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Broaden your horizons

By Emma Tremont

I believe kids should go to college somewhere very different from their home, regardless of their circumstances. I love my family, I love my town-- I love everything about my life right now. But I know that I need to get out of here before I’m just happy forever.

I need to go be lonely and scared, if only to add character. I need to be really cold instead of a constant comfortable body temperature. I need to eat so many saltines that I eternally appreciate real food. I need to make the list of people I love even longer than it already is.

Of course, money is the main obstacle here. I know that it could very easily be the thing that keeps people at home! However, though it’s difficult, it is definitely possible for this obstacle to be overcome. There are so many people and organizations who want to give money to students trying to go to college, both locally and nationally. We are lucky to live where we do, in a place where lots of wealthy people who miss their kids come to retire, and I am going to take advantage of that (in the nicest way possible). I don’t mean to sound like I’m exploiting my neighbors-- I just am in need and I know that they want to help me. I will take the time to write as many essays as they want me to, and I will be very grateful and repay them in non-money goods. And I will work hard in college to ensure that their money goes to good use.

As far as moving away, I am not exactly confident. Like I said earlier, I am perfectly happy living with my goofy family and attending a small high school where I know the names of my teacher’s toddlers. Why would I leave the place and people that I love so much to go be all alone somewhere completely unfamiliar? This really is hard for me to wrap my mind around, until I remember that this is literally the circle of life and if everyone before me could do it then I can probably do it too. Because more than I want to stay in my happy place and comfort zone, I want to become a strong and self-sufficient woman who knows what she is passionate about and chases that. My dreams are out there! I have an idea of what they are now, but I won’t really know until I see them face-to-face. I know that my eyes are about to be opened wider than they’ve ever been before, and for that I am purely excited.

The beauty of the snow

By Andre´ Piascentin Feitosa

Seeing snow is really uncommon for people who are not from the ends of the hemispheres, especially for people from tropical countries. Countries in the southern hemisphere usually don’t get snow, except for a few of them, like Argentina, Chile and New Zealand. It is also possible to find snow in some other places where the altitude is really high, but it still is an unpopular natural phenomenon.
It is known that some people travel to North America and Europe with the only intention to meet snow. Winter sports are really attractive and make this experience even better, thus people look for a place where they can relax but, at the same time, radicalize what is already beautiful.
My host family took me to the mountains of Bear Valley in the Sierra Nevada, so I could experience both sides of the thing, the radical and the beautiful one. Knowing I like sports in general, my host mom rented a snowboard for me and bought passes for us to enjoy our time better. Although I used to skateboard when I was younger, snowboarding was not the easiest thing ever, so I needed about three days to get good enough to go to the intermediate slopes, which was also totally worth it.
I was expecting to be freezing every day, but I was surprised.  I was sure that even with the heater on I would be cold, which actually is not true and even when in the snow, I was not freezing due to the appropriate clothes.
During the time we spent there, a storm came and I had the opportunity to see fresh snow and do all the cliche things, like making a snowman and an angel in the snow. On the other hand, before the storm I could see all the old snow and how gross it gets, which also made me feel happy we almost never get snow in Brazil.
Being in the mountains was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, it was really beautiful and enriching. Now I can understand the reasons that some people travel just to see this natural phenomenon.

Rescued foxes get new homes!

By Aniesa Vasquez

Reportedly approximately 174 foxes were saved from a fur farm in China and are now located in a new home in a monastery. Karen Gifford and BoHo, uploaded a video to Facebook showing their journey of rescuing the white foxes.

    The foxes were bred in captivity, making them lack basic skills to survive in the wild, so they will not be released. The owners of the farm did not know how to deal with the huge amount of foxes and ended up skinning many and feeding the remaining meat to the other white foxes.

    After rescuing the foxes, BoHo and Gifford (along with many other volunteers) feared they weren´t going to be able to find a proper home for the foxes to live and run free when a Buddhist monastery stepped up to the job. Buddhist residents were happy and welcoming to the new foxes.

Gifford is now looking for new donations to keep the foxes healthy and well, you can go support her on her Facebook: @KarenGifford, or her PayPal: PayPal.me/gifford222 so that she can continue her large amounts of spending for the foxes food.

For now, the foxes will remain at the monastery until they can finally build a permanent enclosure for the foxes to live out their days in freedom!