August 9, 2013

Today is the fourth day of my Wu Chien Shiung science camp trip. Tonight, there is one of the most excited events in the camp. That is the night walk to the top of the Phoenix mountain and enjoyed the night sky without any light pollution from the city. Every students expect this trip to be fun. What we don’t know is that the trip to the top of the mountain would take at least 2 hours and is mostly steep hill. In addition, there are dead corpses of many different kinds of organisms, including frogs and malus, that are killed by cars on the road. People have to walk carefully in order to prevent from stepping on to the corpses. Moreover, this trip is dangerous because some parts of the roads are damaged and broken. We are walking in the dark mountain at night without street light and with a lot of smog. There are many times that I really want to stop and rest. However, I know that once I stop, I probably will not want to move again. After 2 hours of strong determination, I finally reached the top of the mountain. When I looked up, I knew that all this trip was worth it. The night sky is beautiful with abundant sparkling stars. I can even see the Milky Way and Saturn without any specialized equipments. There are some teachers, who were there to teach us about the constellation, at the top of the mountain. I learned to recognize a few constellation on a summer night sky. There were some constellations, such as cancer, that can’t be seen on the summer sky. After the lecture, it was already four am in the morning. Therefore, I decided to stay up for the sun rise before going down. My friends and I spent the hours before sunrise playing card. Just a few seconds before the sun rise, everyone gathered to the east side of the mountain, counting down for the sunrise. When I saw the first ray of light coming out from the horizon, I reaffirmed the belief that staying up all night is worth it.