Letter XXIII: Celebration and quite a Glutinous Week

Hello, Tim!

Or more specifically, good morning! It is Saturday in the morning, 8:30.

I woke up when my mom did (she had to go working) at six, and I finally finished the book that has been with me for over three weeks! Comments later.

Yes, our yearly presentation was finished, but that in no way means we have the time to relax; our midterm is just around the corner AGAIN.

Later I will have to head out to run errands for Mom, and after that, I’ll be attending a French Music Festival with my former French class classmates. Then comes the usual Saturday German class. If I still had time, I’ll have to keep on with my history homework and also several other English assignments.

Contents of the Week

- Friday Partying with Grills (and a Small Spectacle from Yangming High School)  (p.s. Aubrey is Going Back to Germany)
- Harty Potter’s Goblet of Fire
- The French Music Festival with Grownup Friends
- End as the Last Letter Assignment

Friday Partying with Grills (and a Small Spectacle from Yangming High School) (p.s. Aubrey is Going Back to Germany)

Due to our success in our performance at school, we decided to have dinner and hold a small party of celebration in an all-you-can-eat grill restaurant on Friday.

But before that, we were invited to Yangming High School to watch their yearly performance.

Yangming High School is not far from our school, which is about two metro stations apart.

Their campus doesn’t seem larger than ours, but it certainly looks better tended to, with the clean environment and the renovated instead of antiquated buildings.

The exterior of the Yangming High School

The strengths of their performance are that they have a lot of programs planned. It was so different from ours since we have only three programs in total while they have about ten.

They also have more students in their class, and these are the moments we realized that how small our class actually is.

However, their problem, I believe, also lay in their number of programs.

Their supposedly climax-program of the show is an adaption of the story Mulan, the girl who took her father’s stead and went to war. We could see that they really did put their heart in their practice, but it would be better if they had fewer programs so that they could spend more time to elaborate on their plot of the play.

After the performance, we went straight ahead to the metro station so that we could get to the restaurant.

The grilling restaurant we went to was recommended by Melody, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

With the dim lights and a DJ and some flashy lights, I thought, that this restaurant would pass for a club.

The large servings of meat were undoubtedly the star of the dining table.

The two hours we were given to eat was spent on a frenzy of grilling, eating, and laughing.

The laughing was something that satisfied me the most since it was the feeling I like when being with the amazing class. Along with the music we sway, we sang, and we shake. It was a lively atmosphere; normally I would back away from places with music too loud or disco lights too flashy, but with them, they obtrusive factors were more bearable.

On our side of the table, we have Doris, Allison, Amy and me. Amy and I were in charge of most of the grilling, while the other two… They ate. :D The beef tasted absolutely divine/sinful (I don’t know which side to pick) and we kept asking for more plates of it to come. At some point into the dinner, several awkward moments took place, including my mistaking a customer as a waiter (which brought me a pair of confused eyes riveted at me and a whole table of 220 laughter), and also the weird glances cast by the people walking by our table when I was actually stir-frying the salad from the salad bar. (I was already full by then, but I heard some of my (demanding) classmates saying that they didn’t like eating raw uncooked vegetables, so I thought ‘Why not?’)

This was a screenshot from my cellphone, which is an Instagram post of Cathy, who apparently found what I was doing funny.

Allison and the vegetable chef

Aside from the mere celebration of our performance, it was also like a farewell party for Aubrey.

I don’t know if you knew about this already, Tim, but Aubrey will be leaving in several days, from Taiwan to Germany, where she will be finishing her school work from the next semester.

Someone drag that photobomber away!!!!!

It is such a pity, not only because we already have less than twenty people in the class, but also she is a very good friend of mine. As a parting gift, I gave her (wait for it) A BOOK!

Yay.

If luck strikes, I’ll be joining her in the same country next year, though.

Harty Potter’s Goblet of Fire

Three weeks. It took me three weeks to finish the fourth book of the Harry Potter saga.

The Goblet of Fire is the turning point where the coming sequels wind up over six hundred pages. Inside the book features a series of tasks for Harry participating in a tournament, which ensures the quality of the thrill and excitement that has been going non-stop upon his entering the magical Hogwarts Wizarding School.

I like the fact that J.K. Rowling made the character Ron more like a round character in this installment. He indeed is the best friend of Harry, who has been the focus of the spotlight. Being next to the glamorously famous person, I believe that no one other than Ron deserved to be more jealous than he had been. I was glad that they made up soon enough, and that did but strengthen their bond.

From what I've heard about the coming plot...

Well, let's wait until I finally pick up the next book.

Movie poster found on the net

The French Music Festival with Grownup Friends

One day, one of my former classmates of my French course shared a link to the information of a French music festival.

It sounded interesting, and it's been a while since I've seen any of my French class classmates, so we arranged a time to meet at the place where the event was held.

We sat at a table right next to the stage, ordered food, and just started chatting.

To be honest, we thought that the stage would be bigger than what we saw, and we imagined there would be more French songs, because, it was a French music festival (95%of the songs were English songs) but through chatting, we enjoyed the company of music nonetheless. One of the classmates just came back from England after three months of studying medicine (they are all adults) and for me, it's quite different from chatting with people my age. It indeed was a nice afternoon.

End as the Last Letter Assignment

Yup, this is the very last-class-assigned letter. Thank you, Tim, for taking your time in reading and replying our letters/blog posts every once in a while. If luck would have it, we the others will still read about you next semester!

As for me?

I, still, will keep writing. Keeping this blog running has become more like a habitual activity, and here I will be, writing about the books I just read, about our graduation trip, our summer vacation.

I’ll be here.

Sincerely,

Hugo