LA River Trip

I'm Selena Valdez, I had a distinct experience at the river trip with Professor Hernandez from California State University of Los Angeles. Over had a great experience, I went accompanied by my sister on the trip. I found a lot of fast food trash such as cups and wrappers. Also, found a market carts buried and attempted to dig it out. What surprised me was that the minute I crossed the bike trail and headed toward river I saw trash every where. It was my first time visiting the La river so the experience was all new to me. At the end of the trip I felt really glad I went and help the environment. I believe that if  people were to participate more often there will be less trash every year. I mostly collected plastic bag which according to Beavin it has a dramatic impact to our environment. I saw difference object that don't make sense why they are in the river but it felt good cleaning it up.

I didn't expect to have fun in the trip or find it interesting. It was just a class assignment I had to do. However, I got to experience nature in LA and improve it even if was just a little. I hope to again in the future. The experience made me have a self connection to "No impact man" that i enjoyed. I understand the book better and I saw what Beavin was taking about. Furthermore, understood the statement that Jenny Price makes "nature can be experience in La.". I didn't get to see the ducks that she talks about which was a bummer. After, looking at all the trash in the La river it made me realize the impact that trash has over the environment. Therefore, knowing there is a solution or something that can be done to make our environment a cleaner place is inspiring. By everyone at least cleaning up after themselves it would make a difference in the environment.

LA River Clean Up Experience

Hello fellow classmates, my name are Brandon Herrerias and I attend the English 101 class with Professor Ximena at Cal State LA and had an amazing experience cleaning up the LA River on a beautiful Saturday morning. Despite the heat, my experience was one for the books. I was accompanied by my group members and we had a great time bonding. Trash varied from trash bags to gold balls and miscellaneous items. We found shopping carts and baby toys which was quite a concern on how exactly they got there. We had also seen some homeless people there which were a surprise because I was not expecting for people to be living in this area. The LA River is a beautiful sight and peaceful view to experience because we are all guilty of living in the city and not really getting the opportunity to enjoy what has been here for decades before us as humans arrived. The trash bags gave me the most concern because like in the reading on Impact Man, we have the choice between using plastic trash bags and taking our own reusable bag. Before this class, I had no idea that Los Angeles even had a river and that the river was heavily impacted by the trash we leave around the streets. It's a big change on my personal perspective on how I go about my trash and where I place it. I now realize that all these little wrappers I might leave around are actually ending up in the nature's rivers and environment. I am now more cautious about my trash and am careful. Every year I will be attending this for now on because I love doing good things for the better for our world.

Helping the Environment

My name is Estella Lamas I am in Professor Ximena Hernandez English 101 class. This semester I have learned a lot about issues dealing with the harm people are causing to the environment. We have read the book No Impact Man, seen a video, and read articles. The best part of this class so far has been going to the Los Angeles River. I had such an amazing time being outdoors for once. Our class had the chance to have hands-on experience with helping out environment. Although the fact having to attending an event on early on a saturday morning  did not excite me, but I knew being there was a good cause for the environment and attending would help me engage more with the topic. In my group my job was to keep track of all the trash we collected. I did not get the chance to pick up as much trash as I would have liked to, however the beneficial part of keeping track of the trash was that I got the chance to see what type of trash our group was collecting and how much was there. We collected trash bags, plastic bottles, glass, food rappers, and even clothes. The trash that our group had collected the most was trash bags which was not a surprise to me, but what did surprise me was seeing shopping carts. Some shopping carts were growing within the trees and the only way to remove the shopping carts would be to remove the trees. Another thing that surprised me was that we had to search for the river and once we found the river we saw ducks and bird with their family (which was better than seeing dead animals). The river was dirty, but it was nice to see a different part of nature that we do not acknowledge in our busy lifestyle. Now that I have seen the harm people have caused to the environment I want to change my lifestyle and consume less trash such as how the author Bean Collin did in No Impact Man. The little I do to help the environment is going to help the lives of the next generation. But as for our trip I had lots of fun with my group and I recommend it to all other student who are invited to help clean the environment.

Steelhead Park (Los Angeles River)

              Before                                                                                               After

Hello I am Sharon Santos and I am in Professor X. Hernandezs’ English 101 class. This past Saturday (May 3) the class had to participate cleaning up the Los Angeles River, FOLAR (steelhead). Throughout the hours I was there I was picking up trash around Los Angeles River and I had the chance to separate the trash the last 45 minutes of the event. Picking up trash was not bad at all but it was funny to see some people not going all the way into the “island” to pick up trash. Sort out the trash was somewhat difficult because I was standing underneath the hot sun picking out the waste from the weed of tree and separating it into categories (metal, plastic bags, junk food wrappers, ect). The Los Angeles River can hardly been seen. Before seeing the river people have to pass the "island,” trees, grass and trash. I learned that everyone should give a little bite back to the community just by cleaning it at least one hour every two weeks. Time passes by quickly, so the people will not feel the hour pass by. The reason why the class did this event was because we are learning about the environment on how we can help Earth instead of destroying it and conserve the natural resources we have now before they run out.

What is up you guys. My name is Arturo Gutierrez and I am in Professor's Ximena Hernandez English 101 class. This past Saturday our class went to clean up the Los Angeles River with Friends of the Los Angeles River(Folar) organization. It was my first time at the Los Angeles River, and I thought it was amazing even though it was filled with trash. Before getting there I was expecting to see a river with concrete instead of grass and trees, but I was wrong. Steelhead park was really close, and I got there with no problem. The class was divided in groups of four. Folar also gave us a bag and gloves to pick up the trash. The trash that I saw and picked up the most were plastic bags. There was plastic bags on trees, on the ground, and the river; pretty much everywhere I turned there was plastic. My bag also consisted of clothes, a backpack, a CD played, Cds, and golf balls. I filled up my bag really fast, so I had to go for a second bag. Everybody in the class did a good job cleaning because it was really hard to find more trash. There was a group that found a shopping cart. It made me wonder how in the hell did they ended up there. Overall Saturday was great because it was not a normal day. What I am trying to say is that I interacted with nature that day. Yes, there is nature everywhere like parks and our backyards, but not as much nature as the Los Angeles river. There was a lot birds and a couple of dragonflies I thought that was cool. I am not going to lie I thought it was really fun even thought it was 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. That was only one section of the river and I want to do this again.

L.A. River Cleanup

My name is Ricky Hoang and I'm from Ximena Hernandez English 101 class.  This past Saturday we had to clean up the L.A River.  At first, I wasn't looking forward to it because it was hot and I had to wake up early on a weekend.  When i came to the event, I noticed there were a good amount of people there, it seemed like a lot of people really cared for the environment.  I was put in a group with four other people.  I didn't really have a specific job, I just picked up trash as we went along the river and let people put trash into my bag.  As the day progressed, I noticed we started to gather more and more trash, the item that we seemed to get a lot were plastic bags, this surprised me because I didn't really expect to see a lot of plastic bags there.  The river itself was very shallow and dirty itself, but it was nice to see it.  I noticed as we got deep into the river, the more cotton there was, I'm not sure if it came from the trees or not.  Besides the plastic bags, we picked up a good amount of food wrappings.  When I saw the river, I wasn't surprised to see it the way it was because I seen part of the river on the bridge on Chinatown.  The water was pretty green and there wasn't much in the water at all.

This experience had a lot of relations with the readings we been doing for "No Impact Man" because both of these situations had to do with the environment.  "No Impact Man' talked a lot about plastic bags and how they end up in the ocean, I know the river isn't a ocean but it made realize why there were plastic bags there.  Overall, this experience has taught me a lot about the environment.  It showed me that a lot of people ca come together to clean up something that's very important to us.  The L.A isn't the most cleaned place but after that day, it was definitely better than what it was before.  This experience was not easy because of the weather and the conditions of the river but I would it was worth it because at the end of the day, the river was cleaner than what it was before.  This has taught me a lot about nature and something I would like to do in the near future.

LA River Clean up

My name is Vanessa Acosta from English 101 Professor Ximena Hernandez Class. Yesterday morning I had a great experience cleaning the la river. I expected to be cleaning along the river and expected to see trash in the river and cleaning that up but I had a great experience cleaning like in the woods. In order to enjoy my time there I had my friend Steven tag along and we formed a group with Naomi, Carmelo and Brandon, and I must say we all had a great time and enjoyed the day picking up trash. All five of us were on a mission on finding money but that was unsuccessful. Once I started the clean up, I noticed that I was picking up a lot of plastic bags and made me think if all the plastic I was throwing away was ending up here. I picked up a lot of Capri suns and cup of noodles cups. I also went in a little corner that looked like a kids playground with kids toys and a child's jacket which made me wonder if there was a child living there. Thinking of that made me also wonder if I was invading someone's home. I expected to be picking up trash like paper, plastic bags, wrappers but instead I was picking up beer bottles, alcohol bottles, food, bags of chips, I also picked up a women's purse and saw a lot of shopping carts especially from target. I also noticed there was a lot of golf balls which made me wonder how did they get there. I also noticed like small caves put together with boxes and clothing items on the ground.  I normally am not an outdoorsy person but this clean up made me want to become more involved and want to continue cleaning up not just the la river but also local parks. As our day continued, my group and I heard a loud sound like a waterfall sound which lead us to want to go see where that sound was coming from and we saw the la river up close and it was beautiful. I expected a river with no water and trees everywhere but it was nothing close to my expectations. The water was running through the river and the water looked fresh and made me want to take a dive. All the walking and picking up trash was worth the view of the water. My friend along the way found a  strange painting with weird lettering and he thought it was so different and interesting, he decided to take the painting with him. I thought to myself, " who knew that picking up trash would lead to my friend wanting to keep this painting "? This experience was an eye opener on how involved we should be and aware that Los Angeles does have nature. I honestly did not think that the LA river would have much water or nature but going down to the woods and being around all the trees and the smell od dirt made me see how Los Angles is full of nature. The LA river even had ducks swimming through the river. Seeing the ducks made the La river feel more like nature and made it feel a more enjoyable experience. I really enjoyed this la river clean up and I'm glad I had great friends to experience it with.