question 7

I'm a city boy, but when I do experience nature, I usually enjoy it. Back in high school, our field trips were nature trips. We explored caves in freshman year, and we hiked up two different mountains in sophomore and junior year (we went to an amusement park in senior year). When I entered high school, I couldn't wait for senior year so I could go to the amusement park (they ended up making us do stupid physics problems though), but after experiencing all of the field trips, the nature trips were a lot more tiring and dirty, but definitely much more scenic, pretty, memorable and fun. Nature is so unpredictable, and thus so many funny things happened during the field trips.














In freshman year, our science teacher was an Australian guy and he was doing crazy things like climbing around the caves and jumping from rock to rock and it was so cool. After that trip, he would then be known to all of us as Dr. Indiana Jones. Here's a pic of Dr. Jones taking a picture. Also, we got to see what can be best described as the cave taking a dump, and it was pretty cool too. We were also supposed to go to the bat cave, a huge cave where tons of bats hang out, but some guy freaked the bats out, which freaked him out, so he fell and fractured his leg and the rest of us ended up not going there.

Sophomore year was even better. It was raining while we were hiking up to the flatrocks in Mount Makiling, so the trail was really slippery, which led to a lot of funny moments. One of my classmates slipped and was literally hanging from the root of a giant tree. He was crying out for his mommy and I thought it was hilarious. There was also a guy who actually fell and tumbled down the slope and we heard his scream from pretty far away, doppler effect and all.

Junior year was definitely the best though. We hiked up Mount Banahaw and it was so much fun. It's kind of this religious mountain journey thing, and there are things like carvings of the Virgin Mary and stuff like that on the way to the top, which had three wooden crosses. There was a slight drizzle, but at least it wasn't scorching hot like it usually is in the Philippines. There was this one tiny cave (they called it something, but I don't remember what) that you had to contort your way through to get to the other side. Supposedly, sinful people would have a hard time going through, so I didn't even try because I'd probably be stuck there forever. Here's a picture of us hiking up (there's me waving to the camera) and here's a picture of me and my buddy pretending that we'd just gone through that cave.
Those trips were definitely among my favorite high school moments. I actually kind of miss it, and I'd like to go to one of those trips again with my friends.

I think that nature is definitely something worth saving. Some people have a more "practical" approach to conservatism; they want to save the environment for self-preservation and to save us humans as opposed to actually preserving nature. I think that we actually have a responsibility to take care of nature though. It doesn't matter if we can eventually find replacements for the things that we rely on nature to give us, it would still be too different. I don't want my kids to not be able to experience what I went through during my field trips (or whenever my mommy drags me to the boonies). Nature has been around long before our civilizations, and hopefully we won't destroy it and when all is said and done, it will last long after human life as well.

Question 6

Over spring break six of my friends and myself drove down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I would say that the group was as environmentally aware as the average of American University students. Basically, the situation was that five of us drove down on Saturday and one had to come late on Tuesday. Because of this, we decided to drive three cars. Even though we had five driving down at the same time on the way there, because of convenience and comfort we decided to take two cars. When this situation is looked at in terms of environmental waste or gas cost this does not make too much sense. Because of this, I had a discussion with one of my friends about this on the way back.
I learned that the group generally cared about environmental issues enough, but did not want to sacrifice comfort. He understood how this situation did not make sense, but did not really want to do anything about it. This is probably the most important thing I learned; while some may care about the environment they do not want to make sacrifices to protect it.