My Special Place
201302361 Sangjee Lee
When I look out the window from my apartment I see the street lights, rows and rows of cars and just bunch of apartments. I can't find anything green and it makes the whole scene almost lifeless. Then I remember where I used to live when I was little. There was three paths that leads out from the front yard of my house. I used to walk through the first path to go to the elementary school. It leads out to the most crowded parts of the town. Second path was the path I loved the most. There was this small rusty door at the entrance of the second path and when you open it, patches of rice paddy spreads out in front of you. Also our neighbor grew a lots of corns along the side of the door. It was a perfect place to play hide and sick. My sister and I always found somethings that interest us on these three paths in front of the house.
When spring comes, my grandmother used to take us when she go out to pick some shepherd's purse which is called Naeng-I in Korea. When you walk through the first path, you can find tons of fresh green herbs alongside the path. The small hillock alongside the path is covered with a hint of green in the spring. The earth was still hard and cold but amazingly small green herbs with fresh smell peaked out from the ground. If you saw hint of green at the beginning of month, you'll see the hillock covered in green after few weeks. I remember three of us at the small hillock with the bag full of herbs. The earth is cold but if you peck it with a hoe to dig out herbs, it broke easily. It felt so soft and cool grabbing the soil with bare hands. The Naeng-I smelled so fresh and unique that you can pick a smell even from far away. When we came back with the bagful of Naeng-I, grandmother brew some stew with it and we had a wonderful dinner together.
Summer was a great time to catch tadpoles and frogs. When summer begins, my sister and I used to visit rice paddy every day to check if there are tadpoles yet. After the rice planting, we could see lots of tadpole hiding between the rice patches. As soon as we see it, we used to go inside the house to find something that we can catch tad pole with. We scooped a water that had little tiny black tadpole. We put all the tadpoles we caught inside the huge bucket with the water from rice paddy. The strange thing was that tadpoles started to disappear after few days. The mystery was solved after I spent almost every second in front of that bucket. I noticed that they starts to grow legs and when they do, they starts to climb up the bucket to escape. When they make it to the ground, they don't have any strength to go to the water so they die. After seeing one tad pole dead on the ground with only back legs, my sister and I never caught a tadpole again.
Fall had the most beautiful scene. There was two ginkgo trees, one maple tree and one persimmon tree around my house. Before you know it, the leaves of the tree turned from fresh green to beautiful yellow and red. The ginkgo tree smelled a little bit stinky from all the fallen fruits but when the color yellow paints the whole town, the smell really didn't matter. The rice paddy also turns into golden brown in fall. The rice stalks are bent with grain and the golden waves of rice crop danced along the fall breeze. The ripe fruit of persimmon tree turns into red-yellowish color. The color was beautiful but the sweet juicy taste of the fruit was even better.
When winter comes, every inch of tree and plant covered with white frosty snow. It was a perfect time to skate on the rice paddy. As whether gets colder, water in the rice paddy starts to froze. At the beginning of the month, it is little bit dangerous to skate there since you don' know whether the water froze to the center. So my friends and I always waited till the end of December to go skate on the rice paddy. The frozen water had a geometric pattern all over it which was quite fascinating. We spent hours on the rice paddy or had a snow ball fight in the front yard.
After I turned 13, I moved to another town. I haven't visited my old house since the day I moved. Almost ten years had passed, but I couldn't make myself go there because I am afraid that all the things I remember would be gone. That place was a huge part of my childhood memory. If I see the place all changed with things I remember don't exist anymore, it would break the happy memory of my childhood.
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ReplyDelete-Improved final draft of CH4
ReplyDeleteRemembering four seasons
201302361 Sangjee Lee
When I look out the window from my apartment I see the street lights, rows and rows of cars and bunch of apartments. I can’t find anything green which makes the whole scenery almost lifeless. Then I remember where I used to live when I was little: the place where I enjoyed each beautiful seasons. There was three paths that leads out from the front yard of my house. I used to walk through the first path to go to the elementary school. It leads out to the most crowded parts of the town. Second path was the path I loved the most. There was this small rusty door at the entrance of the second path and when you open it, patches of rice paddy spreads out in front of you. Also our neighbor grew a lots of corns along the side of the door. It was a perfect place to play hide and sick. My sister and I always found somethings that interest us on these three paths in front of the house.
When spring comes, my grandmother used to take us when she go out to pick some shepherd's purse which is called Naeng-I in Korea. When you walk through the first path, you can find tons of fresh green herbs alongside the path. The small hillock alongside the path was covered with a hint of green in the spring. The earth was still hard and cold but amazingly small green herbs with fresh smell peaked out from the ground. If you saw hint of green at the beginning of the month, you’ll see the hillock covered in green after few weeks. I remember three of us at the small hillock with the bag full of herbs. The earth was cold but if you peck it with a hoe to dig out the herbs, it broke easily. It felt so soft and cool grabbing the soil with bare hands. The Naeng-I smelled so fresh and unique that you can smell it even from far away. When we came back with the bagful of Naeng-I, grandmother brew some stew with it and we had a wonderful dinner together.
Summer was a great time to catch tadpoles and frogs. When summer begins, my sister and I used to visit rice paddy every day to check if there are tadpoles yet. After the rice planting, we could see lots of tadpole hiding between the rice patches. As soon as we see it, we used to go inside the house to find something that we can catch tad poles with. We scooped a water that had little tiny black tadpole. We put all the tadpoles we caught inside the huge bucket with the water from rice paddy. The strange thing was that tadpoles started to disappear after few days. The mystery was solved after I spent almost every second in front of that bucket. I noticed that they started to grow legs and when they do, they starts to climb up the bucket to escape. When they make it to the ground, they don’t have any strength to go to the water so they die. After seeing one tad pole dead on the ground with only back legs, my sister and I never caught tadpoles again.
(I couldn't upload the writing in single post because of the word limit)
ReplyDeleteFall had the most beautiful scene. There was two ginkgo trees, one maple tree and one persimmon tree around my house. Before you know it, the leaves of the tree turned from fresh green to beautiful yellow and red. The ginkgo tree smelled a little bit stinky from all the fallen fruits but when the color yellow paints the whole town, the smell really didn’t matter. The rice paddy also turns into golden brown in fall. The rice stalks are bent with grain and the golden waves of rice crop danced along the fall breeze. The ripe fruit of persimmon tree turned into red-yellowish color. The color was beautiful but the sweet juicy taste of the fruit was even better.
When winter comes, every inch of tree and plant was covered with white frosty snow. It was a perfect time to skate on the rice paddy. As whether gets colder, water in the rice paddy starts to freeze. At the beginning of the month, it is little bit dangerous to skate there since you don’ know whether the water froze to the center. So my friends and I always waited till the end of December to go skate on the rice paddy. The frozen water had a geometric pattern all over it which was quite fascinating. We spent hours on the rice paddy or had a snow ball fight in the front yard.
After I turned 13, I moved to other town. I haven’t visited my old house since the day I moved. Almost ten years had passed, but I couldn’t make myself go there because I am afraid that all the things I remember would be gone. That place was a huge part of my childhood memory. If I see the place all changed with things I remember don’t exist anymore, it would break the happy memory of my childhood.