This weekend was one of the most eye opening experiences of my life. We were on a trip to a race, and after the race we went to the beach. I was excited, but I had been to the beach before and...a beach is a beach. However, my roommate was bursting with excitement. She could not wait to get there.

Little did I know, that was her first time ever going to the beach. You know when you bring a dog to a party, and it just spends half the time running around going crazy because of all the new things? That was her. As soon as we got there, she sprinted to the ocean as fast as she could. She ran through the water, chased waves, let the waves chase her, and even let us bury her in the sand.

Now to me, all of this was normal. I had done all of this before and going to the beach wasn't a big deal. To her, however, it was like the most amazing thing ever. At the end of the day, we decided we were going to go down to the shore at night and look at it under the moonlight. Like during the day, she continued to leap around and go insane. She was in awe of the wonders of the beach.

For some reason, one of the girls on the team thought it would be a good idea to get up at the crack of dawn, walk to the beach, and watch the sunrise. At 6:30am, when my alarm went off, the last thing I wanted to do was get up and watch the stinking sunrise like it does every morning. But I went along because I didn't want to be left behind.

Boy, was I glad I went. We arrived just as the sun was coming up in the sky, and it was breathtaking. This sounds crazy, but I was overwhelmed by such a wave of emotion. It hit me that such a small thing like this was so beautiful. We often take for granted such things in life like this.

The sun rises and sets everyday. How often do we look at it and admire this beautiful earth we live on? A sunrise, like the one I saw this weekend, will never happen the same again, and I was lucky to share that experience with some of my closest new friends. It is a small thing but small things are big things to some people. Going to the beach wasn't a big deal for me, but it was for my friend.

And it reminded me that this Earth is so beautiful. We cannot become blind to the little things that are the most beautiful.