Sunday, March 19, 2006
forty winks under the stars
we had the stargazing last friday and saturday. it was fun, but it really wore me out. well, seeing as i only slept for a few hours the previous night because of too many, ehem, assignments..
it was great. i got to see saturn! i saw its rings and i think, one of its moons. i also got to see the southern cross and the moon through the telescope. we also saw many constellations, like taurus, orion, ursa major, and even Polaris, the north star.
oh, and did you know that geometry followed us to the star gazing? the speaker, who's this oh-so-fabulous astronomer who practically knows every star and every constellation, pointed out three stars that if you measured their distances using your fingers, you would be able to form an equilateral triangle.
after dinner we had a really long lecture, which i'm sorry to say, i kinda slept through. it sucked that the first years who were sitting beside me could not keep their mouth shut. they kept going on and on and on about who knows what, even if koko shushed them for like ten times already. i mean, it's great if they were discussing the things the speaker was talking about, but no. needless to say, that ticked me off.
after we had a look at all the planets that were in the night sky, i went into the tent and planned to "rest my eyes" because they were itching from tiredness. my nap turned out to be a four-hour sleep, wherein i slept like a log and did not have any inkling at all as to what was happening anymore. i slept through the sunrise, wherein we were supposed to have a look at venus, and any shooting stars other fellow campers might have spotted.
i was the last, i think, to awake the following day. it was ms ngo and mrs torralba who woke me up. didn't take long to rouse me from my beauty sleep. so when i was finally awake, koko, jescia and i proceeded to pack up our tent, which by the way, we worked really hard in setting up the previous day, with the help of a few friends. we proclaimed it a miracle that the tent did not collapse and bury us under its sheets. anyway, it was really hard packing up the tent because it had become really dirty with grass and dew. we wondered how the tent could have fit in the teeny tiny box with the heavy metal poles and pegs before, but now couldn't. so we worked out that dilemma partially and proceeded home.
it was a great experience to just lie underneath the stars and appreciate them. there just aren't too many opportunities that allow us to bask in the beauty of the softly glowing stars in the inky black sky.
written at 5:31 AM