My science class took a 2-day camping field trip to Joshua Tree national park this week. Tom and I were put in charge of cooking for our first night there and we made bean burritos with papas con queso (which means potatoes with cheese). We also learned about the Joshua Trees and other plants there. Some of the Joshua trees are hundreds of years old and they have a hard time growing because animals and birds eat them before they get to grow so the Joshua tree is now in danger. Also, a park ranger told us about the pollution from Los Angeles and how its effecting the plants there with too much nitrogen. They are really neat looking trees and some of them look like people. I also learned that the park is located in two different deserts - the Sonoran and the Mojave desert. We also got to see a Big horn sheep that climbing high on the rocks above us and we also saw a desert turtle. One of the students in our class thought it was a rock until our teacher said it was a turle in its shell. Eventually he peeked his head out to see if we had left yet and then quickly went back in his shell.

There was another science class there from San Diego and they were camping nearby. We talked with some of the students from their school and even shared some of our food. We also all volunteered together to help pickup garbage around the park and the campground. Tom found an old cowboy hat and Cindy from our class found an old Nintendo gameboy that didn't work. I didn't find anything interesting, but I did talk for a long time with a girl named Lisa from the school in San Diego who was very cute and a lot of fun to talk to. She liked to laugh and giggle a lot as we talked about books and movies and about her Dad who is a Genomic Scientist or something like that. I asked what that is and she tried to explain it too me, but I don't think she knew either. So, I decided to look it up in the old dictionary. "Genomics" is "the study of the complete set of genetic material of an organism" and an example of its use that I found during a search of the word is "The Cat Genome Project was announced along with plans to sequence the genomes of eight other mammals: the elephant, the orangutan, the shrew, the hedgehog, the guinea pig, the tenrec, the armadillo and the rabbit." I will have to ask my science teacher Miss Parker more about it on Monday.