Balloon Release Story

If I had to guess what happened to my balloon in a realistic manner I'd assume it just got stuck in a tree and will never be read. If I wanted to be creative it would be another story...
As the balloon rode the waves of air away, it was unsure of it's journey. It stayed high about the trees until one tree was too high. The balloon popped instantly and the letter fell to the ground far below. A dog was below when the letter fell onto it's sleeping body. The puppy began to sniff the foreign object. After deciding if the object was safe or not the dog picked it up in it's mouth and ran though the woods. Upon arriving to a house the dog ran in and gave it's owner the letter. The owner was very surprised and very confused. The owner pondered whether or not he should open the letter but later deciding he should. As he opened the letter he became even more confused because there were actually disks inside of the envelope. The disks were were very colorful but also were worn from rain and melted snow. You could still read the inscription in the disks. The disks read of how the Earth is fucked and the owner took time to ponder this statement. The disk even had a number to text when found. It was slightly worn but still readable. The owner picks up his phone to text the mysterious number. Hours later he receives a text back from a student that attended Alfred University as an art student. She always wondered if someone was going to find her letter. This conversation with the recipient of the letter helped her learn more about communication and collaboration. She used this in her further career.

Alien Communication Walk and Balloon Release

I didn't know what to expect when I walked into CoLab on Thursday. I had a hint based off of the possibility of doing the same thing as the other class but I still was unsure. We started the class by introducing ourselves to each other because we had all been separated at some point based on our previous groups. We also had to say a book that we enjoyed. After that we learned about a golden vinyl that was created to showcase Earth's music and culture to other possible life forms in space. This brought us to the activity of the day; creating letters to aliens. We were told to write on disks and put them in envelopes. We had to write to someone or something that would possibly receive our letter. I enjoyed this process because it gave me the ability to be creative with my design and message. After we created the letters we had to attach balloons to them. I helped blow up the balloons which was cool because I had a lot of prior job experience blowing up balloons at Party City. When we were done with that we decided as a class to go to the windmill to launch. None of us expected the walk to be as bad as it was. Most people were dying and wanted to give up. Honestly having a ton of art kids going on a long, uphill hike at 10am probably wasn't the best idea. I wasn't having the best time. I found needing to document my surroundings, keep my balloon from popping and dealing with my possible asthma was tiring. On the walk though I bonded with people about hating the distance of the walk. Once we got to the launch location I realized how beautiful it was and I appreciated the walk we all went on. It was picturesque. Launching the balloon felt bittersweet. Knowing I created that letter and it might not even be found was hard to accept at first. I ended up realizing it'll be a cool mystery though. Walking down the path back to Cohen was way easier but also more chaotic. I had class at 11:20 and I never got back until 11:15. I wish I had documented more on the way back because a few peers and I got a little lost in AState. It was very funny and would have been good content. Overall I really appreciated this experience. It made me realize even more how important communication is and I'm interested to see how CoLab makes me thing deeper about it.