Journal 19

Nature plays an important role in the cycle of life and death because without nature there would be no point to life, nor would we be able to live.  Nature plays a big role in our everyday lives and we don't even recognize it most of the time.  All of the wood furniture in our house was made out of wood, our metal cars and irons were made out of raw materials found in nature, and our clothing was made out of cotton grown in nature.  Nature and spirituality play a huge role in the cycle of life and death since it itself is a part of nature.  You are born to parents who were born to parents, who were born to parents, and so on.  Every living being is a part of nature including mammals, fish. bugs. etc.  We are born in nature, live in nature, die in nature, and then our bodies go to use in providing helpful nutrients to the soil in nature.

It is very important to have a  spiritual belief throughout your life because if you don't you have nothing to strive for, nothing to live for, no point in continuing on in your life.  This is not what was meant to be if you are like me and believe in the Bible.  If you believe in something you have something to strive for, to be like.  In my instance I strive to do the best I can at everything and be an overall better rounded person.  I work hard to be more like Jesus and God so that I too, hopefully, some day can go to Heaven and spend eternal life with Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  To me this is my goal and what I live for, but to some it could be something else.  Regardless of what or who you believe in you must believe in something even if you don't know you do, you do because without that you wouldn't have anything to live for and you would be afraid of everything especially death and life after death.

Journal 18-Perfect Autumn Day

To me, a perfect autumn day would be 73 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze here and there hitting me in the face with a cool gust of fresh air.  There would be no rain only a few clouds here and there to break up the sunlight.  The leaves would still be on the trees with their changed colors preparing for their descent to the earth beneath.  The perfect day would be when I grew up and had kids of my own.  It would be one that I didn't have to worry about going to work the next day, didn't have any responsibilities to get accomplished that day, just a day to relax and enjoy with my family.  I can just picture it now, my two boys would be outside throwing the football around running plays and such while my daughter would be playing hopscotch, dolls, doing something girly, or inside with my smokin' wife making snacks and lemonade for all of us.  I can imagine her bringing the  lemonade out to us guys and the sweat beading off of the cup.  The taste grasps your taste buds with a quick punch of sour immediately comforted by the rush of sweet sugar.  The coldness of the glass of lemonade would bring relief to your body and cool you down in a refreshing manner.  A little later I can see her walking out the front door saying it was time to come inside the game was going to begin.  Of course this wouldn't be any old football game, it would be between Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU Tigers.  The Crimson Tide would storm the field in victory as me and my family sat in the living room, with the sun gleaming in through the front windows, watching Alabama stomp all over LSU while eating little wienies wrapped in bacon.  It would be the perfect autumn day getting to bond with my perfect family.

Journal over bonding with nature

I remember one time when I specifically really bonded with nature.  Of course people bond with nature all the time when they take walks in parks or through woods, but they aren't always that amazing and meaningful.  One time when I was with my church on a conference trip here in illinois, we stayed at at cabin like camp in the middle of the woods.  I truely encountered nature and bonded with it during this while we were having "serious" time.  I remember sitting on the ground and looking at the trees, the lake, and the grass.  It really made me realize how awesome our world is and how great nature can be.  I loved that moment and will never forget it.  I figure without nature we wouldnt have any fun in life.  Besides needing it nature has many benefits and fun of it.  I enjoy walking iin neture and feeling the wind in my face, the smells of the trees and pine needles, and feeling the leaves inbetween my toes.  It feels so good and is so much fun.  I have gotten myself so excited about this by thinking about it for this blog I now want to go home and go for a walk.  Seeing nature could entertain me for hours.  That is another reason I enjoy going on vacations and walking on beaches.  Beaches are crazy cool i the fact that if you think every little grain of sand was placed where it was places for a reason.  I also think about all of the fishies in the sea and how much work it would have taken to create them.  It also brings up a good debate between the Creation vs. Evelution debate.  I personally believe that we were created by a Creator and that he made us in his immage.  I also believe that everything was placed for a purpose and he indevidually hand crafted every animal, mammal, fish, or even unicorn in this world.

Journal 16

Some different ways that I could communicate with my group are facebook, twitter, texting, writing letters, calling, and more.  I really think that this project will be pretty easy now since technology is now so advanced.  I plan to be skyping people a ton too.  This is because seeing people visually can help keep each other on topic.  It also is easy to screen share and see what each other is doing.  I have done this before with my friends and all you have to do is go to the little button at the bottom of the screen that says which screen the friend you are Skyping with can see.  You then choose to screen share and they see what your doing.  That means that when I go to the start menu or want to show them a website, they see that.  This will benefit us for when we want to show different articles online that are found or we want to show them a youtube video of a cute little puppy.  Not really that would be off topic and irresponsible of me.  I plan to use facebook to email them back and forth, but make it easy since people get notifications sent to their phones and usually wont check their actual email as often.  That means if I need to get ahold of them for something I can very quickly.  It is also helpful that I have a couple of my members that live very close to me.  That allows for us to go over to each others houses at night and finish things up.  Chris O'Connor and me will be working very hard on this project and want to get a GREAT grade.  When it comes to projects I always want to get my stuff done ahead of time and done correct.  I love hands on things and projects are one of those hands on things.  I am excited to start this project today.

Journal 15

I feel that some of the problems that we will have to overcome are mostly the internet speed.  It will be hard to video chat through this because it lags so much, but typing shouldn't be a problem.  Another problem would be making sure they were continually on track and getting their responsibilities done on time.  This could be a high stress situation and we will have to just relax and trust our group members to get everything done.  We can use many modes of communication and it is a lot easier now that everyone has cellphones and technology is so advanced.  I hope that we will be able to find a time during the school day, say PACE for instance that we can chat through everything for a little.  I plan to text, skype, email, and chat through a social media site with my group members.  Since two thirds of the group will go to this school, it will be a lot more convenient and I will be able to talk to them during lunch and other free times.  I was just informed by you (Captain Langley) that we will be able to access the computers in the library and that will help a ton when it comes down to the end and everything is due.  I hope that I will be assigned responsible partners and be able to get everything accomplished and that through an irresponsible group member my grade doesn't go down.  Google+ will be a very useful mean of communication because it is one of the only social networks allowed during school hours.  I am extremely excited that I am participating in this project and it will be a great learning experience on what its like doing a project with a long distance partner.  This will be great experience for my future and it will be very important since many jobs will require working with someone on the other side of the world on the same project.