Year Three, Almost Free 18: Occupied and Busy

Hello, Tim!
The ever-dreadful GSAT has crept considerably nearer with its pitter-pattering feet, and not even the pending new year will be able to fend it off!
Look, here comes four consecutive days of holiday! Too bad it will all be spent on studying. Four days later, right after or breaks are over, our semester finals will be here, and shortly afterwards, it's the GSAT.
This is going to be surprising, but this might have to be the end for this week.
My bad.

Year Three, Almost Free 17: Merry Christmas and a Hot Pot

Hello, Tim!
With the countdown for the GSAT reaching thirty-four days, we have only less than five weeks to prepare.
Before that, however, comes Christmas.
(This will be yet another short letter.)

Third Christmas with EHP

Let's stroll a little down memory lane. The first year we entered EHP, we were asked to hold a Christmas party for us and the seniors from both the in the second year and the third. The year after that, Patrick came to school in his own Santa costume, and we had a present exchange, in which Amy gave me a book I really wanted, and Angela helped me pick out a purple purse for Candy. This year was almost going to be lacking any sort of celebration. We didn't even have the spare time for buying presents this time!
One day, by the Christmas tree and under the glowing lights, an idea came to us.
"Christmas is coming, and so is the winter solstice... let's have a hot pot party." One said. Maybe it was meant to be a half-hearted idea, so it was strictly forbidden to have a fire lit up in the classroom and is also against the rules to have any other sort of heating device. Nevertheless, the idea caught on before long. I guess we were all desperate for something to do to make this Christmas special, and the fire in our heart kindled excitedly but gently.
It was winter solstice. A very sunny, beaming, hot winter solstice.
In an eccentric efficiency for is, we all had brought what we were supposed to prepare. A hot pot in the making has never been hard. All there is to do is turn on the fire and put all ingredients into the pot. The difficult part about cooking in the classroom when it was illegal in school is to hide the portable gas stove and the pot together. (Well, o forgot to mention that we still asked for Ms. Summer's permission, who simply told us to be careful and have fun. She is a cool teacher, isn't she?) There are no curtains to block the pot from the view of the outsiders, so whenever a teacher walls past our classroom, we would make a wall out of ourselves circling the pot to cover it lest it be seen.
This winter solstice is hot, but it wasn't the reason our hearts were warm.

Merry Christmas, Tim!

Sincerely,
Hugo

Year Three, Almost Free 16: Christmas and Mock Tests Pending

Hello, Tim!

What's my status?
Still alive, still struggling.
In two days, we will have our second mock test, and just a little more than a month, we will hopefully be able to extricate ourselves from the burden.

Pending Christmas

There is really nothing Christmas-y about burying our heads in books.
With our heads filled with maps and Chinese articles, formulae to solve equations and years when different wars took place, I say we still managed to put our hearts in classroom decorations.
In the storage unit of a school that is not normally accessible, we fished out a forgotten Christmas tree. Like kids who were just about to celebrate their first Christmas, we bounced through the corridors all the way back to our classroom, barely registering the fact that there were people watching us with judging eyes. For the third consecutive year, we hung the led lights in the classroom. This time, we were blatant. We hung it on the frame of our blackboard, and it was blinking and shining all day long, and no one complained! Angela wrapped some tinsels around the chalks, one of which pricked our math teacher on the thumb.
I brought a chocolate advent calendar given by my cousin, and every day, we would take turns open one little door on the calendar, counting down the days until Christmas comes to us.
This Christmas is bound to be the least festive in the three years of high school life, with the test pressure that has been interfering with our free time to an extent that we all became accustomed to the perturbance. But I dare say our classroom is the most festive in the whole school. This is the last year we will be doing this as a family of over a dozen people, and we do not want to miss out on it because we have a test to deal with.

Yeah, we also spent time decorating William.

Christmas Presents

It is unrealistic to prepare presents for everyone in the class, but I have one prepared for Candy. One day, we were taking the MRT together, which was a rare occasion, with me living just forty minutes of walking from school. Several changes of topics later, and we somehow touched the conversation about books. She told me that she loved the story of Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, and that she cherished the book with her heart, but after a small accident, her book was ripped apart. She didn't get a replacement of it afterward, so I figured this Christmas is a good time to do so. I got her an English copy of Little Women, even when the one she lost was translated into Chinese.
Hope that she will like my gift.

Christmas Music

Being such a globally popular festival, the music industry would not lose grasp of the chance to produce some modern Christmas music.
Music has been an endearing friend when I am studying. The block out the hustling of the world and replace it with rhythms that I am familiar with. These days, a lot of my chosen songs have been Christmas themed. No matter if it is some classics like Last Christmas or even Twelve Days of Christmas or some more modern ones like Meghan Trainor's I'll be Home or Owl City's Kiss Me Babe, It's Christmas Time, I welcome them all.
Just a week or two ago, I came across some more of them, like Michael Bublé's rendition of Santa Baby and Sia's Snowman along with a dozen others; I couldn't be happier than to expand my storage of Christmas songs.

Musing and End

Of course, I am running out of time again. One last thing.
One day, I was on the bus heading home with Allison, and I said to her with a tone quite forlorn, "I really do wish to be in an old tavern or cafe that has nothing but decorations that scream Christmas." She was nonplussed.
"Save those sentiments for later. You'll have plenty of Christmas to be cheerful about when you're abroad. Enjoy the not-so-Christmas when you can."
Her tone was cool and neutral, and she did make sense. I don't think about it that often, but there is absolutely no doubt that I would be missing home like crazy when nostalgia hit.
This is all for this week.

Second blood donation!

With Mom.

Sincerely,
Hugo

Year Three, Almost Free 15: Thanks for This Blog and a French Riot

Hello, Tim!
I’ve been falling more and more into the category of a stereotypical Taiwanese student (or in some cases, an Asian student) who, in accord with/against his will, will study whenever morsels of time are scattered around, scolding myself severely if I don’t. I would threaten myself with ominous future predictions, trying desperately to rein my mind in and buckle it onto my studies.
The temperatures have dropped two days ago, and even when the sun is present, it would still make you feel vulnerable from the nipping winds. It’s better; at least it’s feeling a lot more like winter.

What This Blog Has Given Me

Almost two years had fleeted by since I started with this blog, but it was only recently had I thought about all the benefits it, writing an update of my life on at least a weekly basis, has given me.
First of all, my entries are like weekly journals, for they alone can paint a general image of what my life in Taiwan is like. If I departed for a trip rather far from my house, that particular trip is very likely going to be on my blog. Having this kind of records is very convenient, for example, if you are one day suspected of a murder case that would require your alibi on the second Thursday of June, I wouldn’t have to think until my brain cracked and still unable to recall anything.
Just kidding. I, for one, believe that twenty-four hours a day is not enough for us to both live in the moment and trying to remember some details in your memory. Writing them down basically means that you are having a computer work for you and it will remember every word you feed it with no effort.
Keeping a blog also helps me with my writing, both on the English ones and the Chinese ones. When writing events like telling a story, I found myself more and more capable of arranging the paragraphs in a more fluid order; forming similes and metaphors has also become relatively easier. In the past, trying to put some abstract ideas on paper would require me squeezing my brain until all the fluids inside are forced out, but now it’s more like twisting open a water tap; some can be done with rapid succession, while some others would need more strength, meaning that there’s no more mission impossible.
I know half of the effects come from my profuse amount of reading, but I would like to credit the other half to my blog keeping.

French on Riot in Their ‘gilets jaunes’

In our school, especially in civics classes, we mention the current president Emmanuel Macron with an attitude that is either neutral or positive, like how he had joined hands with Merkel at a monument to commemorate a conflict in the past that pitted France and Germany against each other. Therefore, I believe we all have subconsciously registered that he should be adored by the French people.
Oh, wait.
Due to a recent project in our English writing courses, I went to the website of BBC news. It came as a surprise that the Europe section of the media was bombarded with numerous close-up following reports of an anti-government movement in France called the “gilets jaunes,” or “yellow vests.”
I read through several of the reports, including one that says that due to a recent damage of monument by some of the more extreme rioters, most of the tourist sites in Paris like the Eiffel Tower and the Musée d’Orsay will be closed for now.
This movement of angry citizens, according to the reports, had once reached a peak of over 280,000 protesters throughout the nation. Their discontent was clearly aimed at the French government and its president, Emanuel Macron. What had lit up the fuse of the people on the streets with their reflective yellow vests, however, was initially a rise in the diesel tax. This issue sparked another, and it went on and on, until people of all walks marched the streets, crying out their demands for the government to listen. The students wanted President Macron to abolish his plans to change the baccalaureate, a college entrance exam for them; people in poor living conditions wanted a new and friendlier tax system, etc.
It sure is very different in Taiwan. The people here are also constantly having problems with the government, but what we do more often, take my father as an instance, is to turn on the TV and switch to the political commentary program and listen to the people on the show raving about the incompetence of the government. There are occasional demonstrations that happen on streets, but never with such an impressive crowd. Note how even though the yellow vests protesters don’t have a central leadership, they still connected through social media and stood in unity. I know that setting off riots, burning cars, and destroying national treasures should not be praised with merits, but when you are practically several oceans away from the place, you would find it quite fascinating.
Luckily, it seems that the crowd has been temporarily appeased by the PM and his promise that the President would address the problems on the desk in the near future. I don't usually follow politics, but I think I would be interested in seeing what Mr Macron could do as to prevent another French Revolution.

End

I think writing about news also does a great deal of help on my writing. Maybe I should do it more often.

Year Three, Almost Free 14: Grandpa and a Busy Week

Hello, Tim.

This week is the first time I’m not really able to write a lot, for this week is my grandfather’s cremation and funeral, which took up a whole weekend.

Maybe I can put some highlights in bullet points and call it a day for this week’s letter?

• There are sixteen days left before our second and final mock test of GSAT, and less than two months before our actual GSAT.

• Christmas is coming! I got a chocolate advent calendar from my cousin and I plan to bring it to school to count down Christmas together.

• The cremation was relatively calm; my grandma, my aunt, and my mother teared up a bit when my grandpa’s body was brought out. A dozen of relatives came for the ceremony.

• A while later, his body was taken to a cremation center. I, the eldest of his grandsons, was in charge of holding the urn that contained his bones.

• Later, his bones will be taken up to a mountain where his urn will be placed in a building reserved for people who were in the army.

This is all I can manage for this week.

As for Christmas, I don’t think we can afford the luxury of the two previous years; the GSAT sits upon us, pressing into our backs like it was a stone with very sharp edges.

This is all for this week.

Sincerely,

Hugo