SHOW - DON'T TELL

I never knew how cold it can get in Upstate New York. It is the middle of December and my friends and I are on our high school senior trip. We were staying at some type of cowboy’s hotel that I actually felt we were somewhere in the west. The area was completely deserted so it was a wonder that the bus driver was able to navigate his way through the pitch black roads. Once in a while, you’d see a dark green sign on the side of the road and by the time you read it, you would have already missed the exit. I can never imagine living in a no-man’s land like that.
I stayed with five of my closest friends in a room, sharing one bathroom. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. The trip was 3 days and it was so lame since there really was nothing to do. We tried to play laser tag one day but the equipment was so old, it could not function right. It was insanely cold, the type of cold where you feel your fingers are about to fall off. The second day my friends and I decided to take a walk outside and hang around. I have been with this group of friends since the sixth grade so we are all incredibly close to each other. It was a bittersweet trip because it was the first time we all spent the weekend together, but it was the last time we’d all be going to the same school. None of us wanted to think about that so we all tried to focus on having as much fun as possible in this lame place our school put us in.
We all woke up in the morning and ate a breakfast that we didn’t have to question the contents of. That was something we were thankful for. Then we wore our many layers since we planned on spending the rest of the day outside in the cold. As you step through the doors, all you see is white everywhere. The sky is that pale blue, the type of blue that tells you it’s freakin’ cold out, and completely cloudless. The sun is there but it’s not doing much work. It's very bright causing the snow to sparkle like millions of tiny diamonds scattered all over the ground, covering it fully. It’s completely quiet and every once in a while, that silence is broken by a laugh from one of us. Even though we were all in boots, I remember holding on to my friend Connie’s arm because it was so hard to walk on the layers of ice. We finally got to the top of the hill where the snow tubing was going on. We all took our turns sitting down in the tube and being pushed down a white hill of snow while screaming at the top of our lungs. When I slid down the hill, I didn’t know how to push myself out of the tube. I must’ve voiced my question out loud since some wise guy yelled out, “It’s called using your feet!” Well, who would’ve thought of that… What would happen to this world without these geniuses? The four of us repeated this over and over again. A few hours later, as we were walking down the hill back to the hotel, some guy came up to us and asked if we would like to take a picture. So we did. We stood next each other, arms around the person on each side of us. We put on goofy smiles that were so big, we thought our faces will freeze in that position due to the ridiculously cold weather. We are on the slippery white hill, with bare trees behind us and nothing else. I remember that day perfectly, and every time I look at the picture, all the sounds of our laughter come rushing back to me. It’s a plain picture, with no scenery and no colors. But there was really no need to stand in front a beautiful mountain or an iconic statue. The four of us were enough to get the point across.
Even though the trip was so lame and the food was not restaurant quality, it was a time that will forever be embedded in my memory. We are separated in different colleges now, but each one of us has that same picture.