Our class trip went horribly wrong, and I’m here to tell you what we have done to make things better. We went to some island to visit a museum, and while looking around the island because we were a tad early, a storm hit. We all ran to the boat and once everyone was on, we went sailing away. Our boat wasn’t all that far away from the land when something went wrong. The boat became torn apart by a gigantic wave. As we were all scattered around in the ice cold water, we were all quivering. Someone had mentioned that they couldn’t see Mrs. Walls anywhere. As we swam to shore, we all solemnly mourned the death of our teacher. Our class finally arrived at land, and it was a hard time to deal with.

The first few days were a mess, everyone misbehaving, fighting. Everyone was exhausted and confused, some were worried and scared. I (Marisa) was with my group of friends—they always made me feel better. In the middle of all the worry, Kevin, Indolfo, and Dylan were caught stealing Tyler’s waterproof laptop. Other groups of students got it back and returned the laptop. The other Tyler started yelling at them and told them that we are all friends here—so we shouldn’t have to steal someone’s things. All they have to do is ask to borrow it. In my group was Hannah, Kyle, the other Tyler, and me. We were getting sick and tired of this behavior, so we decided to get everyone of the survivors together for a meeting. The class had to come up with a way to live here forever how long it took to be rescued. We had to be ready for what was to come in the future. Kyle was brainstorming ideas on how this meeting should be run. My group of friends—the group that I was hanging out with the first few days were the most mature, besides Jaclyn, Tranae, Brianny, Annie, and Ally, so we decided to run the meeting, since it was our idea.

As everyone started arriving to the meeting place, there was a tense feeling in the air, which made things a little uncomfortable. Once the whole class was settled on their assigned logs with their “separate groups”. Kyle cleared his throat and the meeting started. He explained that we needed a government now, and we needed it to work well. So, De, Brittni, Aaron, Colin, and Alex started brainstorming ideas on how to build living areas. Meanwhile, the rest of us were deciding on how to elect a leader of our new civilization. Our group decided that we should raise our hand to each of the student’s names to see who would we would want to run for our leader. The first person we chose was, of course, Kyle. The other person we chose was Colin. They were both the smartest people of the group. After we had agreed on that, Kevin, Tyler, Alex, Tyler, Indolfo, and Dylan all started to make areas for voting polls. Once they were finished, everyone immediately voted on their opinion to who should be our leader. The votes were counted time and time again, and by two important votes, Kyle was declared our leader. He told everyone to return to the meeting place so we could get the rest of the government put together. Kyle had appointed Colin to be his assistant, which was most likely a good idea. We’d have to wait and see. Next, there was two people chosen to be in Congress. The first was Ally, and the second was me. Then, the Congress appointed two students to be our Senate. Those students were Annie and Hannah. Finally, the Senate appointed one judge and two jury members. The judge was Jaclyn, and the two jury members were De and Brittni. Tyler, Tranae, Indolfo, Kevin, Cat, Dylan, Alex, Renee, Aaron, Tyler, Tyler, Luis, and Brianny were citizens of this new colony.

After all the important positions were filled, Kyle, Colin, Ally, Annie, Hannah, and me got together to decide on laws. The first was that there was no stealing, of course. The second was no murders, homicides, “accidental” murders, or suicides to be legal. The third was that there was to be no one person leading the group. Of course Kyle was technically the chosen leader of the civilization, but he could not be the only person making decisions. Just like in America, there has to be something called checks and balances. The Congress and the Senate had to have at least one third of their members agree on what Kyle wanted to do. That way, if something Kyle wanted to do wasn’t right, he couldn’t do it. It also was not too hard to do something that he wanted to do that would help the civilization for sure. Those were the most important laws that were made, the rest were just little ones that made everything run smoother.

Kevin, Indolfo, Tyler, Colin, Kyle, Tyler, Alex, Tyler, Luis, Dylan, Aaron, and Renee all started building houses and other buildings for us. Brittni, De, Tranae, Annie, Ally, Cat, Hannah, Jaclyn, Brianny, and I all were collecting wood, bananas, apples, oranges, coconuts, corn, cotton, and wheat from an abandoned farm nearby. Hannah and I stumbled upon some strawberries and some blackberries. We both had our bags still, so we stuffed them with all the food we could find. Tyler and Alex went fishing. They gathered up three salmons and ten tuna fish. The brought it back to our new village and put it in the mess hall, along with all the other food everyone had found. The other Tyler had found some chickens and some cows around, so he took a bucket he had found and started milking the cow. Then, he killed two large chickens and brought them back to the mess hall, as well. Hannah, Jaclyn, Tranae, and I all started cooking food. I put the chickens and the fish on a long piece of wood and I turned it over a fire. While those were cooking, we mixed water and flour together, and then I added some yeast to it. After that, I patted the dough and I shaped it into six large circles. After, I mashed some tomatoes and I mixed it until it became saucy. I spread it all over the six circles of dough. Then, I threw on some of the cheese we made from the milk.

The food was all ready in about two hours, and we all began our feast. Everyone thought that this was too hard, and they wanted to build an oven and a dishwasher. Also, they wanted a washing machine and dryer. Building appliances wasn’t the easiest thing to do. No one knew how to even begin. But, Since Tyler had a laptop, he figured it would help to look it up. Maybe one of the factory websites had blueprints on how to build appliances. It sure would be helpful. And of course, with his great Google skills, he found the easiest blueprints, and with all of the guys working on them, all of our appliances were done and ready to go in just four hours. We moved the refrigerator, the dishwasher, and the oven into the kitchen of the mess hall. De, Hannah, Jaclyn, and I all started washing dishes and pans. At that moment, Tyler came in with two buckets of milk in his hands. The girls and I decided to make one of the buckets into cheese, and keep one for drinking. We put them both in the refrigerator and finished up in the kitchen. As we walked outside, we saw that all of the guys were finishing up the living quarters. All of the other girls were just hanging out, they all looked a little worried…and very homesick. I’m sure everyone missed their parents as much as I did, and if they did—parents aren’t really as bad as everyone thought. Anyway, the next thing we did was we all were given cabin assignments by Kyle, and we all took our stuff (if we had any) and went to get a nice night of sleep, if we could. Most of us just stayed up venting to one another about how much we miss everyone.

In the morning, I got together with Kyle and we started talking about how we needed to get everyone closer. It might be a while until we are rescued, and it would be nice to have someone to talk to. So, we decided that it would be nice if we had a big sleepover/party. Of course we’d be sleeping over with people every night, but it would be something different. It would just be a big party that everyone could just talk and dance and have fun together. The first person we told was Tyler, so that way he could get together songs on his itunes for the party. Then we told De and Brittni, who were totally happy with making food for everyone. When we went out to tell Kevin and Indolfo, they were actually working on some more washing machines, and the other Tyler was working with Dylan to build a laundry mat for everyone so they could wash their clothes…if they had any besides the ones that they were wearing! We were very happy with the progress that everyone was making. The whole entire class was helping out with something. If this was some type of sick project that the teachers were secretly making us do—I was sure we’d get an A+ on it. But in reality, it wasn’t a project. This was real life. The truth was that we may never get rescued, and that scared us.

The time for the party rolled around, and everyone gathered in the largest cabin for the party. Most people looked excited enough, but some still seemed a little depressed. That all changed when we started dancing and eating and talking. Partying wore everyone out by 9:30, so the class set up their sleeping bags and we went to sleep. The next morning, all of the girls were out cooking breakfast for the guys. They had worked so hard that they deserved something good to eat.

When the boys finally woke up around noon, they were pleased to see that we appreciated their work so much that we were willing to wake up early and do something nice for them. We all really thought that the party was a success, and we all became closer. Until one day, that is.

One Monday morning, I woke up to a bunch of yelling coming from the cabin next door. I realized some girls were fighting, so I sat up in my bed and climbed down the ladder. Getting dressed, I had heard from the yelling that something of Cat’s was taken, and she thought Annie stole it. I stormed out of my cabin, letting the door slam shut behind me. As I half sprinted to the cabin next door, and practically ripped down the door as I started yelling for them to be quite. I made them both go in different rooms for twenty minutes, and when they both cooled down I gathered them again, with Kyle, and we figured out what was going on. Cat was accusing Annie of stealing her hairbrush that her mother had given her. We searched Annie’s bed and her dresser, and we found Cat’s brush.

Kyle, Annie, and I had a meeting to figure out what Annie’s punishment would be. We figured a week of activity suspension would punish her just fine. We also had her on kitchen duty. Sticking to the law was kind of hard. We hated punishing our friends, but when someone did something wrong, they had to be punished. We couldn’t go on living in a place where when someone did someone else a wrong, they wouldn’t be punished. So, we learned to deal with it.

We lived like this for some time. It was about 4 years until someone came to the rescue. But, we all did manage to survive. Sure, we might miss it on the island, but we were sure happy to go home and see our families.