Helping The Environment

This past Sunday I was able to participate in a great event. As part of my English class I was able to go help out at the beach and see why they say the beaches are so dirty. While arriving there it was clear that i couldn't really see the beach I don't know if it was because the day was so foggy or because right next to the beach the air port is there and obviously the planes create smog in the air. Well besides that when arriving there we were given instructions to clean up the beach and pick up anything that looked to be out of place. Some of the things we didn't pick up were things that looked dangerous or something harmful. While walking around the beach with my classmates we discovered various things that didn't seem to fit into the beach environment. For example we found socks laying around like if it was a laundromat, we found tampons GROSS!!, we also found allot of cigarette buds. A beach is suppose to be a friendly environment where you want to take your family for a nice time not to see all these disgusting things. As part of the clean up we were given bags and a tally marker to check of how many things we found and the number of times we found them. I was along with all of my classmates and it made it feel like we were a group and not just one person doing all of the work. I was able to cooperate with all of the guys and see how they all work and also find out that we can all work together. It made me feel good that I was doing something to help out this planet and that even though it is not as big of a clean up as i wish it could have been it made me feel good to know that I was doing something to help out. While doing all of this it make me think about the comic i had read in our book called As The World Burns and it shows that if we do not do anything to save the world it will end up dying. We must also think about the animals that are living here and we must also learn that we are not the only ones living in this planet. It makes me feel great knowing that I am not the only one that thinks this and also that I was able to make a difference for one day.

- Stephanie Rodriguez , Instructor: Hasmik Barsamian