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.