As I woke up feeling refreshed in the fixed temporary shelter, I woke up to the sound of complete shock and surprise by Jin, the flight attendant. I got up from my bed, a spare airplane seat (the other five airplane seats were either used or swept away by the mudslide from the previous night beforehand, so now there are only three seats left) and found myself surrounded by a gigantic stream of sunlight, tons of shade, evergreen trees (obviously), and the sticky and moist mud, covering the entire evergreen forest. I put on my shoes and greeted the morning air. Jin, now dressed in another set of clothes (she had gotten it from the plane wreckage in a random passenger’s suitcase) was looking frantic and worried. David was wearing the other set of clothes (he had gotten it from Jin) and was heating up an airplane meal (away from the evergreen trees) for breakfast. When Jin saw me, she asked,” Hey, have you seen Esther?”I simply replied, “No. Why?” David interrupted our conversation,”She hasn’t been seen anywhere and its noon.” I stated,”Why do you guys care anyway?!” As I said this, I seemed to have stepped on something. It was Esther’s white beanie, now drenched with mud. Jin and David said in unison,”That’s why we care and oh, all of our stuff’s missing!” I muttered,” Oh, that’s just great!”Jin said, “What’s wrong?” I stated,” I think I may know why our stuff and Esther is missing. It’s because I gave her a challenge of surviving in this mixed evergreen forest all by herself. Besides, it was just a harmless joke…, “I stopped in mid-sentence. Jin and David said in unison, ticked, “Harmless joke?! That girl could be dead right now!”I admitted,”Alright, I’m sorry. Let’s just find Esther. However, it seems that we have no items for this particular search.” Jin objected,” All though Esther did take everything, she did forget about this.” The thing that Jin showed was the serving cart, entirely covered with the brown sludge, mud, and was packed with the ten items the party had when they met. So we then started the search for Esther.

So we started the search for Esther. The entire search was long, exhausting, and tragic. We had to eat like cannibals just to save the three leftover airplane meals. There wasn’t a whole lot of water except when rainfall came and we almost died from exhaustion. However, we did have some water from the previous rainfall yesterday and that the search took about a week. On the morning of the seventh day, a Friday (Yes, I had kept track of the days), I thought I had seen a ship of some sort and had absentmindedly sent out a signal by using the broken make-up mirror. They spotted the signal and landed on the mixed evergreen forest. I was thrilled to see that we were going home, but Jin and David said,” We’re not leaving behind Esther.” So to get this two to stop nagging to me about Esther, I decided to follow them till the very end.

Fortunately, Esther was nearby; she was found asleep on a pile of evergreen leaves and ferns. We managed to wake her up from her slumber. She woke up, dazed and surprised to see not only Jin and David, but also me, she spoke quietly, “What on earth are you three doing here?!” We said, “We came here to search for you and oh, by the way we thought that we saw a ship of some sort setting dock on the evergreen forest.” Esther exclaimed, “Really?! She also exclaimed this, in a bewildering voice: “Why should I believe you guys, when there is no water in this mixed evergreen forest!?”  The two, Jin and David, turned around showing their backs, now embarrassed and said quietly under their breath,” Whoops! We forgot about that! I, however, stated, “Okay, maybe we saw something else that we mistaken for a ship.” So, after telling Esther everything that had happened to us, we then decided to head back to the location of the “ship.” We proceeded back, sprinting, to the location of the mysterious vessel, enthusiastic and impassioned to finally go home. Because of this, I knew that something significant and vast was going to happen.

As we scurried to the mysterious vessel, we were greeted by a gargantuan militia tank. It was dark and light green in color, a ship-like appearance, and had treads connected to the wheels of the army tank, completely encrusted with the atrocious and scandalous sludge from the disgusting mudslide eight days beforehand. It had dangerous rocket launchers attached to each side of the bottle green but noxious tank. The entrance to the inside of the terminal and incurable artillery machine was locked stalwartly well and wouldn’t budge. Finally, as a finishing touch, it had a repulsive and irreconcilable missile launcher locked tightly to the top of the heavy-in-size machine. I then quickly figured out that this was the “ship” that we had seen. Suddenly, the frightening missile launcher was facing slowly, directly towards us! However, the entrance of the military machine opened and a man stepped out of the lethal machine and onto the swamp-like ground, sentimental and moist. He had the most enormous Adam’s apple I had ever seen! He had brown hair and a broad chin. He had giant shoulder pads on his shoulders (obviously), wore the traditional garb of the U.S. army, and spoke in a gruff voice with a sense of dignity. We all realized that he was a general in the U.S. army. He spoke to us roughly and with discipline:”Who are you and what are you doing on the training grounds of the U.S army?” We all questioned him in unison, “Training grounds?!”He exclaimed, “Yes, training grounds. Training grounds for new recruits.” He must have heard one of us mumbling, “Yes, we’re finally going to be rescued,” because he questioned us with this response:”Rescued? Well then, I supposed you wish to get rescued by us, the U.S. army?” Behind him, we could see thousands of men lined up like ants in single-file in columns. We, Esther and I, said with enthusiasm, “Yes,” while pointing at Jin and David.”We all want to be rescued.” The stern general replied,” Alright then, I am going to sent some recruits out to rescue you four.” As we boarded some army planes, provided by the general, I wrote these final words in my journal: Well, I guess this is my final journal entry. This is Michael Kim signing out and we all thank you, General, for taking us all back home. I finally hope that I won’t be boarding any more planes after this particular survival episode. Again, thank you, General. These are my final words.