Summer Vacation Day 37: Bus Day and Ex-Home

Hello, Tim!

Today is the first day I’m taking the bus to school.

8/6, Monday

Just to save some time for everything that could go wrong on the first time riding a bus to school, so I set the clock at 6:30, an hour and a half before school. Still, it was thirty minutes later than the alarms I used to set in Xindian.

I pressed the snooze button once -ONLY once- before I practically bounced up from my new comfortable bed, got ready for school while checking the bus times on the Net.

Six minutes before the arrival of the bus, I was waiting alone until someone tapped me on my shoulder. I got company. Allison was the person I asked just the other day, of which bus to take if I wanted to go to school, and there she sent me a list of the buses you can or can’t take. It was the first time I felt how nice it feels like when you have a friend just in a literal two minutes apart.

It was incredible- It was about 6:45 when we got onto the bus and we arrived at school at 7:20! When back in Xindian, anytime after 6:35 guaranteed a post-eight o'clock arrival at school! Life here felt so good all of a sudden.

I invited Angela and Melody to my house to study and have fun for a while. I introduced to them the riceball restaurant downstairs, and Angela was in love with it. Later in the day, she bought two more home for dinner! We were watching TV, chatting, etc. Then, Melody left to meet Cathy at Starbuck, which left Angela and me alone at the desk. We studied until we decided to play some music. She listens to English, Mandarin, Korean, and some Japanese, while I listen to mostly the same language, just that her Korean is my French. We blasted some songs and sang along until we agreed that we were too distracted and so not focused on our homework. I then turned my phone into a two-hour jazz quintet, and suddenly, the desk became a quiet cafe. This kind of hanging out in my house is exactly one of those that appear on the list of dreams. I have always wanted to be a host to my friends and just chill out and spend some very happy and relaxing hours, but this was the very first time that this actually happened, for my previous houses were all hard to reach for my friends.

Angela waiting for her orders.

The restaurant with killer riceballs is called the Bahar Kitchen, which, I have no idea what that means.

Fast forward to this evening, where I was traveling on a metro, heading back to Xindian.

True, we had moved since just the Saturday that passed, but I had already gone back for the second time! This time, it was for the tutoring. Mom would be giving the house back to the owner on the next Saturday, meaning that the house would be empty with zero residents throughout the week. I thought, then, why not still have the math classes in my previous house?

I walked along the path I had grown so familiar with as I remembered myself seeing the place for the first time. Three and a half years ago when we were still looking for a house to rent, I had not once thought that we would be living in such a magical place.

I opened the door to our house. It was a number lock – you have the key in your head. It was, unsurprisingly, empty. Deserted, even. The furniture was very minimalistic since all our bought furniture was moved to our new place. The white covering paint on the walls done by me days ago was long dry.

After the class, I walked once again along the path of low-lying bushes, reminiscing and I then noticed just how serene the whole scene was. There was a man holding onto the handle of a red tricycle his kid was on. Under the dim yellow light, people were jogging as exercise. I came to a small plaza neighboring the metro station. It was empty at the time, and I sat there on one of the benches to wait for the metro to come. It was a very quiet place, and while the street we live on was comparably less noisy than the nearby areas, the quietness it provides was no match for the isolated and laid back atmosphere over there in Xindian. 

Uncomparably quiet place.

The metro -which of the only source of high volume sounds around here- roared past me, the pace slowed and finally came to a halt. I stood up and gave the community another look. (I chastised myself, "You will be here again on Friday for another tutoring class. Linger then.")

For the millionth time, I would miss this place.

This is all for today.