CHELSEA

JOSE (PEPE)

JOTHAM

LAUREN

LONNIE

MIKE

NAOMI

RHONESHA

SAMANTHA

VAHE

I am a thinker, and artist, a seer. I love to let life take it's course through me. My favorite color is blue. My parents have shaped me into what I am today and what I will be in the future: a compassionate, strong girl (woman). My name is Lauren. My parents and my sister all have names starting with "K". I was different. I don't know what my name means. I would like to know. I'm sure it would apply to me. My sister's name is Katherine. It means "pure". I think that your name applies to you. Along with names I believe in astrology. I am a Capricorn. When you are in a place like Yosemite you get to be the real you. No strings attached.

Nothing limiting your ability to be who you truly are. No grades, parents, or school limiting your belief in yourself. You should never lose your belief in yourself in life. I shine when I'm doing things I love or [when I'm] with the people I love. Art, family, friends and the outdoors are my outlets of freedom from everyday life and stresses. A lot of those components are found here on this trip therefore my trip will be wonderful.

3 things I am hoping to accomplish are to make 10 new really good friends, to enjoy this opportunity to be out here and away from Berkeley and to learn new things about myself.

Letter to Self:

My week is Yosemite was amazing. It's hard to explain if you are, or were, or never have been there. The magnitude of your surroundings eats you alive and there is no way to escape but you don't want to. When I arrived I figured it would be a good way to miss school for a week. By the second or third day I realized there is way more to it: the feeling of being surrounded by wilderness for the sole purpose of peoples' awe and enjoyment, to

be involved in a group of people that in 42 hours become your best friends and keep you laughing through it all, to test your own personal limits by introducing you to the unknown and uncomfortable. WildLink and Yosemite did all those things for me and my life will be forever changed. I will be coming back to Yosemite for the rest of my life and I will bring others there so that they can share the experience [it]. I read a quote today, while I walked uphill by myself 2 miles in the snow, that "an experience is not what happens to a peson but what a person does with what happens to them." And it's true. A trip to Yosemite is not an experience unless you make it one and for sure I made it one. Like I said, it's hard to explain my trip if you haven't gone so I suggest you go to Yosemite.