Portfolio piece #5

Reaction to the story: I thought the Steven King story was really cool because he was telling about his old baby sitter and how she was mean to him, but he would not be the same person if it weren’t for her. Also the glass castle was very interesting because her parents choose to live that life style. The girl was cooking by herself and ended up catching herself on fire. In both stories the authors used words and phrasing that really made me feel as though I was in the story with the characters.

Memory: I arrived at the O’Hare Airport at 5 A.M. It was dark and my troop was meeting at gate 3E. I was there early, but a few other scouts were huddled around one corner. I saw some of my friends there, Mitchell, Dylan, and Andrew. I walked up to them and started pushing and shoving them, saying hi and talking about the upcoming trip that we were about to embark on.

As my troop was waiting in the corner more member started to arrive, Theo, Jason, Teddy, Sean, Steven, Joe, and many more followed. Once everybody was accounted for we began to move towards security. The line was not moving fast and we were all surprised of the amount of people in the airport at 5:30 A.M. We eventually made through security, luckily we were all wearing our scout uniforms so they would not even think that we would take a deadly weapon on the plane.

After security we could not find our gate, H7, because it was only a single door with no Humber on it. Confused, we listened to what the security people told us and sat by the door. Finally our flight was called and we started walking towards the door only to find out that we had three flights of stairs to walk down. Then we went outside and walked about 300 feet to a ramp that lead into the plane we were riding. As we were walking up the ramp I thought to myself, man are Boy Scouts cheap.

The flight itself wasn’t so bad, the flight attendants were very nice and the bathrooms had toiletpaper, what more could I ask for. Once we landed I could emediatly feel the heat lather onto my body. Our troop made it off the plane and through security fairly easily, but when we were in the waiting area we found out that our bus was an hour late. So Troop 23 was camping at the air port for around 45 minuets. Finally the bus arrived, we all piled in as fast as we could and began our journey from Fort Laurterdale to the island of Marathon. It was about a four hour bus ride, but nothing to horrendous. On the bus ride everyone passed out because of our already long day.

Once we arrived at sea base I could barely contain my excitement. The smell of the ocean, being there with all of my friends, it was amazing. We first had a meeting with the staff members, also referred to as mates, telling us the rules of going onto the island and what we need to bring. We then took our swimming test to make sure that we were capable of swimming. I was next in line and I was honestly a little scared to jump into the ocean, I had never been in the ocean before. As I jumped in I prepared myself to be extremely cold, but to my surprise the water was extremely warm. After I while some water went into my eyes, this was the first time I learned not to run your eyes with salt water.

Following the swimming test we had our snorkeling demonstration and we were able to try it ourselves. It was a little strain after a while I became used to it, the only problem was that it was becoming dark and hard to see. After we finished that we had time to shower, and relax before the opening camp fire. That night I learned that all of the mates are crazy, literally insane. I was a little terrified at first and even the following day.

Metaphore: a journey is like a maze, many paths, but you chose your own.

A place you can never have the same experience twice.

I traveled through the endless maze of my adventure. It was never ending, always changing, adapting to its surroundings. Not only was it never the same when I returned, but it was forever changing. The environment changed everyday, rain, sun, and fog. Many more adventures can happen with one activity yet they are very similar. Only the little differences make the big changes. The end of the hall opened up into the keys, I stopped before entering, wondering if this is real. I slowly walk onto the warm sand as flows through my toes. I turn around only to find that the hallway is gone, vanished.