4. Sense of Place - Your Neighborhood

• Sense of place is understanding the environment around you, your comfort zone, where you feel most at home.

Three places I feel most at home:
1) Those dingy bars and clubs where you'd expect to see some wacky punk or rap show, or get beaten up by the guy with the torn up clothing and studded-leather belt. (that would be me... Not that I beat people up...)  I grew up around places like this, where people are friendly and open with each other, and everyone just wants to have a good time.
2) The uncharted wilderness, surrounded by trees so far that you can't see the road when you climb one of them.  It's nice to run out there and get away from things.
3) My bedroom, which is decorated with both of those concepts in mind.  Also, my computer is here.

• Take a walking trip around your neighborhood.

    I do this every night, if you'd call my apartment complex a neighborhood.  I used to live in the freshman dorms, so I'll talk about that too.

• Observe special environmental features, green design, sustainable aspects, species, wildlife etc.  What sustainable or ecological features do you notice?

    Well, there are some cool owls and falcons around my apartment complex.  It's actually pretty naturey when you walk around it: there's a big lake in the middle which is surrounded by native plants.  Actually, the area it's built on is a big scrub habitat: I can tell from the sandy ground and the burn-proof plants.  The scrub is also visible in the area surrounding it, where it's mostly overgrown brush on undeveloped land, which blocks the view of the nearby highway quite nicely.

    The freshman dorms were, of course, built with LEED certification in mind, so they're pretty eco-friendly.  They're also surrounded by the mostly-pristine FGCU campus preserve, where I used to walk around all the time.  I've seen alot of cool animals out there, including:
- Possums
- North American Raccoons (with cubs!)
- Crab Eating Raccoons (that's a different species, they are smaller and cuter and live in wetlands)
- Coyotes
- Deer
- Hogs
- Armadillos
And all sorts of wacky birds.