Do you find it hard to be away from your family and friends?
...K. Childress, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
by Springer Fyrberg, Shannon Hernandez, Rachael Max, Rebecca
Caswell, 2/19/97... from Queensland
Yes, it is hard to be away from our friends and families. It's not
as hard for us to be away from our parents since we're used to
being away at college for most of the year. But, it is a bit
different than that because they can never call us. We do miss
our friends because many of us did not know each other before
we came. The good part about that is that we are all making
really good friends here and are all feeling the same way about
having left so we are all taking care of each other.
We can make calls home but it is really expensive calling half
way around the world so we don't get to talk for very long. The
other way we talk to our friends and families is through mail,
but that is also very different because it takes ten to fourteen
days to get here. That means that by the time we write back to
them it's been almost a month. And, since most of us were used
to having email at school which is very fast, it's hard to get used
to the slow communication in such a fast paced world.
How would you describe the forest to a group of 2nd grade students
so they could picture it without being there?
...Ms. Malley's class, Beaumont, TX, USA
by Becky Curtis, Ann Chanecka, Lisa Holderbach, and Lissa Harris,
2/19/97... from Queensland
Imagine standing on a hill and looking out at treetop colored a thousand shades
of green. There's mist rising out of the lower parts of the forest, and as the sun
comes out from behind the clouds, the light turns just a bit golden. The air is
warm, and humid, and your skin feels a little damp, or sticky.
As you watch, a large, white cockatoo flies by, screeching loudly, and lands in
a tree where many smaller birds are feeding on nectar from red flowers. You
walk into the forest and notice that you can hear many different types of bird’s
songs: some are chirping, others are cackling, some sing to one another, others
squabble as they run through the underbrush. Up on a tree branch you might
see an eleven-foot long amethystine python, but she won't bother you.
You can smell the sweet scent of fruits on the trees, and the rich scent of the
earth and decaying leaves. You break off a branch of a sasparilla tree, and it
smells like root-beer. If it's evening, you might see flying foxes, a kind of bat
with a two-foot wing span, flying overhead in search of tasty fruits. As night
falls, stars appear in a clear sky arranged in constellations unlike those from
home, and an evening chorus of frogs sing you to sleep.
