Category: Current thoughts

I love my family.

My winter holiday was an exciting trip. I went back to my home country, Japan. I met my grandparents and my cousins that I haven’t met for 2 years. I had the chance to catch up with them. There were so many things for me to do every day. But my favorite thing was spending time with my family.

Going to Japan reminded me of my Japanese culture. On New Year’s Eve, I ate Toshikoshi soba, the long noodles wish for us to live long. On New Year’s Day, I ate Osechi which is a special big bento box, and this bento is to give the traditional housewives a rest for the first 3 days of the new year. Every food in the bento has a special meaning. On New Years Day, we go to a local shrine to greet the gods.

We also went snowboarding. I had snowboarded once, 2 years ago so I didn’t remember how to get on and slide. On the first day, I could barely balance on the board. I struggled to get on the lift and fell off every time the lift ended. On the second day, I had lessons. My teacher was very friendly and we had lots of fun conversations together. After my first day of classes, I had improved so much. I could go straight and could do curves, but fell sometimes. I could get on and off the lift without falling. I was so proud of myself. On the second day, I was able to go down one of the hard routes with my older brother. I could do curves without falling. On the final day, I snowboarded down slopes with my parents and I had the best time ever.

I went back to Tokyo, and met my grandparents and cousins on my mother’s side. That was also very fun. We extended our stay since we had many more things that we have to do in Japan. My older brother went back to America. It was a fantastic winter break.

January 11th, 2021

Since 2020 was such a crazy year I decided to summarize it.

First of all this is a world-wide problem and it has affected everyone on the planet. Even though there is a vaccine for the coronavirus but I don’t think that the corona virus will fully go away because many people in the world won’t be able to afford the vaccine. The most affected countries from the pandemic are The United States, India, Brazil and Europe. Since the UK has gotten a new virus this will be harder to recover from. I really hope that the vaccine can reach all around the world so that people can get free from this terrible pandemic.

Talking about countries this brings me to the country that I stay at, Singapore. In Singapore lockdown started in April and the goverment said all of the restaurants would have to be closed for a month but soon we found out that it would be way more than a month. We couldn’t go outside other than shopping and exercise so we were all just stuck at our houses most of the time. All students started online school and online school actually wasn’t hard but it was boring because we couldn’t hang out with our friends or talk with them during classes. But now we have finished lockdown and we can all go outside of the house but we still have to wear masks and we have to scan a QR code whenever we go inside a shop or place for contract tracing. The coronavirus was not really spreading at the community level but most of the cases are from the worker’s dormitories and imported cases. Overall the situation in Singapore is thanksfully well managed and there are no new infections in the community at this point.

My family during the coronavirus wasn’t actually that bad, we as a family we did more things together like for example we played a little bit of badminton, biking, working out and running. One thing that was good about lockdown is that I got to spend more time with my parents. We also learned how to wakesurf but that was after lockdown. During lockdown everything was online so sometimes I had to take a break from screens because I kept getting headaches and I didn’t really enjoy online school either just in general I thought that normal school was better because we got to interact with students as well as teachers. When school went back to normal I enjoyed it way better and I was very happy and joyful. Our whole family was safe during the pandemic and luckily none of our family members have caught the coronavirus. We also moved into a house which was really enjoyable. My whole family except for my older brother stayed in Singapore and we missed our grandparents and cousins a lot. The worst thing about the pandemic to me is that we can’t go visit our family members and we can’t travel that was a very sad thing to me because I love traveling.

2020 was not the best year for the world but my 2020 wasn’t actually that bad, and I hope that 2021 can make the world and everyone more happy.

There is a school that I really want to go to, it is the school that my older brother goes to, I think the school is incredibly unique. The reason I love the school is that it isn’t a normal high school, it has horses to teach the students new things and not horses for activities but the first year you have to learn how to ride a horse and that interested me to the school. The teachers there are like family, you could see your English teacher in the classroom and on your hiking trip! Another thing that inspired me to want to go to this school is that my brother said that the school is his second home, and his friends are like his second siblings and I really like the idea of that.

I joined an online meeting with my parents and the director of the school, I always get inspired by his presentations, he talked about how the students live in the school, he talked a little bit about the horses and even my brother joined! After listening to the presentation I wanted to go to school more than ever, I just wanted to be there with horses and my new friends. I was so excited! Then it was Q&A time, I felt nervous but I wanted to know the answers to my 3 questions so I raised my hand and I asked my questions, he answered them really kindly and I understood it very well. After the meeting, I am really thankful for this occasion and I am looking forward to seeing the school again!