Tuesday 25 December 2012
Sunday 2 December 2012
Growing with the Cinnamon Tree
Have you ever seen an array of trees besides the school gate? When I go to school, I love to see the trees, especially the cinnamon tree. It was very small in the beginning, as told by my parents who witnessed the building of the school and the planting of the trees.
When I was in primary one, I was small too, not knowing much around me and going about everything self-centred. Once, I had a tasty lunch at school. Guess what? I was supposed to eat the lunch prepared by Mum, but my brother and I followed some classmates to the canteen and ate a free lunch. I remembered that we had two drumsticks and a cups of pudding. When I went home, I told Mum about the yummy lunch!
There was another laughable thing in primary one. One day in recess, I was joyless because I had two big cupcakes which would take me most of the recess to finish. Just then, my friend passed by and I gave him the bigger one. That was because there were almonds on the smaller one. He took the bigger one and I was happy again!
Promoted to grades three and four, I grew up a bit and was less self-centred. It was at that time when I became aware of the cinnamon tree. It was tall and upright, providing shades with other trees to cool us down once we entered into the campus.
I started to join different extra-curricular activities since my body and mind power became stronger. At grade three, I hiked in the ten kilometres long Little Trailwalker bushwalk held for our principal Mr Cheung who would be retiring soon then. At that time, I also joined the school string orchestra, the Olympic Maths class and the after-class athletics lesson.
But then, in teachers’ eyes, we were still small kids. Maybe for this reason, they gave us many rewards to encourage us. For example, my kind Chinese teacher Miss Wong gave us stickers if we performed well during lesson. She gave me a special sticker which was a pack of red and yellow shrimp chips.
There were two memorable events took place in primary four. The good one was that my brother and I joined the Yip Can Cook Class. We both liked cooking. In the first term, we could only join the easy paper cutting class which was rather boring. After that term, we joined our favourite inter-class activity, Yip Can Cook which we longed to join. Mr Yip taught us how to cook easy and yummy food in English. I recall that he once taught us how to cook curry fish balls and meatballs and spaghetti in the canteen.
However, the bad one was that I got my glasses for the first time. Those months, I could not see clearly when having lessons at school, especially the words projected on the screen by the projector. My glasses had a pair of shiny silver frames made of metal that almost shaped like rectangles. Its plastic sides were dark blue. I chose it by myself and my favourite colours are blue and silver. I felt quite dizzy when wearing the glasses on the first day. But I could see the cinnamon tree more clearly.
Primary five was a very exciting year. First, my brother and I were no longer in the same class because my brother, who is hard of hearing, could manage himself in primary five. Second, my school had renewed the facilities. At the assembly on the first day of school, Principal Ms Ho said, “Good morning! Have you students noticed there are air-cons in the covered playground!? There are also some plastic curtains and blue soft lining. most exciting is that the library has transformed into a ‘space station'! Have your first school day great!’
Probably because we had grown bigger, our class teacher Miss Wong treated us like bigger boys and girls too and she liked to joke with us. Sometimes she called some students in a funny way like Little Car and King of Leaving the Seat. Certainly, I had happy moments in primary five.
Now I am a primary six student. I am much bigger and taller. It is like the cinnamon tree which grows bigger day by day. I will leave the school soon but the cinnamon tree will still stay in the school to provide shades for students for many, many years.