My name is Joelle Marino and I’m from a town outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania named Downingtown. I’ve lived in the same town my entire life, I have never moved. Although I lived in Downingtown, my grandparents and other family members live in other places close by. I have spent a lot of my time at various houses in my family around Chester County, PA and Delaware County, Pa. These houses were no more than half an hour away from where I lived. Before I came to University Park this fall for my junior year, I started my college experience at Penn State Brandywine, a commonwealth campus that is located in Media, Pennsylvania. At that campus I started my journey in becoming a teacher and I completed two years there before moving up here. I wish to teach at the elementary school level, specifically kindergarten or first grade. I’m very interested to learn more about geography and how humans have an impact on the environment through their every day actions and decisions.

While looking through the first module, I was very surprised by a picture of the drought that hit California. There were two pictures put side by side of Folsom Lake; one picture is from July of 2011 and the other was from January 2014. In the most recent picture ,the lake and all of the land around it is dried up. There are little patches of water and the grass that was once green is dried up and brown. This dryness has resulted in forest fires and water shortages all around California. It not only has an impact on animal life but on human life as well. It is important to look at this event and take into account other events like this because human decisions not only impact this change but are impacted themselves by it as well. I would like to look deeper into this in future lessons to come.