Thanksgiving

 As the school year goes on and I live nearly fifteen hours from home I was finally able to head home for a much-needed break from school. I flew home this past Tuesday with excitement to see my family and be capable to sleep in my own bed. I haven't been home since the beginning of August and this has been difficult. 

I spent the entire vacation with my family. I had my best friend from home pick me up from the airport Tuesday at midnight and I cannot describe how excited I was to see him. I grew up with him and we have been best friends since we were in middle school. The following day I got to see my siblings, nieces, and parents whom I haven't seen in what felt like years. This made me beyond happy and was nearly therapeutic. We watched hockey, went shopping, and did all the things we always do, and of course, feasted on a ridiculous amount of food on Thanksgiving day. 

This thanksgiving was very enjoyable and I loved every second of being home. It reminded me of the summer and it made me happy being back in my element. This time had made me really realize how thankful I am for my family and all they do for me. I hope everyone had enjoyed their holiday as much as I did!!

 

Chasing Corals

 Chasing Corals, a documentary about the world's coral reefs, was a very interesting documentary and very informative movie. The movie follows a group of researchers who travel the world to study the worlds corals reefs and their rapid change with different climates. This movie had really interested me because I have always loved the world and especially the oceans of the world. 

One specific part of this movie that has stuck with me is the scene about how the corals are able to adapt within climate changes. The corals had changed to a florescent color due to the change in heat in the water. This had amazed me because of how complex corals really are. Although this is very sad because they were dying it was still amazing to see the ocean come to life. I had always believed that corals are just rocks that fish made homes in but they more much more amazing than that. This showed me how crazy the ocean really is. 

After watching the film it showed me how bad the shape of the ocean is. I have always known about climate change and how the world is in a rough shape from what it has been previously times but this movie informed me more on the subject. At the end of the documentary there was a stat that said within thirty years there could be a complete eradication of the entire ecosystem. This is scary to hear that it could happen in my lifetime if there is not change.

Before watching this I had no interest in coral reefs or the life within the ocean because I had always thought that it wasn't going to directly effect me but I was clearly wrong about that. I am now more interested in the ocean and I hope there will be a solution to the problem at hand. I have learned that this is very important although it may be overlooked by many people it really does matter and more people should be concerned about it. I would like to dive deeper in this topic and learn more about it because this documentary really got to me and I enjoyed it from start to finish. 

When I am writing my summary about the reefs I feel like I should stay away from research because its a summary and not a research paper. I could go on and on with facts about Coral reefs from both the movie and different websites online but that is not the point of the summary. It could be carried away with facts and statistics rather than the objective of summarizing the movie. 

This documentary moved me. I was attracted to it from start to finish and it struck a new interest with the ocean for me. It showed me there is more to the world than what is happening around me and showed me there is more important things to worry about. 

 

Home

 I have always found it hard to call one place home. Throughout my life I have lived in several different states all up and down the east coast and now in the midwest. Although this has always been my choice I still miss my home where I grew up. I am originally from Connecticut yet I now only live there in the summer time. Since I was the age of thirteen I haven't lived at my home with my family and had to make a new home. 

I started my journey In high school. I lived at a high school in the northern part of Massachusetts. I made this decision ultimately to continue playing hockey at a higher level. This was very hard for me to do at a young age and often recall myself getting home sick and begging my parents to pick me up nearly every weekend, but as the year went on I had gotten used to it and began to enjoy it. I stayed at the school for all four of my high school years and as I look back at it, I had one hell of a time. I had no curfew, no parents to tell me what time to be home and what to do and I learned how to be an adult at an early age. 

After high school I chose to continue playing hockey rather than go to school right away. I lived in Syracuse New York my first year. This was a lot further then northern Massachusetts yet I was able to call my little apartment home and my roommates my brothers. I later moved to Charlotte North Carolina in hope I liked the team and location better and I was more than lucky enough to move into a house with people who I consider my second parents. I lived with three of my now best friends and one little brother who I still keep in contact with.

Now I am in Indiana and I often ask myself how I ended up here.
crazy how a little decision can make such a big impact on your life in such short time. If I hadn't made the choice to step away from school then I honestly can say I have no clue where I would be now. This was possibly the happiest and most proud decision I have ever made for myself and I often remind myself how truly lucky I am to be here at PNW.  

Personal Essay

 As we head into the weeks to come I have been taking time focusing on my personal essay. This assignment so far has been very interesting to me and I am enjoying it a lot. I have always enjoyed free writing about my personal life because I like telling my story to others. 

Within class as we did the exercise where we wrote down specific sights, smells and various other senses we had at a stage in our lives, it brought back memories I completely forgot I had. It took me to a fifteen year old Blake, sophomore year in high school hanging out in my friends dorm room playing xbox and eating pizza. Although very stereotypical of a teenage boy to wast time eating junk and playing video games it was calming in a way to remember these forgotten memories. After doing this exercise and having the day to write alone with no distractions of the classroom I attempted this exercise alone. 

The exercise took to way back to a very young version of Blake. I encountered memories of me and my siblings that I haven't thought of in years. It took me to happy memories and to sad ones, but in all it really helped me with my personal essay and gave me material that I needed to sit down and write. As I am getting deeper into my essay and the more I write the more I am enjoy writing it. 

Hockey

 At this point in my life I have come to realize hockey means everything to me. Ever since I was a little boy all I had ever wanted to do was play hockey. It happens to be the reason why I came here. I love every little detail about it from the stench of a locker room to getting screamed at by coaches after an embarrassing lose, I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

I got into hockey at the young age of seven after watching my first Boston Bruins game with my mother. I can still vividly remember watching the game and Turing to my mother with a face of joy saying "mom I want to play hockey" and seeing her smirk saying "ok Blake we will look into it." It took some time to finally convince them to buy me my first pair of skates but when they did I don't think I every took them off. I remember walking around the house in them till my parents would scream at me to take them off because I was ruining the hard wood floor or begging my dad to come outside and shoot pucks with me. Hockey is all I have ever known in life. 

Back home, when I am home, I never go out to party or hangout with friends because that never interested me. I was always shooting pucks against the wall of my house or at a rink hours away from my house skating. Some people my ask what makes me love it and the honest truth is that I have no idea. Just the thought of hockey gets me excited like nothing else can. When I step on the ice for practice nothing else in the world matters to me, its a way of escaping the worries of the world and it calms me down in a way nothing else could, its my stress reliever. It doesn't matter if I'm watching it on TV or playing a game myself, when I'm around hockey I'm happy. 

Nicaragua

A few years ago when I was in high school I was able to take the trip of my life time. I went on a service learning trip to the country of Nicaragua to assist less fortunate people with building various different things to help them live their daily lives. This trip had impacted me in many ways so I decided after my first trip I wanted to go again the next year and so I did and it made me realize many different things. 

One major thing I learned from this trip is to never take anything for granted. Within my first twenty four hours of this trip there was a common thing I noticed about every person I saw, they were all happy. for miles and miles all there was on the sides of the roads were little shacks covered in blue tarps that looked like a big gust of wind would blow them down. Within the major city like Granada and Managua there were many historic site of the country's past with large beautiful markets and many people cramped into the city lawn but once outside of the major city there was nothing. This had been a major culture shock for me. Coming from a small town in Connecticut I had really never seen life or even though about it outside of the country and it blew me away. I had always thought how boring my town was and how dark and miserable it was but after seeing how some of these people lived and they were still capable of smiling or joking it was nearly breathtaking and it changed my outlook on life. 

With as much as I have done with my short time on this earth my trip to this third world country definitely had the biggest affect on my life. This taught me so much within the short span of time I was there. I was able to see the historic sights, travel around the country, see how others lived and practice my Spanish speaking skills. This trip was beneficial to me in many ways and I am more than proud of myself for taking advantage of this opportunity and would take a trip like this again in a heart beat. 

Family

 Nothing in life is more important to me than my family. I am the youngest for four and I can't describe how much I have learned from each one of them. I am lucky enough to have two loving parents, two sisters, a brother and two beautiful twin nieces. We are a larger family and growing up we lived in a tiny house that could barley fit all of us but that had never bothered me. 

My oldest sister Sarah is one of my role models. She is a single mother of twins that does nothing but love and care for them. I even consider her my second mother due to the fact she is twelve years older than me. She had to always babysit me when I was younger along with my other siblings but seeing as she was the oldest she was always the boss. Now that Im older and I have to babysit for her children I realize how much of a problem child I must've been to her. My second oldest sibling Audrey is my best friend. Audrey and I have always been close and she would always have my back in every family argument and still does today. Then finally there is Logan my older brother who I never got along with until we both grew up and realized just how much we had in common. 

The point I'm making in this blog post is never take anything for granted because the things that really matter will be right infant of your own eyes. As I have been away from home for a bit I miss my family more then ever.