Eastern Neck

I never really stop to see nature. It's always there. The trees, the grass, the Bay. But I pass nature by everyday without acknowledging it. After spending a week discussing the The Bay by naturalist Gilbert Klingel with the group of middle schoolers Ms. T and I were teaching I started to understand and appreciate what's around me.

The class took a field trip to the Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge on the Chester River last week to really get a feel for what Klingel was talking about in The Bay. They went around, slowly with a great attention to detail and discovered each plant and animal with a newfound sight. 

And you know if I wasn't looking at everything I saw as a naturalist, I wouldn't have discovered the bay leaves growing and how they smelled like soup, or the not yet ripe wild rice that was growing underneath the overlook, or which berries were poisonous and which ones I could eat. I believe the fascination with the edible plants was due to the other reading material, The Hunger Games though.

I can't say that I'd like to stay in the "wild" all the time, but now I can walk out and identify the plants I know, learn the ones I don't, and survive off of certain roots. Mostly I can just stop and appreciate what's there instead of walking past it all.

Shannon

Duke Creative Writing Workshop

This summer I will be working with one of my favorite teachers from High School, Ms. T. She was both my AP English Language teacher as well as the advisor to Etchings, the Literary Magazine at South River, which I was actively involved in. Together she and I will be running a Creative Writing camp for gifted and talented kids at Washington College. Since the class is for Middle School children, we will be reading, The Hunger Games!

As excited as I am for the upcoming creative writing class I'm going to teach in three weeks I am also a little nostalgic for the Creative Writing Workshop I attended back in 2009 at Duke University. That two week long camp was just about one of my favorite summer memories and I still keep in touch with most of them and we are all from different states!

The classes the camp offered, really opened my eyes to the world of creative writing. The drills and lessons sparked creativity in me and really did enhance my writing. We read many short stories and poems (that I still have,) wrote and we even gave really constructive feedback on the stories to one another.

When we weren't in class we'd usually be hanging in the common room playing the dart game, playing dodgeball, or just generally being silly. We even had a camp dance where I both had an awkward date and passed out on the dance floor. My favorite events were definitely a combination of karaoke and the talent show where Dibo and I did an impromptu lip sync performance of Elephant Love Medley.

And one night we even traveled around the college town befriending hippies, hula hooping with them and even drinking some fresh milk from a dairy farm not to far from campus. The friendship, the writing, and the memories will always be with me from that wonderful summer.

Shannon

Letters

Opening up your mailbox to find a letter is one of the best feelings in the world. I try to write and keep in contact with the friends I've met along the years that live far away. I write to different places:

1. Friends in other countries. I worked at a camp that had counselors from all over. I have a few letters from some friends in Sweden and England.
2. Friends from different parts of the United States. Such as my friends from the Creative Writer's Workshop. We made an awesome bond 3 years ago and I love to hear from them.
3. Friends at different universities.
4. Friends and Family back home.

Letter writing is a much more personal way of talking to a person. Letters make a person feel special in a way that a text or an e-mail just can't. I encourage everyone to write letters to friends and family from all around the globe!