Today is Umar's Birthday. He talked about what it was like to turn 19 in Yosemite and reflected on his activities of the past few weeks with Barb Miranda.

What is special about today, Umar?

Road Trip. Birthday. Today I turned 19 years old and I'm road tripping to Los Angeles to visit friends.

How does it feel to turn 19 in Yosemite?

It feels good. I don't feel any older. I still feel like I'm 18.

What did you do last week?

Last week I worked with YI. We had a group in from San Francisco. It was fun being in the teacher role. I was doing a lot of teaching. I was kind of nervous but it was kind of fun. For instance I set up the kids for entry into the spider caves. That was my second time doing it. That was fun. Kind of panicky for a minute there. The spider caves are like a crawl through tunnel it has one place at the end of the tunnel that's called the birth canal. There's a hole you squeeze through to get to kind of a large room in the rocks.

Were the kids freaked out?

A couple of them were. They made it through. They were like - "I can't fit through this hole." I was like -- "if I can fit through this hole, you can fit through this hole.

The weekend before you went to a GLOBE training. What was that like?

It was really fun because I got a little more understanding about GLOBE because I'd been doing all the water quality testing but I didn't know what it was for, so it was good training.

What's different about Yosemite now?

Yosemite is changing colors. Fall is here. Winter is coming. I just talked to my mom yesterday and its snowing back home and its like freezing cold in Detroit.

If you could bring anyone you wanted to here right now who would you bring and what would you show them?

Probably I would bring all five of my sisters and I would like to show them everything. I would show them the mountains and the valley. That'd be real fun. I'd teach them about the park and the glaciers and everything. They would be amazed - they would definitely be amazed! I've been describing this place to them on the telephone and they were just like wow. And I'd bring my father and my mother too.