Pine Mountain

Just recently I took a class trip to Pine Mountain. It was a very different trip from the many that I have taken. The week started off with a four hour bus ride to Eastern Kentucky, where Pine Mountain Settlement School is located. The bus ride was a ton of fun; I sat by three of my best friends Beverly Kings, Mackenzie Tatum- Johns, and Marra Burton! We had a really fun time playing lots of card games! The only boring part about the ride was when Mr. Whillimi has us learn our birds!

During my week at Pine Mountain I got to learn a ton of things! One of the first classes I had was coal class. The coal class was taught by Mr. Ben. Mr. Ben told us how coal was made, how it was removed from the mountain, and what it is used for. That part was MEGA boring, though it also might have been the fact that I had gotten no sleep the night before! After Mr. Ben talked to us, we got to go in cars and see some old mines. The car ride was really creepy because Mr. Ben’s car had lots of wasp in there! Nick and I were very, very scared! It was also annoying because Goldberg keep saying how cool he was for killing one wasp! But anyways, once we got out of the car we had to cross a creek to get to the old mine. The creek was really fun to go across, because it was cold and really high, and was funny to watch people get across! Then when we got to the old mine, Mr. Ben told us how they made room for the machines and tools. Then we got in the car again and went to see where the miners did Mountain Top Removal. It was kind of sad to see that where a beautiful mountain top should be, there is dead grass and nothingness.

The other classes were okay, but one of my favorite classes was the animal class! Valerie, our teacher, showed us tons of animals! First she showed us two toads! They were really cute with their big bulging eyes! Though I didn’t touch them because I was afraid they would bite me! Then Valerie showed us turtles!!!! I had been waiting for that moment because I LOVE turtles! (I can also relate to them with my wicked awesome turtle face!) She showed us the boxing and snapping turtles! THEY WERE SO CUTE! Then she showed us the snakes! That part was creepy, but because I knew my Avada Kedavra curse, I decided to be brave and touch the snake! It felt really weird!

The only scary part of the trip was my fall on the very top of Pine Mountain. You will hear my class mates say how they fell down, but none of them fell as bad as I did! At the top of Pine Mountain there is the SSS. That stands for Short, Sweet, and Steppe, but it is really; Long, Hard, and Steppe. So I was at the top coming back down, and I had only gone down two steps when I fell. It wasn’t one of those “Woops, I fell. I think I’ll get back up now” kind of fall. This was the “Holy Cow!” fall! I slid face first down the side of the trail! Luckily there was a rock I grabbed my foot on! I was grabbing it for dear life! But Mr. Rice and Mrs. Seely came to help me. They told me to lie still while they came and got me. The good part is I only feel 3 more times on the way down!

My all time favorite part of the trip was the Folk Dance! It was super funny to watch people dance to it! We did about 3 types of dances but my favorite was the last one! It was where there was a circle of boys, and on the outside was a circle of girls. A few girls had to play the part of a boy for there to be enough people. The “point” of the dance was that you would sing the songs with the partner in front of you. Then at one part in the song the boys would go to the right, and the girls to the left, and when the music stopped you had to dance with the person in front of you. If you didn’t have a partner you had to run to the middle to find one. But because there was an odd number of a boy, one boy would be left in the middle. The boy in the middle would have to start singing the song, and then everyone else would join in! Then the dance would repeat itself again!

Over all Pine Mountain was a fun experience, but I was very glad to get home!