A special year

A special year
The year of 2010 has passed and it is time to make a quick review of 2010.
The year of 2010 for me is not an ordinary year. At the beginning of that year, I was busy studying and preparing for the college entrance examination, one of the most important examinations in every Chinese student’s life. I really hoped that I could get a good grade so that I would be admitted to a good college and pay back to my parents, my teachers and others who paid attention to me. However, I did not do well in the examination and got a low mark. Maybe it was not too law, but at least did not make me satisfied. Because of the score I got, I entered Ji Lin University, Car Engineering, which is one of the best major in Ji Lin University and also in China, but I still felt disappointed at the endings. I did spend a few days to adjust myself until I got used to the life in Ji Lin University.
When I was in the university in China, I became the monitor of our class. Everything went smoothly, not only my study, but also my relationship with my classmates and teachers, because in our major, the graduate students, especially the monitor, usually have no pressure to find a good job. The future for me seemed so bright. However, things changed as I took part in the examination for the program of SM3 and I successfully got the chance to go to Singapore, to go to a new university with higher quality. More importantly, I got a chance to go abroad. It was a great honor for me and my family. Later, after a few days’ preparation, I said goodbye to my families and flew to Singapore, at the end of 2010.
Now, my new life has already begun. Although sometimes I feel homesick, I am sure I can overcome such kind of difficulties. I will fight to earn me a brighter future and a better life for my families.

After I Left My Homeland

As I was native in China, I never got the chance to feel the way I feel now in Singapore. Actually, I am a foreigner, and the Spring Festival becomes a link between Chinese and Singaporeans to show the respect for multicultural customs.
Things are just changed in a flash while I even do not get time to adapt in. However, maybe it was exactly the moment when I reached the deep into my heart and surprisingly got to know how much I missed my homeland.
Never had I felt strongly connected with Chinese in Singapore before I came here even though we might never see each other before. I still remembered the exciting feeling when I heard the dialogue of Wuhan where I was born and grew up. I still appreciated the moment spent with my family. I still dreamt of my grandmother, and just could wish that the god would always bless her! Finally, I did deeply understand how much courage people who truly loved me had to take to let me go and sent my wings to help me fly in trade with the time spent together. No one like you will sacrifice so much just to support me, my dear mom.
After I left China, everything just came clear in its own way.
Then one of my favorite sayings occurs to me,’ No one indebted for others, while many people do not know how to cherish others.’ I think maybe I know the adequate way to show my concerns for them now.
I do not know whether it is exactly what people call ‘growth’ for or not. But I am sure it is the process of learning to love and to be loved.

What holds back our dream?

One Sunday morning, one of my roommates and I went jogging with our seniors. When we were running, it started to rain, so we ran in the rain for about half an hour, and when we got back, we were almost all wet through. So other roommates showed empathy to us. ‘It is too terrible! It is raining!’ I also felt that it might be not worth it, so I started to complain about it too. Finally, it turned out that I did not feel like joining them anymore. However, I really wanted to take some exercise at the beginning, and maybe also now. So should I go jogging next Sunday? Or should I listen to my roommates and give up?

What holds back our dreams? It is not what others have said, but ourselves. It is our own decesion that holds our dreams back. We are so easy to change our minds that we cannot realise our dream or even start our dream.

Let’s think about it deeper. Imagine you dream of climbing the highest mountain in the world. Of course, there will be a lot of people around you suggesting you to give up. ‘It is too high to climb! You will die there! Get it out of your mind!’ What is the possiblility that you can insist on your dream? How many people just give up after hearing this? Maybe only one out of one hundred can insist on and finally realise their dream. Others are all held back and do not even have a try.

Maybe sometimes we need a kind of pressure, to force us to do something. Then we have no excuse to escape and what others say can no longer change your mind. You could just say ‘I have no choice, I just have to do it.’ Well, maybe next time, I will just tell my roommates ‘I have no choices. They invited me, so I have to go.’,and join them willingly just as before.

Spring Festival

Since most of the citizens/residents in Singapore are with ethnic group of Chinese, the Chinese New Year becomes a public festival in Singapore. Today is the day before the Chinese New Year, so people leave their work very early and go home to prepare themselves for the coming festival. As a result, our lessons today ended very early, at about three o'clock. Then we made our way to Raffles Hall, where we were going to celebrate the festival there with our senior colleagues. Our plan was very simple, just making dumplings and watching the performance arranged for the Spring Festival on CCTV. So after the dinner arranged by our seniors, we began making dumplings. For me it was the first time to make dumplings without my parents helping me, so I was not very confident. I even thought the dumplings might end up in a mess in the pot. But thanks to our experienced seniors, we were able to eat the dumplings made by ourselves, and they were very tasteful. During the process of making and eating dumplings, we also watched the performance. But the performance was not very satisfying. We watched it through the internet and in consequence, it didn't go smoothly and was not clear enough.

Although we had some activities for the festival, I couldn't feel the atmosphere as that I felt when I was in China. Above all, the way Spring Festival is celebrated in Singapore is different from the one in China. So it was reasonable that I couldn't feel the atmosphere.

But I was still very happy because we were going to have a four-day holiday.

A trip filled with warmth

Last Saturday, one of my Singapore friends took me to her church which is located in her old middle school. That afternoon, I got a very close to the daily life of the Singapore citizens here and had learned a lot about its culture.
There happened to be a group of Taiwan local residents visiting the church. They were all wearing their traditional ethnic costumes and the clothes seemed quite different from the modern ones at this age. We fully appreciated the teenagers’ chorus together with the locals. The pure voice sounded from the Heaven. After the performance, we got some break time to help ourselves with some snacks and dessert. Then it came to the interesting games. During that period, we got the chance to acquaint ourselves with the others. To our surprise, we met quite a number of Chinese. Some were SM1 scholar students, others were workers and doctors. We chatted and as if felt the warm from home. My friend also introduced the neighborhood for me. They were all kind and easy-going. One aunty even invited me to her house for dinner during the spring festival. She was so hospitable that I could not refuse. That evening I ate dumplings for the first time after arrival here.
Truly that I’m now far away from my own family, but I know I’m always in a much bigger family named Chinese.

After Chinese New Year…

This is my first Chinese New Year I have abroad without families beside me, but I spend several wonderful days with my friends. This journey becomes a forever memory of happiness and warm for me.

On 30^th of the last month in Chinese lunar calendar, we still had our classes in COM1, which depressed some of us quite a lot. However, the celebration that afternoon gave all of us great joy. We were blessed to have Chinese traditional food such as jiaozi and delicious sushi for lunch in classroom. Besides, our monitors prepared some interaction games for us. In one impressive game, we should play in two people, one of them is to describe the Chinese idiom printed on the screen in English and the other ought to guess the idiom. I found I was good at Chinese idioms as I got 8 correctly in 3 minutes, the most in my group. After two games, we finished in a song ‘We are the world’ with our dear tutor Ms Christine.

I was honored to be invited to my host family on Feb 2^nd, the Chinese New Year Eve. They showed great hospitalities to supply a substantial meal including some special local dishes. Though theses local food tasted a little bit strange to me, I still felt excited at the great chance to taste it. There were quite a few people in their family with one daughter in Britain, one son studying in Australia but serving the army now, and another daughter studying in secondary school. We chatted a lot happily and I learned much about Singapore and the world as well as China.

After the lovely dinner, I went back to NUS where I celebrated the Chinese New Year with my classmates. We enjoyed the Chinese New Year gala together and chatted freely with our family members and friends online. I was very grateful that our seniors prepared large quantities of snacks so that we could stick to midnight without hunger. By chatting with the seniors, I also learned more about university life which we would experience after the bridging course. It will be an unforgettable memory because it was the first time I waited for the new year to come with my friends abroad since I was born

I was so happy that our befrienders didn’t forget us as one of them invited the whole group to his home on Saturday. Though he was in Serangoon, far away from our Eton Hall in Queen’s Town, we were excited and headed there in the morning. Apart from chatting and eating, we played several interactive games. The most interesting one for me is a kind of card game called ‘saboteur’, in which there are two kinds of roles, miners and saboteurs. Miners should try hard to find the gold mine while saboteurs ought to block miners’ ways to the gold mine. Players don’t know everyone’s role except himself, so we need to pay attention to each person’s actions and guess it. We were absorbed in the game, enjoying the smiles on everyone’s face. At the end, we were so happy that someone even suggested playing ‘Sanguosha’, a more complex but interesting card game, together next time.

These happy days drives away my desperate miss of my homeland and make me feel more excited and warmer inside. The series of experiences will never fade out…

06/02/2011

Before Chinese New Year…

The Chinese New Year is coming. I can’t help missing my homeland much more desperately. The pictures of my life in the past precious time in China are flowing over me continuously. I would like to show my best wishes to my dear parents, respectable teachers and lovely friends as well as anyone I loved and everyone who loved me.

I recall frequently that before the college entrance examination, my dear parents took care of me considerately all the 365 days a year. As soon as I reached home, delicious food is well served on the table. Every moment I got stuck in my study, they are standing by, ready to do anything to help me. However late I went on with my homework at night, my mother would accompany me and assistant me with my study regardless of the great tiredness until I went to bed. Any time I got confused with what I should do and what is the right choice of the following life, my father was always behind me and lightened the way clearly. They helped me a lot.

It can’t be forgotten that my head teacher, Ms Chen, spent her precious time talking with us in class to encourage us heading for our target steadily. It seems just happened that my math teacher, Mr. Zhao, required us strictly with our work and took his humorous lessons to catch our attention so that we could learn more efficiently. It is the same with my Chinese teacher, Mr. Xu, who shared fantastic lives during classes with us and my English teacher, Ms Liu, who spared no efforts to help us enhance our abilities of using English.

I still remember my full commitment in hard study with classmates, the deep conversations and great enjoyment with my wholehearted friends. I was lucky enough to have Chen luyang, a top boy in my class, go along with me all the way in the whole senior high and share valuable experience with me. Wish him success on his way in Fudan University. It is also a great blessedness that I came across Zhou Xinyi, a top girl in my senior 1 class, who inspired me constantly from the first day we met to that big exam, though we were not in the same class after school rearranged classes for our senior 2 courses. Besides, Peng Yihe, an active guy who went into my life after the rearrangement, also give me too much during the two years when we had our sincere conversations about the world, the life, and anything else. There are so many impressive friends that I can hardly talk about them one by one…

The Chinese New Year strengthens my miss of China and these important people in my life. I promise to cherish the memory forever and I want to deliver my best wishes to them; wish all health, happy and success. At the end, I would like to wish all the Singaporeans best as well to express my appreciation to be cared well by them. Happy New Year!

31/01/2011