together.