Places can connect me with others. by Branden Shay

At Lake George Great Escape Campground I Connected With New People And Made Memories With Friends.

bshay9 — 2023-11-06 22:54:16 UTC

Lake George Great Escape Campground Is a place in New York it has cabins, RV’s, basketball, tennis, mini golf, rivers, and an arcade. This is my favorite vacation place because there is so much to do there and I can meet so many new people. It is also right next to Lake George which is a really big and nice lake to go boating on. I went to Lake George 2 summers ago with my friend Grant who goes to Saint Joes. We had An extremely fun time up there even though we got kicked out of the campground for something we didn’t even do. However even though that happened it was still a really fun trip that we wanted to do again. We also connected more as friends sharing those memories and also connected with other kids around our age at the campground who were really funny.

This last summer I ended up going with my friend John from prep. This summer was even more fun than the last because I knew the place better and I knew all the fun stuff to do there. Also we met like 20 kids our age and hung out with them all day and night and it was so much fun meeting these new people from out of state. We are all still friends even though none of us live close to each other and we are making plans to go back up next year and connect again. We all still talk about the memories we made there and how much fun it is. Me and John both think of it as the best week of our lives. In total all of the people we met there and me and John are all connected through those memories for the rest of our lives.

Connecting with friends and strangers at Greenfield Hill Congregational Church (Spf)

bshay9 — 2023-11-06 22:59:53 UTC

I go to Greenfield Congregational Church to go to a youth group called Spf every week on Thursday. I have been going to Spf since the beginning of freshman year when one of my friends told me about it and told me to come with him. That ended up being one of my best decisions to go. I went there with my friend and saw other kids that I knew from my school and other schools. I started to talk to some of them and connect with them. There were also some kids that I hadn’t known before and I met there and started to connect with. I have really felt like I am part of a community at Spf because of how welcomed the advisors make you feel and how you can hangout and be comfortable with your friends while still meeting new people.

Throughout my time at Spf I have become very good friends with kids that I barely knew before like: Matt, Chuck, Scarlett, Fallon and Maddox. I have also met people who I have connected with and became close with like: Rj, Lilly, Jeremiah and Caleb. Spf is a great place to speak about anything that is going on in your life while having people that listen to you and pray for you.

At Spf you can hangout with your friends, eat, do activities that the advisors make and finally my favorite everybody gets together and holds hands in a circle and joins together for a prayer before we eat and before we leave. This makes me feel really connected with everybody in the room. They also have speakers that come in every once in a while and talk to us about their life experiences and important things that could happen in our life and generally trying to spread a message about something or trying to help us.

During the beginning of July you can also go on a trip for Spf called ASP where you go to Appalachia and you help build houses and work on houses for people who need the help there. This is a great way to help others who need it and is a great life experience to have. It can also connect you forever with the people you do it with because of all the memories you hold with the others on the trip. I didn’t go on the trip last summer but I have signed up to go this next summer and I am very excited because everybody says it is the best week of the year. These are all big reasons why Spf connects me with my friends and even people who I have never met before. These memories that I make with all these people connects me with them not only now but for the rest of our lives.

Playing With Teammates and Opponents at Cubeta Stadium.

bshay9 — 2023-11-06 23:09:04 UTC

At Cubeta stadium during the hot sunny summer days with sounds of birds chirping, people talking and the sound of baseball in the stadium. Me and my teammates hustling on and off the field and playing our hearts out against our opponents. In the championship game it was us vs Stamford like it was for years. But this time it was different. We had played in a lot of tournaments instead of the league games so we were lower ranked and had to climb our way up through the playoffs while they were at the top and only had to play one playoff game against a lower ranked team. However we worked our way through mercying every team we played and met them in the championship. This was a different team from the Stamford team we used to play in the championship and we had already beat them twice in the season. The night before the game I had a 102 fever and couldn’t get out of bed but I knew I would wake up the next morning ready to go play. I woke up still sick but a little better and mustered up the energy to go to the game and try to play. It felt like the more I was on the field warming up with the sun pumping behind me the more I was ready to play and feeling better.

After I had great warmups we huddled in the dugout and knew that this was our game to win. Heads clouded with the thought of destroying this team we took the field and I went out to shortstop. The sounds of cheering, balls being thrown and caught and the sound of the ball cracking off the bat.our pitcher was pitching a gem and I was covered head to toe in dirt because I was sliding and diving and making every play that came my way. Along with not giving up any runs we applied pressure scoring 5 runs in the first two innings. We continued on this path the whole game winning in four innings by mercy rule 12-8 to make us the 2023 champions. The thrill and adrenaline were rushing to my brain and I didn’t know what to think. They announced us as the winners and gave us a plaque and then we were congratulated by everyone. We had one last huddle for the season and gave our coach a gatorade shower. He gave us a long speech saying “you guys played with a lot of heart, I am really proud of you guys for finally getting to this point.” Finally he handed out some game balls and I got one of them. I was sitting there tossing the rugged baseball around not sure what to think. Me and my teammates and family have been through a lot together and have really bonded as a team so it was really nice to finally finish in 1st which connected us as a team forever.