Wind chimes slowly emerge from my 手机，my phone. It’s time to wake up. The alarm has an energy contagious for me to feel like I’m recharged enough to be turned on. I get up to wash my face and start the day.
As if under a sorcerer’s spell, I feel lifted into the morning routine’s autopilot mode, going to the market outside the gates of my dorm to buy 1.5 liters of water. I see chocolates – instead I’ll get salad, for me, or feel nice so I’ll buy coffee for a friend.
Studying for hours and hours to catch up to my classmates and maintain the intensive pace and strenuous Chinese lessons, studies, or homeworks knotting my head, I walk in what feels like slow motion, as if a cowboy coming to draw his pistol for a duel. It takes 15 minutes to walk to school, finally sitting down and resting. I’m not tired from the walk, but exhausted from the possible six hours of sleep I earned. I couldn’t allow myself to sleep until I imagined an A+, or maybe even an A++ in red ink on my paper for being perfect on today’s dictation.
陈老师，Ms. Chen, doesn’t wait a minute to start class, “上课” she says. The 8:30 a.m bell ritualistically sings its hymn. After she says my Chinese name, “齐德开” She tells our 班长 (class leader), to hand out the printed half-sized papers to us. I studied four hours last night for this, memorizing the characters and writing them out, ten times each. Before I slept, I studied for my next class, reading and writing. They would have a quiz after lunch.
I ask Ms. Chen to repeat herself; she spoke quick and I only wrote half of the pinyin. In the tiny little break before hearing her repeat herself, I rush to write the characters out. After all seven sentences, I go past the allotted time, I’m the last to hand in my seven lines of pinyin and characters. I remembered everything but, anxious, I study in class until, during the ten-minute break, I ask her to review my hard work. She looks it over, but squints at a tiny mistake. Only an A+ today. I feel instantly defeated, as if I wasted time during those hours I could have slept.
Once it’s lunch, 11:20 a.m, I get over my mistake and head over to the canteen, seven minutes away, eat some spicy sliced noodles with friends, and hurry back to class by the time it’s 12:10 p.m (at the latest). I’m nervous to be perfect for this next quiz, but when I arrive home after the school day is over (3:50 p.m), I look at the PDF from 微信 (Wechat); the message says 13/13. My first blue high light from a perfect quiz. I’m content.
I can’t go to the gym until the weekend. I’m too tired, so I study and read in my dorm until 5:30 p.m for dinner at the canteen. I hurry my kimchi soup down to my stomach and head back to class to study. Full and tired, I ignore these weights and finish my pages of homework.
It’s 8:00 p.m now, so I’ll study for what’s on the quiz tomorrow. I write the sentence’s characters, the pinyin next, and their definitions in English last. Every character I don’t know must be written at least ten times, a rule enforced by me. If I write the sentence and forgot the character, I write it again, ten times. I stress this excercise to 练习, practice. I hope tomorrow won’t let me down again.
It’s 10:00 p.m when I’m in my dorm finally and I rest for a while. I deserve to rest. At 11:00 p.m, I say enough to leisure. I wash my face off, brush my teeth, and do whatever else is necessary to sleep, before continuing to study until my demise. 我想睡觉。Today I sleep at 2:37 a.m.
Of course, I don’t have every day like this. Sometimes I study for another class, as I have three teachers to do homework and studies for. They’re all unique; comprehension, reading and writing, and my most difficult class to understand, hearing and listening. I love and study the most for comprehension.
When it’s Friday, I pray I’m not too tired to forget all my dictation I studied for. At 1:00 p.m, lunch is over and I have a weekly test. I dread Friday. I’m only freed until after the final sentence is written on the 100-question test.
Saturdays, I rest for what feels like forever, but, in reality, the day is over in a snap. Sundays are the worst because Monday is next. I’ve finished studying over the weekend.
Then the wind chimes whisper to me, “It’s time to wake up”.
Sentences from October.
One response to “My Daily life”
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