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Read the story »I need opinions on my short personal narrative ~ if you feel like reading a few paragraphs, click here!?
Background information… I went on a trip to Peru with 30 other classmates of mine this past spring break. If you were wondering, we were in Puerto Maldonado at the end of our trip, which is in the Amazon Rainforest, where I’m describing this moment in my paper. This is for my english class 
and this is my rough draft – due tomorrow – and I don’t want to turn in something awful, so give me your honest opinion! Here it is: I believe that we were born to be here in this time, this moment, this place. This was easy to believe as I stood gazing up at the most spectacular display known to man, something we have all stopped to see at some point in our lives, something that has roused a resounding and brilliant sense of awe in all of us. Perhaps the fact that we were finally there, in the sweltering, muggy Amazon rainforest, teeming with life and a stunning sense of adventure, had already inspired us all. Maybe this was true, but I think the reason we students and teachers alike stopped in our tracks was the fact that, for most of us, we were seeing the true night sky for the first time. I had rushed through many places and events in my past, but there is a moment in all of our lives that hits us with the force of a bull, and widens our eyes to the fact that yes, this moment is real, and it is our purpose to enjoy it. For me, it was seeing the stars — millions of lights, unexplainable, the stretch of varying shades of brilliant light we call the Milky Way — that kept me entranced. I’d never seen anything like it; maybe in pictures taken by NASA, or in one of those Space documentaries they play on Discovery Channel. But of course, no picture can match the feeling of standing where I stood then, on the banks of the Tambopata River in the Amazon jungle, no lights to dim the sky but the ones so far above me. It truly was as if the earth had stood still, just for a moment, a moment that I could drag on forever as long as I simply stood there and kept looking up. No words were exchanged between any of us, the thirty some people standing there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes — it didn’t matter — all of us feeling the exact same way: insignificant under such a vast, endless display of lights, and amazed into silence. Well, that’s how we tried to describe the feeling afterwards, when we finally picked up our bags and headed off to the lodge to sleep. But very soon we gave up trying to find words to exchange; we fell silent as we stumbled through the dark lodge, without electricity, trying to find our rooms, knowing that nothing any of us said could emphasize how spectacular it was for the group of us to fall eerily still, and lose ourselves in the silence, spellbound by our own thoughts as we looked at the sky above us. That’s what I was doing; looking. Rarely before then had I considered that maybe I don’t stop enough, just to be there, in the moment, at that time, in that place. Maybe I worry too much about the past, regretting, or maybe I worry too much about the future. When did regret get me anywhere? When did worrying about the trivial things help me out in the end? As I type this, a cool breeze sifts through the screen of my bedroom window, sweet and inviting, and I think, just out of curiosity, I’ll leave right now and enjoy this moment. I’ll walk out onto the back porch now, in my pajamas, to sit in the quiet night for a bit, before going to bed. And maybe, if [my city's name] has turned out enough lights by this late hour, I’ll be able to see the stars.
