Post by Seashellstarz on Apr 4, 2005 16:51:22 GMT -5
When I stepped onto Room One’s threshold, I believed that the speedy change of color on my face to virescent could be compared with lightening. The dryness of my mouth exceeded of which after a double P. E. class. Does my mother know what I’m going through here? I secretly asked myself. The envelope’s roughness appeared salient in my sweating hands. A faint smell of old wood surrounded me. I glanced at the other girl, Chu Jie Zhong, and saw she was just as uncomfortable. With her features frozen, her dark eyes glazed like glassy beads, and not a speck on her glaucous school uniform, Chu Jie resembled one of those figures drawn on Chinese textbooks right after the Cultural Revolution. I knew that the memory of this morning would stay with us for a while.
The vice principal stood behind the long, stiff desk with paint peeling off, revealing battered wood. She wore an impassive expression. Her eyes seemed to x-ray scan our brains for any infinitesimal imperfection on our personal attitude. For some reason, my emotions just would not let me feel terribly honored for being here, like a competent student should feel. I had never thought that years after, I would view the vice principal’s demands as pertinaciously drastic. Anyway, the inexpressive gleam in her eyes and her low, rigid voice did not excite me. “Do you have your forms?”
My first few days in my new school were not what I had expected. Still, when Mother informed me about her perfect plan of her seven-year-old daughter living in the perfect Hui Ming Primary School, I became perfectly speechless. For a long time, I urged to naysay my unspeakable kismet, which was just respectably looking upon Hui Ming as my home. I had wondered for a while after Mother filled me in on how she and Father needed to go live in Hong Kong for a spell and could not be with me. Then, I knew about my grandparents coming over to look after me. Even so, Mother’s scheme of my living in school did not vary. Monday through Friday, I would be residing in an educational prison, or so I thought at the time.
“Are you serious? Your home is right next to school!” My friend Chu Jie’s insensate response to my complaints failed to console my spirit. I told her how it was solely my mother’s arrangement and secretly, very secretly, wished that this fate were hers instead of mine. Chu Jie didn’t think my grandparents would like it. Shrugging like an unflappable westerner, I pretended to give up on the issue. Chu Jie never guessed how much her friend contemplated over it.
I peeped out the window through the school’s grayish, see-through curtains. A lark danced upon a mulberry branch. Its wings flipped carelessly about in the sultry air. Emitting a sigh in vain, I inwardly questioned the bird. Little creature, can you detect my envy? Are you as intelligent as you are lithe and winsome? Nobody enjoys being tantalized. No. No way I’ll be dreaming in one of those systematized beds in the fifth-floor’s dorm. No way. No one can make me.
I had to drag tediously my attention back to Miss Zhou, who was fervently talking about preparation for the Moon Festival. I stared blankly up at my committed homeroom teacher. Do I get to eat my moon cakes in school with my teachers? Do I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks together? Not that I detest all my dear educators, but…
The day finally came when mother handed me the permission slip with her signature on it. She somewhat relented when she descried the dead, destructive glower in me, “It’s your choice, really. Your very own.” Without another word, she scooped up her luggage and went after Father.
“Wait!” I pled, to whom, I did not know. Was it to Mother, perhaps? Or was it to something else? Was it something bigger and more out of a young child’s control? At that moment, I wanted to cry. Why? Why does the person I love and trust the most in the world want to leave me in the dimension of unfamiliarity? New home, new school, new schedule, new people, and new custodians… what else is new? I couldn’t cry though. It was seven. It was time. Seven years old. Seven o’clock. Time to make my own choices. Time to go to my classes.
Time to answer the teacher’s query. “Yes,” Cu Jie’s voice slightly trembled. Although the fact of her apartment’s faraway distance remained, she never had even visualized her destiny of living in a boarding school.
“Yes,” I replied in a determined manner, putting the signed papers onto the instructor’s desk. To my surprise, or maybe to her own, she smiled faintly. Even her callousness didn’t appear intimidating for a moment. I suddenly viewed myself outside of my body: a little girl who finally knew how capable she was of doing things she dared not imagine beforehand.
Chu Jie caught my surreptitious smile, “What’s so funny?”
Later on, I discovered how much I enjoyed “the parsimonious, seared, spiritless, and sober educational prison.” The so-called gloom and boredom were nothing but serious atmospheres at times of huge tests and finals. I ended up loathing to leave for Singapore in third grade. One way or another, this is one of the best experiences I could ask for, ever. It has taught me all about independence. This experience also told me that if I don’t try, I’d never have a chance to know.
The vice principal stood behind the long, stiff desk with paint peeling off, revealing battered wood. She wore an impassive expression. Her eyes seemed to x-ray scan our brains for any infinitesimal imperfection on our personal attitude. For some reason, my emotions just would not let me feel terribly honored for being here, like a competent student should feel. I had never thought that years after, I would view the vice principal’s demands as pertinaciously drastic. Anyway, the inexpressive gleam in her eyes and her low, rigid voice did not excite me. “Do you have your forms?”
My first few days in my new school were not what I had expected. Still, when Mother informed me about her perfect plan of her seven-year-old daughter living in the perfect Hui Ming Primary School, I became perfectly speechless. For a long time, I urged to naysay my unspeakable kismet, which was just respectably looking upon Hui Ming as my home. I had wondered for a while after Mother filled me in on how she and Father needed to go live in Hong Kong for a spell and could not be with me. Then, I knew about my grandparents coming over to look after me. Even so, Mother’s scheme of my living in school did not vary. Monday through Friday, I would be residing in an educational prison, or so I thought at the time.
“Are you serious? Your home is right next to school!” My friend Chu Jie’s insensate response to my complaints failed to console my spirit. I told her how it was solely my mother’s arrangement and secretly, very secretly, wished that this fate were hers instead of mine. Chu Jie didn’t think my grandparents would like it. Shrugging like an unflappable westerner, I pretended to give up on the issue. Chu Jie never guessed how much her friend contemplated over it.
I peeped out the window through the school’s grayish, see-through curtains. A lark danced upon a mulberry branch. Its wings flipped carelessly about in the sultry air. Emitting a sigh in vain, I inwardly questioned the bird. Little creature, can you detect my envy? Are you as intelligent as you are lithe and winsome? Nobody enjoys being tantalized. No. No way I’ll be dreaming in one of those systematized beds in the fifth-floor’s dorm. No way. No one can make me.
I had to drag tediously my attention back to Miss Zhou, who was fervently talking about preparation for the Moon Festival. I stared blankly up at my committed homeroom teacher. Do I get to eat my moon cakes in school with my teachers? Do I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks together? Not that I detest all my dear educators, but…
The day finally came when mother handed me the permission slip with her signature on it. She somewhat relented when she descried the dead, destructive glower in me, “It’s your choice, really. Your very own.” Without another word, she scooped up her luggage and went after Father.
“Wait!” I pled, to whom, I did not know. Was it to Mother, perhaps? Or was it to something else? Was it something bigger and more out of a young child’s control? At that moment, I wanted to cry. Why? Why does the person I love and trust the most in the world want to leave me in the dimension of unfamiliarity? New home, new school, new schedule, new people, and new custodians… what else is new? I couldn’t cry though. It was seven. It was time. Seven years old. Seven o’clock. Time to make my own choices. Time to go to my classes.
Time to answer the teacher’s query. “Yes,” Cu Jie’s voice slightly trembled. Although the fact of her apartment’s faraway distance remained, she never had even visualized her destiny of living in a boarding school.
“Yes,” I replied in a determined manner, putting the signed papers onto the instructor’s desk. To my surprise, or maybe to her own, she smiled faintly. Even her callousness didn’t appear intimidating for a moment. I suddenly viewed myself outside of my body: a little girl who finally knew how capable she was of doing things she dared not imagine beforehand.
Chu Jie caught my surreptitious smile, “What’s so funny?”
Later on, I discovered how much I enjoyed “the parsimonious, seared, spiritless, and sober educational prison.” The so-called gloom and boredom were nothing but serious atmospheres at times of huge tests and finals. I ended up loathing to leave for Singapore in third grade. One way or another, this is one of the best experiences I could ask for, ever. It has taught me all about independence. This experience also told me that if I don’t try, I’d never have a chance to know.
and 
all
time for me 
echoes, hope you all are doing well 
