English Project
Amanda Stockton
3rd Hour (7th grade)
Dear Mandi, (note: one of my good friends at this time was also an Amanda, and she went by Mandi)
I'm sorry I couldn't write sooner, but just lately I got your address when Josh wrote home with it. (Note, apparently people didn't have telephones before 2000.) Congrats on the big archaeological find! (Josh wrote about it.) What have you decided to name this "missing link?" (You could name it Steven Ealy, or perhaps the equivalent, Doofus maximus.) I notice you haven't written, either. I live in Aberdeen, Scotland, now. (I decided the plains of the Serengeti weren't really for me, after all.) Its really neat here. You'd like it. Aberdeen is called the "Granite City." That's what makes it so beautiful. Many of the buildings are made of white, polished granit. It's local here! (I knew you would like that.) We live at the mouth of the river Dee. It's a bonnie river, with unco guid fishing. (I'm proud of myself, I'm finally learning the slang here!) Josh and I live about 90 miles from the Loch Ness, and have a summer home there. We still haven't seen the Loch Ness monster, but our neighbors say they have.
Mandi, you've got to stop by my house sometime. It's so pretty! It's made out of pink and white limestone bricks, with light blue trim. We own such a small lot in town, we have to buy land along the Loch Ness to raise cattle. So far three have turned up missing. The neighbors say the Loch Ness monster ate them, but that's only three out of about one hundred fifty head, so they were probably victims of storms or died while giving birth or some other natural phenomena.
As you've probably heard, I've become an aerospace engineer after finally getting out of college. I had to take four years of engineering school, and after that, four years of graduate school. I went to MIT, the Massachussetts University (hahaha, whoops Institute!) of Technology, that is. I majored in aerospace engineering, took a few hours of astrophysics, took calculus, physics, algebra, biology, chemistry, computer programming, the Russian and Japanese languages, a few speech and writing classes, Advanced English, and typing (haha, like I needed typing after all the years of AIM). (Try saying that in one breath... or paying for it with one job! Note: I did work 2 full time jobs one summer, and got the unique experience of never having a full day off working 80 hr weeks. It was fun, I recommend it to anyone.) Anyway, it's a pretty little mile-long campus, and just happens to be on the Charles River. I'm glad to be out of it, no matter how pretty it was. (Those were the best years of my life, and it was very pretty and a ton of work.)
Brie and I have designed and built an engine that is half the size of the onew that were being used, are reusable, has 1/2 the feul consumption, and is twice as powerful. We have been to Mars and back in the last year. We left on July 4th, 2009 (wow, that was a few years ago!), orbited the Earth five times taking readings on the Earth before breaking orbit and travelling on to Mars, where we landed the "Scotty" on the Martian surface on July 11th, set up a permanent "Marsbase" where we can leave people in the future, and retured to Earth July 4th, 2010. It is sort of like a miniature Earth, with plains, forests, rivers, an ocean, three lakes, two marshes, a mountain range with twelve mountains, a polar region, and plans for the plants and animals to live in the appropriate regions. We have found that the Mars soil is fertile in places, including where we landed. The Marsbase has been pumped full of oxygen, equipped with the oxygen recycler that one of the people I went to college with invented, and has a few plants, mainly the ones from the shuttle. We will be leaving fifteen lizards and around 100 plant-eating insects along with the plants. Our goal is to see how lizards might evolve in the next few years. We will be returning to Marsbase September 1.
...Other paragraphs fulfilling the assignment: I convert to Islam, etc...
My garden's doing pretty well this year. The Delphinium elatums bloomed right when I got back, a little behind schedule. The seeds must have germinated later than I thought they would, or else Josh must have not wanted to plant them when I told him to. He wouldn't admit to it, though. I only planted purple foxgloves before I left to Mars, and this year I had red and pink as well as purple, which must mean they evolved because they self-plant every fall. That's why I planted them, so I could have pretty flowers to come home to. The bleeding hearts died while I was away. I was a little upset, because they were the prettiest (little rose pink 3-D hearts with little liquid-looking growths at the tip for flowers) and forgot to save seeds. You have no idea how hard it is to find a Japanese species of seed in Scottish stores. In other words, don't try it. The wheat crop is doing okay. These Scots really seem to like hot rolls made out of stone groungwhole wheat flour, and the cows seem to like wheat hay just as well. I haven't tried cooking much with oats yet, but that's my next course of action.
The main reason I'm writing this was to speculate on the up-coming Q.E.2 cruise. ..writing assignment bull... Oh, but apparently I do speculate that a certain J.T. Kirk otherwise known as Vulcan is "most likely" to be the person to arrange our future (past?) cruise. I write on and on about all these good foods I am looking forward to that at that point I'd never even heard of, let alone tried. Fortunately, it's hard to go wrong there. All food is good. I liked this part, though:
"Now here's something that's not so good. 10,000 bottles of champagne, 27,000 bottles of still wine, 16,500 bottles of spirits, 500 bottles of port, sherry and liquors, 45,000 cans and bottles of beer, and 2 million cigarettes, so, just some friendly advice, WATCH OUT!!"
After another 2 pages of obvious writing assignment work, talking about the straight of Gilbraltar and things, I get back to business:
I don't get to see Josh very often. It's almost as we're not married at times, and I sure was thinking about him during the trip to Mars. The times I am at home and not at NASA headquarters or something, he's usually trekking across the Sahara desert looking for Bronchitosauraus or Do-you-think-he-saurus Rex or Jake's ancestors. (Note: Wow, for a 7th grader with only the role-models I had at the time, I really accurately predicted the future!) I hope you and John are getting alng better than we are. I'll get to see both you and Josh and John at the cruise (he's meeting me up there) so I guess it doesn't matter.
Well, I just ran out of subject matter, and you're probably getting tired of reading this, so I'll let you go. My address is 6613 Tarbet Rd. Aberdeen, Grampian 99371 Scotland, Earth, Sol solar system, Milky Way Galaxy, Einsteinic Universe. You need only go to Scotland, but in a few years my address will change and you will need to put Mars instead of Earth. Bye!
Your friend and colleague,
Amanda Michelle Stockton-Matlock
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