One cold
Wednesday of 2012, I remember it was around January, I got off work at 9:00
p.m. like usual. To my surprise, my roommates and good friends, Ariel and Mabel
were talking about staying up late that night. My nosy self wanted to know what
was going on that Wednesday, so I asked Ariel why they were trying to stay up
late. Then Ariel told me that during that night there would be a meteor shower
with over a 100 shooting stars. That immediately caught my attention, and I
decided to stay up late. Mabel went to sleep, so it was my nerdy friend Ariel
and I that stayed up.
The
Quadrantid meteor shower is once a year, usually during winter, and its peak is
around 2:30 a.m. until down. Ariel and I started to set up, and we looked for a
very dark spot outside the patio. This was very important to us because if
there are too many lights around, we would not be able to appreciate the sight
of the shothing stars. As part of our set up, we brought a couple of chairs and
wore very thick jackets, gloves and scarves; but the most important to keep
warm, a bucket of beers!.
Ariel
and I spent about four hour trying to spot the Quadrantid meteor shower.
Ariel’s house is located in the middle of Gretna, a city in New Orleans, and
with so many city lights around we could only see nine shooting stars. During
those four hours we talked about past childhood experiences and adventures, and
realized how similarly our parents had raised us. The shooting stars fell in
all kinds of directions through space, and we saw many interesting shapes. Then
I saw one shooting star that looked like those multicolored five point stars, with
the long rainbow like tails that appear in cartoons, which I thought it was
funny.
That
was my first time seeing a meteor shower, and I never expected I would enjoy it
so much. A sentiment of happiness
overwhelmed me at that very moment.
Nature, the beauty and vastness of the sky and space,
made me realize that we need to be more appreciative of our surroundings, and
we can have wonderful moments without spending money in expensive places.
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