Saturday, May 17, 2014

LA River Clean Up

Hello, I am Jaclyn Martinez
 I attended the LA River clean up as a part of my English class assignments.
This LA River clean up trip was a total adventure for me. It was the complete opposite to what I was expecting. One thing I was not expecting were all the plants and trees that were growing in the middle of the river, but what was disturbing was to see all the garbage that was stuck in the trees because they had apparently adapted and grown with the trash. That made the trash extremely difficult to pick up. The item that was most difficult to obtain were the plastic bags because many of them were stuck in threes, they intertwined in the branches, others were half buried in the ground and could not always be pulled out because it would tear leaving the rest of the bag stuck somewhere in the ground. Going into the river to clean up was not the most pleasant adventure because of all the plants, bugs, air particles and heat  however it was a mind bottling and learning experience. I admit that when LA decided to ban plastic bags at the supermarkets I was upset because it made grocery shopping less convenient but when I saw how many bags we had to pick up and how many were stuck and unsalvageable I then understood that maybe just buying canvas bags to replace plastic bags is not completely a bad idea. this experience was not all bad because it was interesting to see that deep in the la river can be lying the most bizare and unimaginable items. For example, my team and I found a complete Toy Story blanket what was amazing was that despite it being buried under a tree and tangled in the roots of the tree, the blanket was in tact; it was about 5 sq. feet. Along with the blanket we found half a car tire that was also buried under a tree, fortunately we were able to dig it out. Unlike the blanket and car tire, we found a cart that was unfortunately impossible to get out because of all the plants already growing in and around it, plus we did not find it safe because we did not know if any animals had already made it into their home. Although finding these cool items somewhere unexpected was productive my team and I were disappointed to not be able to find and opening into the river, no matter how much we walked down the river passed all the plants we could not find an opening into the river and after a while we gave up. At the end of the day my team and I felt accomplished and proud of what we had done. It was a new adventure for all of us and taught us numerous things. It was a good day.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Hello my name is Keyera Johnson and I attended the LA River clean up with professor Hernandez English 101. During the La river clean up my group and I found unbelievable items while walking around cleaning. We saw and found things like food wrappings, a lot of plastic, pieces of clothing and even a suit case, but we could not grab it out due to the fact it was deep in the ground and wrapped in between the tree. I could not believe how much trash it was polluted in that area, it amazed me because the things we found were every day items we use. Also I learned that majority of the trash was plastic bottles and food wrappings and I remember during my trash experiment I collected lot's of food wrappings as well. Before taking a trip to the La river I knew nothing about it and I had no clue what it even looked like, now that I have gotten the chance to see/ experience the clean up I strongly encourage others to come out and help clean it up. Just imagine how beautiful it would be and how we would be able to get our water from there instead of somewhere else. I actually got a chance to see the river and it looked very dirty and also had a smell to it I was surprised when I seen the ducks swimming in that type of water. Over all I learned that we polluted our resources and it harms our economy and makes the city looks dirty.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

LA River clean up

My little sister
An old fan that I found
My name is Jocelyn Perez and I'm from Ximena Hernandez English 101 class. My point of view of the environment have always been different compared to others, I've always wondered what would life be like without our natural resources? This class has taught me to be aware of the amount of natural resources I'm using. I appreciate every ounce of it. So this past weekend on Saturday May 3, I helped out the community by attending a clean up event. Not only was I fortunate to go, but I also had the opportunity to join the team and clean the Los Angeles river. It feels amazing when you know you're putting your part in by helping the environment. When I arrived I saw a whole group of people and I couldn't believe the amount of people that were there. It surprised me because the amount of people I saw there were there to help out our environment, usually now in todays society nobody cares about the environment. So that's why it surprised me that there were people who took their time of the day to help out. My little sister tagged along with me, I wanted her to experience this with me because not many children are expose to this kind of things. When we started to clean, we were given two bags and a pair of gloves. As we went along the river, we came across a lot of trash bags and plastic bottles. The trash bags were hard to pick up from the trees, I was surprised how much of a good grip I had to have in order to get the bags. There was also paper and rubber bands. Beside the bags, we also collected food wrappings. It was disappointing at first because I thought it was going to smell fresh and it was the complete opposite. It smelled really bad, instead of smelling like fresh air, it smelled polluted and I felt awful because we are the reason the river looks like this. The trash that appeared to be there was because of us. This relates to our reading in class No Impact Man, how us humans impact the environment. No Impact Man explains the concept of plastic bags and how they end up in the ocean harming other sea-life. Also, the reading from Jenny Price "How to see L.A thirteen ways" relates to this experience, L.A is much more than a city of fame and riches, there's a lot more to L.A then what it seems to be. We are the reason for this, we should instead recycle our bags and water bottles, too. I would't mind doing this experience again. Overall, this experience has taught me and showed me what harm we are doing to our environment and how blind we are. I'm enjoying this class because it is teaching me more about nature and how we should view nature. We have a group of people who are joining together to make a difference in this community.

LA River Cleanup


Hello my name is Jenilee Iniguez and I am from Ms. Hernandez English 101-21. On May 3rd, I had an opportunity to help keep the La River clean. To be honest I thought the river was not going to have as many trash as people had told. I was surprised because my group and I found so much trash around the river.  When my professor told my class that there were plastic bags everywhere I did not believe it. Once we started to clean the very first trash I found was a plastic bag. I was so surprise on how many plastic bags my group and I found. We also found a lot of candy wrappers and chips bags. Something cool we found while looking for trash around the river was a place that looked like people were living there. We found clothes and something for a baby. After we wishing cleaning the river my group and I decided to go sort the trash. It was very hot and I did want to sort the rash. One thing I noticed about sorting trash is that there was a lot of plastic bags and little pieces of plastic. It was a great experience going to the L.A. River and I would not change it for anything in the world.



Sunday, May 11, 2014

Hello My Fellow Classmates of English 101, as some of you already know and for those that do not know my name is Brittany Fernandez and I am student of Professor Hernandez. In this blog post I am here to tell you about my life changing as well as eye opening experience that happened while cleaning up the Los Angeles River. On May 3rd 2014 myself, my classmates, and other students within CSULA spent our early morning / afternoon cleaning up the Los Angeles River. To be completely honest I thought I would not get that much out of this experience but I was wrong and in fact I loved it and I'm glad that I had this amazing opportunity. As an individual I just usually stick to recycling and not really paying attention to all the other harming objects that have been embedded within our environment. To begin my day at the Los Angeles River we were put into groups and told to basically find and pick up as much trash as you can; in which we would later take it to the truck that was taking it away from the river. My group started out as three and somehow turned into seven but regardless I loved my group and rather than looking at this field trip as a job we saw it as an adventure to help make our L.A. River clean and even greener than before. Throughout the day our group found many food and drink containers and plastic wrappers but what we were most astonished by was finding an area within the greenery of the river which resembled a home or as if someone had been living there in that particular section of river. Within the section that looked like a home we found lot's of wood, cloth material, a snow or warm body suit, and strangely a piece of baby equipment that looked as if it belonged to a jumper or rocker; we later found a suitcase and a storage container. At first I did not think that I was going to have to walk down that steep incline of the hill to get to actual river and when I figured out that I would have to I was afraid that I was going to fall but thanks to my group members Angela and Jenielee they held my hand until we all got to the bottom. Through out looking for trash I would say that even though most of the greenery of the river was a challenge at times to get through that it overall is truly and incredibly an amazing place to be and even wander around for a bit. In order to see the river one needs to pass and get through all of greenery but in the end the struggle is definitely worth the view. Throughout this experience I had came to realize that it was not that other individuals were intentionally putting all this trash in the river but it is the fact that they leave their trash and other objects that with the rain and storms it washes into our L.A. River creating harm to that particular environment. Towards the end of our experience my whole group and I volunteered to help sort out the trash that we and others had collected throughout the day and by us doing so I realized just how many different plastics there are as well as half of the trash are whole or ripped plastic bags that sadly were embedded into the trees from having been there so long. During the trash sorting my group and I found two credit cards one being an American Express Card and other being an actual debit card....we wanted to see if one of the cards still had money on it but we decided not to! Overall I am glad that I attended this filed trip oh and in fact Yareli and myself carpooled on our way there and back so I guess you can say that we tripled our experience by helping create less smog and gases in the air! Another thing is now that my group and I have bonded through that experience one can say that we became even better friends..I wouldn't trade my group for any other, they were or should I say we were AMAZING!


Friday, May 9, 2014

Hello my name is Angela Ramos and I'm in Ms. Hernandez English 101 class. On Saturday, May 3 we had the opportunity to join with FoLar and other volunteers to help clean a part of the La river. When I first heard about it I was actually a bit thrilled because it was actually going to be my first time being there, but the night before I saw that it was going to be pretty warm. In the morning debating if to go or not and end up going. The experience was pretty cool. I was able to interact with my classmates while helping out the environment. We actually found a spot where it looked like someone had camped out. My group didn't only participate in the cleaning, but also in sorting out the trash. For every fifth bag counting we would open it up and sort it. What we found was that there were a lot of grocery bags more than anything. Overall the whole thing was a great experience and it felt good helping out the environment.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Hello my name is Jimmy Dinh and I am in Professor Hernandez's English 101 class. Like almost everybody in the class, I joined up with the professor on March 3, 2014 to the L.A. river. Truth be told, I was looking forward for a couple of sightseeing with my group. Instead, we were welcome with dust particles, trash, and a bunch of branches. I was hoping the river to be what I was imagining many rivers to be. Unfortunately, I never got to see the river out in the open. I only manage to spot a dirty stream of water. There were interesting things that my group manage to find along the way. For example, Andres found something metallic. We all assume it might have been a bucket or something close. It was also rusted too, which means it went through some rain. We also found a shopping cart, but it was stuck inside the tree. Other interesting things we came by was a very dirty Toy Story blanket. However, we found a bunch of plastic and broken glass. I still am disappointed that I never manage to get a better view of the river. Overall, I did enjoy the trip. It was not so bad since I had friends with me. I did not manage to get much picture because that did not come into my mind.


 
 
Hello my name is Moises Sandoval and I am a student Ms. Hernandez English 101 class. On Saturday May 3rd we went to go lean up the river. when I arrived there, I saw something completely different than I imagined in my head. I thought the river was going to be like a concrete jungle with very little plant life around and hardly any environment. The river appeared much like a jungle, with plants, trees and bushes growing on the inside. But it was a jungle filled with much trash. There were many items that we found at the river that were cool, such as shopping carts, old parts of a car etc. On the other hand though there were many things that I found that were bad, such as plastic growing out of trees, old beer cans, tin everywhere, it was a very polluted jungle river. the experience was very good because I learned much about how people pollute the river, and how we as people need start taking care of it.
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

L.A River Clean Up

Hello my name is Ana Rosas and I am a student at CSULA. I am In professor Hernandez's English 101 class and on Saturday May 3rd my class and I along with other classes volunteered with FOLAR to clean up the L.A River.  At first when the L.A River was brought up in class my first thought was "What is there to clean in the L.A River, I rather go clean up a beach". The reason why I thought this was because I had never been to the L.A River. I was aware that we had a river in L.A, but I never thought there was actually something to clean up. I thought everything along the river was concrete. Its sad to say, but just like some people living in L.A , I didn't see the L.A River as a place where nature could be experienced. At first to be honest I didn't want to attend the clean up because I didn't know what to expect. The morning of the clean up it was really hard for me to get out of bed because it was a Saturday and that is usually the only day i get to sleep in, but either way i got up and made my way to Steel Head Park. My classmate Jennifer Romero and I arrived at the place around 8:40 a.m, but we were not excited to clean because it was really hot. When we were asked to get in groups we didn't know who to group with because we really didn't know anyone there, but we eventually found two other girls and a guy that joined our group. When we began cleaning I was surprised to see the amount of nature we are surrounded by , but yet we are not really aware of. My group and I collected all sorts of trash, but what we found the most of was plastic bags. There was a lot of plastic bags stuck in between the branches of the trees and although we tried to pull them out it was hard because they were really stuck. I was surprised to see the amount of trash that was collected by all the volunteers. A group of students even found a shopping cart, which surprised me. Cleaning the L.A River along with other volunteers was a great experience and if I would be asked to volunteer again I would definitely do it again. The feeling I got afterwards,knowing I had helped make  a little bit of change is priceless. After I left i felt good with myself. I felt a great satisfaction. I wish more people got involved and volunteered to try to make a change, because after all it is our responsibility to clean because we are the ones creating all the trash.We should take into consideration the harm we are causing to nature when we do not throw our trash away and just dump it in the streets. This activity changed my perspective on how I see L.A. Before volunteering I thought of L.A as a city full of building and factories polluting our air. I only saw the bad things about L.A, but I really never thought L.A had this wonderful place to where we could experience nature. Over all this activity was great. I do not regret having to wake up early on a Saturday morning to go help clean. I know it requires of more people to make a change and what we contributed with on Saturday might not seem like a big deal, but something is better than nothing. Now that we all saw the damage we cause nature, it is up to us to make a change and decide what actions we are going to take to actually make a change in our environment.



Hello. My name is Rosana Carretero and I'm a student at CSULA. On Saturday May 3rd I attended the river clean up. We cleaned the Steelhead Park. At first, i pictured it with more greens and a small little pathway; but when I got there, it was nothing that I have pictured.  I never thought I would have found so many plastics out there. As i was going down to the river, I was like Oh damn, I'm going to fall. But I didn't. The group I was in and I found some interesting things down there. Besides finding plastic the most, we found clothing. I found a jacket that was stuck in the tree and a beret that seemed to belong to a young girl. One of the persons I was with found a boot and some pair of jeans. Another person found the bottom piece of a shopping cart. As we were looking for trash, we saw ducks. I never really thought that I wound find ducks down there. They were cute because there were a lot of baby ones.  When I saw the river, I was shocked because I didn't know it would look really dry.  But as we walked further up, we found the nice side of the river that actually looked like a river. Even though I got a headache at the end, I had a fun experience but it was hot that day. I would definitely clean the river again. 




FoLAR : Clean Up

Hello! My name is Yareli Esparza. I am in professor Hernandez's English 101 Class and on Saturday May third my classmates and I went to go volunteer to clean up the L.A. River.  At first when we got to the park site I did not expect other people to participate in the organization. I thought it was just going to be CSULA students with the FoLAR members but there were other volunteers. It felt nice to see that people want to make a difference on their own. In my entire live I never noticed that we had a river in Los Angeles, it was mind blowing information. My group consisted of 7 girls including me. What I did at the beginning was I took inventory of the trash we collected while cleaning. A lot of the items were food packages like Candy wrappers and chip bags but he most would be plastic bags/grocery plastic bags. The amount of times the girls called out that they picked up a plastic bag was unrealistic. When we had finished filling up our trash bags, which we had 7 of them. I did not except to find so much trash in the jungle like area because from on top it seems clean. After taking a breather we volunteered to sort the trash. It shows what kind of trash ends up eventually into the water. The items that other groups found as well were pretty much the same thing and they had other big trash like pipes and clothes.  Over all this experience was an unforgettable one and I will wear my shirt with pride because to an extent we helped the river stay clean. the sight of the L.A river could remarkable if we do something about it. So next time you do not throw your trash away think about where it might end up!  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

LA River Clean-Up (5/3/14)

Hi, I’m Samantha Lee, a student from Mrs. Hernandez’s English 101 class. May 3rd, that was the day of our LA River clean up with FOLAR. Waking up that morning, thinking oh man, such a hot day to help clean the river? But yeah, it was definitely worth the trip. In the beginning, we were asked to create a group. So I found my group consisting of 7 girls including me. At first, I didn't think there would be so much trash since there is always people cleaning it, but after the first 15 minutes, we already had half our bags filled up. My group hiked under tree barks and itchy leaves (stupid me, I wore shorts) so ants were all over my legs. We finally saw the water of the river. It was such a beautiful view. We found so many random things such as a large container, jump suit, water pipes, a toy for a baby crib, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and tons of snacks bags. It was mostly all stuck to the trees or piled up with sands.
After an hour of picking up trash, we officially filled all our bags up. We brought back the bags to our first destination and rest. Of course, we had to keep ourselves hydrated. After resting up, the guy who were sorting the trash, asked for volunteers. So my group and I volunteered us to help sort the trash. It was crazy because it was really surprising what many interesting items people brought back such as shopping market carts, pillows, carpet, and many small pieces of plastic bags. It was ridiculous what people can throw in the river. I never thought I would be helping clean the river. It was an amazing experience.





LA River Clean-up

On Saturday, I went to the LA River to help FOLAR clean the river. At first, I thought it was going to  go clean the actual water but it wasn't. Experiencing this clean up was really fun because I was able to socialize with classmates and shared the trash inventory. I never knew that I could experience a lot of nature in LA, especially in the river. Going through all this wilderness made me be in contact with nature and I was closer. Furthermore, me and my partners Aldo and Vanesa collected four bags of trash that was all around the trees and it mostly consisted of plastic bags. We found strange things and they were up the trees due to the currents when the river is filled up. This was an awesome life experience because it feels good to help the environment. After all, we are damaging it so we have to do something to help repair that damage. We should stop buying a lot of food packaging because that is what ends up In the river and it can be impacting our life. Seeing how much trash we collected is just a part of all the trash we create and it made me feel guilty because it was a lot and mostly it was the same things we buy and eat. Therefore, this experience was really helpful because it helped me reflect about the trash we liter and try to create less trash so I can't impact the environment.

LA River Clean Up

Hey there, well my name is Stephanie and I am a CSULA student. My English 101 class, my boyfriend, my friends, and I went on a trip to the LA River on May third to help clean it. Even tough I wasn't looking forward to waking up early that Saturday morning I did and I'm glad I did and I'm also happy my boyfriend and friends were there to experience it with me. I must say I was surprised by how much plastic bags and wrappers I picked up that day. It was a hot and sunny day which made it harder for since we were in the sun all day. After our first hour we had lots trash and most of it was plastic from food wrappers. I'm amazed by some of the things we found there, there was just so much trash and not enough volunteers, although I must say I'm happy we all put our little grain of sand to help out for a good cause. When taking a break between what felt like hours of picking up the endless amount of trash we sat down near the river to see the slow stream and its inhabitants. There was plenty of birds and lizards around, although I never really got to see any lizards my friends did. I'm glad we were able to get at least fade several bags full of trash. Yet, it was depressing to seem that all the wild life had to endure such bad living conditions because of what we have done. Their home is a dump and most of the trash that we can find in the river are either food wrappers or plastic beverage bottles. I'm glad I was able to experience this with my classmates because I felt closer to nature and felt like I got out of the city by just taking a few feet down the river. Its amazing how many people don't really notice the nature in L.A. and I now know what  Jenny Price, the author of 13 Ways to View Nature in LA, meant that there really is lots of nature that we do not take advantage of. It was nice to take a break from the city and help out clean up our environment for a change. I hope that some day the river will be in better circumstances so that the wildlife that once lived there may get there home back.

-Stephanie Cervantes

LA River Cleanup

When I first heard that we had a river I thought it was a riverbed since I have lived here my whole life. Apparently though not many people know about the river itself. I believe that there was no water in it and it be dirty water with mud and such.
When I went down to see the river itself I saw very little water. It seem to me like it just left over water that was barely even there. Then having to see so much trash around it just was disappointing. Like how the plastic bags were wrapped around the trees. What if there were animals that ate off trees and ate the plastic. They would probably die. Its sad to see though these habits are getting worse because we humans are causing this mess and are not even noticing it.
Some people throw away trash in the ocean. In the ocean there are fish who probably eat our trash and we eventually eat the fish. Many people eat fish raw and do not even know that they are eating toxics that are contained inside the fish as well. not only we are putting animals lives in danger but our lives as well.
My experience through all this though made me want to help more. It was nice doing something good to the planet and the lake. I believe though what seem odd were things that I found such as clothing and even jars of who knows what. I would do this again if I had the chance.