Playing with Nature

Last Saturday I planted many trees in a neighborhood at Lake Oswego.  I and my other classmates were doing a project in our sustainability class. We decided to volunteer with this organization that is called Friends of Trees. This organization has done a lot of things for the community and they help the environment look more than beautiful. They do a lot of things such as planting trees around the Vancouver-Portland Metro area, they host different events, and they do help train people on how to plant trees in a proper way. Also trained crews guide volunteers at weekend events, such as planting trees.

Me and my group decided to volunteer for this organization (Friends of Trees) because we are a part of a sustainability class at Portland State University, and we knew that working with nature is away to help the earth look great. We were full of happiness to work with trainees because it was really very important to learn new things. We planted many different trees that had different names, different size and shape, and different looks. As a group, we started to learn the steps to go or follow when planting a tree. Some trainees were helping us to feel comfortable by showing us the best way to plant a tree. After following what the trainees were doing, we started to plant trees as a group. After planting many trees, we started to feel comfortable planting the rest nice and neat.

Friend of trees is such an incredible organization to work with. They are doing everything for the environment and volunteering with them make things look easier. They have done a lot for the environment. This organization was established somewhere 1989 as one of the trainee crews told me. Since that time they have planted more than 412,000 trees. They also plant around 4,000 trees in Portland every year.

Us a group we feel like we have done a great job doing something for the environment. It was really very amazing to work with such a nice people. I am looking forward to work with more earthy organizations. After I finished planting trees, I decided to do more volunteering with more organizations that are friends with the environment.

3rd week: Las Casas

In “A short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” who wrote by Bartolome de Las Casas, is an article that talks about killings and crimes. Las casas who was a historian was also a hero and always liked to see what the wrongdoers do are wrong. In this article he mainly talks about how the Spaniards were cruel to others. The Spaniards were the ones who controlled all the places. They treated people so badly and they also massmadered lots of innocent people. They used people as slaves and beat them to death. For example, on page 45 of this article says, “The Spaniards decided to organize a massacre or punishment in order to inspire fear and terror in all the people of all the territory”.  The article goes and says, the Spanish soldiers unsheathed their sword and slaughtered the poor innocents which results no one to escape from the masmadering. Really the Spaniards were very cruel to the Americas which were innocent people, but the fact was that no help was available at that time. I did not know anything about this situation and I never heard that we had such a terrific and horror killings that took place thousands of years ago. I learned the holocaust which millions of people died, but I questioned myself about why we were not taught this too when we were in high school because I remember from the school I graduated from, the holocaust is the number lesson you could take, but I have never been in a class that was tough of this massacre that the Spaniards did to the Americas. Indeed it is sad to look just one problem where people can focus on looking into more problems. In this article, ‘A short Account of the Destruction on the Indies”, Bartolome de Las Casas, brought as awareness about what happened during the time of the Spaniards. Reading this article helped me gain more experience. As we know that more people are not focused on the problems that we have today like global warming which is a big problem. This is the same thing. People did not pay much attention to this ugly problem that happened thousands of hundreds years ago. I hope people to look and to pay attention to all the problems in this world because in my opinion, any problem can be solved.