Year Three, Almost Free 1: Little People in a Park and School Started

Hello, Tim!

This... is the first week of school, and we were all suffering from some serious Thursday Blues.

School

What is utterly atrocious about the third year of high school is that, barely a week into the beginning of the semester, we are already faced with our most dreaded nightmare: mock tests. We have to take three mock tests in total throughout the semester before the final, but between the three mock tests, we would also find just another three monthly tests, which are the midterms and the finals. With six major tests in our way, we apparently need some time to be mentally prepared.

Let's have a look at our class schedule for this semester!

This is just a picture of how our schedule looks; it showed which subject we would have every day, from eight in the morning until five in the late afternoon.

I don't know the reason for this, but for this semester, we got more subjects that would take up two consecutive periods, essentially making them into several two-hour classes, like the geography on Thursdays, and the history on Mondays.

This was only the first week, and the 'fun' had just begun...

Kids and Parks: Bad Choice

What would a kid want to do in his/her free time, given that any sort of electronic devices has been listed as off-limits?

Going out and have fun, of course. Sure, go have a ride on that elephant slide; give the swings some velocity and just glide against the wind; straddle that seesaw and let gravity weigh you down while the other side with some other kids you lift you up with their opposing weight.

All those sounded absolutely cheerful and childlike, carefree and liberating.

It wasn't. I'm not saying that it wasn't fun, but when you have two kids with you in a park, you can wear yourself out pretty fast.

Several footsteps into the park across the road from our house, a row of monkey bars stood there in the dim, low lights. Sophie, who was very proud of her gymnastics skills, kept climbing up the highest bars and 'politely asked' (No. Try 'demanded') that I join her up there. She seemed to be constantly trying to compete with someone who couldn't even hang on the lowest bar (which was me, by the way). I think these are the few occasions she thought she could do better than I can, and she just couldn't let that slip.

The girl was like a little monkey.

Meanwhile, Aiden, who was still not able to climb the bars because he was too short was impatient. He kept dragging me, asking me to join him at the swings. After many a minute passed, I went with him. He just couldn't swing high enough on his own (he was only four or five, so it was really normal), but then with a drastic mood shift, he stormed off and sulked away in a dark corner of a slide. Maybe he just hated that there were so many things that were out of his control, so many things he couldn't do even if he really wanted to. That explains the running thing later on.

To bring Aiden out of the gloomy disposition, I invited him to a footrace, wanting to let him have some confidence. He bit the bait like a little fish and started running at his highest speed while at the same time cutting the tracks to make it back to the finish line faster. I accompanied him for another two laps around the small circle, hoping he would be willing to sit and rest for a while. But no, he didn’t. He kept on running and running, lap after lap no matter who attempted to stop him. I finally couldn’t catch up with the high density of energy of kids, and just sat at the small stone lump by the track. I barely had the time to take several slower breaths, Sophie was back on the monkey bars again, asking me to lift her up so that she could sit on the bars, which was later followed by several requests of action she wanted me to do on a monkey bar, which, in retrospect, were only for the purpose of hearing me admit that I couldn’t do it. Kids.

He just went on and on and on.

What I had learned from this was that you have to regularly take kids out, unleash them in some safe place and just let them roam around and spend some energy. If you let the power pile up and formed mountains, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with them.

Now, I have to tend my overly strained arms and legs.

Yet Another Failed Blood Donation

I am so infuriated at the system of theirs.

Last week Sunday, I went to a blood donation bus only to find out that you can’t have a dentist’s appointment one week prior to the blood donation, which was on the 23^rd of August. Visiting the blood donation center on 9/1, Saturday would guarantee a fast pass. It SHOULD HAVE been like that.

IT TOOK ME AN HOUR TO COME ALL THE WAY OVER HERE!

With a simple ‘Mister, you still can’t donate blood’ made the one-hour trip nothing. As it turned out, in their system, the last time I had a dentist’s appointment was on 26^th of August, SUNDAY, which was the day I visited the bus, and it was just nonsense.

I was visibly upset and indignant all the way back home, and no, this time, there was no ice cream consolations this time.

NEXT WEEK IF I STILL DON’T HAVE MY BLOOD DONATED, I WILL

Keep trying until it was finally possible.

(I don’t know! There is nothing else I can do!)

End

This is the conclusion to the week’s letter. I am still not sure whether Ms. Lin will restart the whole newsletter thing, but the chances aren’t really high. It was a pity, true, but nothing will stop me from keeping on writing!

Yours truly,

Hugo