My Memory Before

My first memory in my whole life is when I was only three. That birthday my maternal grandma said I was one hundred centimeters tall. I was excited.

I remember when I was very small, sometimes I get a fever and my eye would behave strangely, notably when i see something it would be like one moment normal, another moment seeing it very big, sort of like zomming in and out without actually going there. I was lying on my bed quite still. I could still remember, lying on the bed and seeing the table across the room as big-small-big-small and so on until i close my eyes for some time and it went to normal. I told parents but they don't really care. then now i can't even do experience this! Growing up is like hand holding magical water that drains really fast, and by adulthood you look at your hands, and they are only faint, pleasant, dreamy smells of those that remain. You write it down on a piece of paper to keep a note, when even that faint smell drains off, you still know it existed before.

I looked at my childhood neighborhood on Open Street Map, and I be like "why is everything so small?" I thought the road was... long. A walk down the road, a turn into the right road, then down the road again and turning left again was a very long walk, there, I walked into activity center for children. I would spend half an afternoon there, then taking the long walk back home. There was a river down the street, and I thought there would be a river everywhere between blocks. I looked at an airplane in the sky. I started thinking that if I follow this airplane as I walk, never lose sight of it, and keep pushing through tiredness for 11 hours, I would be in New Zealand. It wasn't even moving fast and I just have to walk according to where it flies. Then I slept and dreamed about it and suddenly I was at the fence looking at the ocean, and I shouted "plane!" and I couldn't walk any further.

Then I remembered more and more things. I was in kindergarten. I could still picture the classroom and the games we played there. I performed somewhere and graduated. I had many memories in elementary school. I couldn't even write them all down on a single page of paper. I started first-grade and got homework; the bad final exam; the fast second term of first-grade; the summer I started learning extra math; the math competitions, when I drank a cup of hot soybean milk and got a prize; always finishing homework in school and practicing English at home(my mom made me do that); bad fourth-grade Chinese teachers; the change of schools; the boarding summer camp.

All kinds of little memories led me to fifth-grade, a more successive part of memory in my life, and unforgettable.

Foreword

The book is for my fifth-grade classmates and teachers, with sweet memories about my previous year.

Prologue

My name is Jim Chen. I live in Shanghai.

I was in fifth-grade. I changed to a new school.

This meant there were different students and teachers. I changed my school because my English was bad, and my previous school is bad at English teaching.

My new school is an International school. It is very good at English teaching.

A year full of suprise and happiness was about to began.

Smic School

The story started in the end of August, 2015. Many parts of it is nonfiction. It started when I was sitting in my mother's smelly car, which was driving steadily on LongDong Avenue. It always smelled bad. I opened the windows to let fresh air come in.

I was on my way to visit my new school teachers. I was in a public school but was about to change to a private school. I was a new student there. The school held a test for new students. I passed it and the principle said I can be here for fifth-grade.

Teachers in public schools are always grouchy with no clear reasons. They are always in a bad mood. I thought it is because their salaries are low.

Then the car stopped and I got out. There principle was going to give a lecture to us. I knew I was in Mr. Zhang's class in Chinese Track 5A. There were also two other new students in our class.

Later, I found out Mr.Zhang is a good teachers. I was very lucky to go to his class to have a magnificent year.

The first day to school was a good start. I took the school bus to school. The teacher who was in charge of it was so nice that she couldn't keep the noisy students quiet.

After we arrived in school, Mr. Zhang asked us for introductions. I hadn't prepared for it much, so I just said my name is Jim Chen and will be here for fifth-grade. That's all.

I found out the school is divided into Chinese track and English track. Chinese track is where Chinese student who passed the admission test go to. English Track is where foreigners go to.

After I know other student's name, I was very surprised to know there are six students with last name Chen, including me.

Smic School is very big. It included kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school. My favorite place is the cafeteria, where it serves delicious food, cause food is not good in public school, so I enjoyed them very much.

Because Smic School is a private school, which parents pay a lot of money every year, teachers are all very kind. They are patient and knowledgeable, especially music, art, and PE teachers.

I used to have very bad music teachers. They didn't care about how we learned. Some of them couldn't even sing themselves. They sometimes even made us sit still all class. How could teachers like that help me learn music well?

Music teachers are better here. They taught us flute. They didn't yell at students. Art and PE teachers are better too. Art teachers could drew almost everything, where in public school they used to only make us walk many times from our classroom to the school art lab and never teaches anything. That was horrible.

Activities

The second week was pretty interesting. We started the reading week.

That's when I started my reading career. I didn't lke reading at all. I could only read books with only four lines on a page. My parents made me do it, and I thought it was boring.

We borrowed books from the school library. The student who borrowed the largest number of books won.

Mr. Weng, our English teacher, led us to the library. We walked around the library. I practically wandered around, seeing so many books made me kind of scared. I was hoping to find a good book when I spotted Junie B. Jones Aloha-ha-ha on a shelf. I got interested by the title of this book, so I borrowed it and started to read.

When I started reading, I found out that this book is so funny. There were almost twenty lines on a page. I was so surprised and proud that I could read forty-five pages in one day, five times than before.

I learned that foreigners usually read this kind of books in first-grade. I read it in fifth-grade, but I still thought it was a little bit hard.

I also borrowed A to Z mysteries, Magic Tree House, and Ready Freddy. I finished one book from each series. I was so proud of myself.

I haven't won the reading prize, which were the top ten readers of our school. They are always reading too many books, and I thought they are better at English, at least better than me. But I was still very happy that I read so much and fell in love with reading immediately.

On the last day of the third week, the school held the Soccer Day. We were going to Shanghai America school. It was my first full day with soccer. I was excited.

We got inside a school bus. I waited for a long time and the bus finally arrived at the school. I ran onto the field happily.

My mom came with me. We were going to compete six times with six different classes in different schools.

I liked soccer very much. I went to many football camps almost every summer, but I was still not the best football player in our class.

I joined four matches. I was too tired to play the other two. I couldn't walk after participating in so many matches!

We won five times and only lost once. It was the last one and also because other players were all so tired. We were also a little arrogant and thought we were invincible.

I must admit I was not a football expert. I never kicked the ball into the net.

However, even if I haven't scored a goal, I still enjoyed the day very much. I have never had a whole day with soccer.

My Study Here

I was very good at math. I got a high score in the first math test.

The teacher seemed to be amazed, too.

There was only one other student in the class who is also as good as me in math, and we were the best two in our grade.

I wasn't good at English.

Mr. Weng taught us English. He is a nice guy.

Actually he teaches ELA (short for English Language Art). He teachres with a textbook titled "Reach".

I used to learn the textbook "Oxford English", which was so awful. Once I even read a story that was about the name of a week. It said that one day seven people named Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday had a meeting. So people used their name to name after the days of a week. That just didn't make any sense. I found out things like Monday is named after the moon and Tuesday is named after Tiu in a dictionary.

Mr. Weng gave us worksheets. I was not good at it first. But later, I adjusted to it.

I was an average student in Chinese.

Teachers were less strict. They graded our tests leniently.

I got eighty on the first test; I used to get only seventy or less. So I was really surprised and felt great.

After the mid-term exam, the math teacher changed, since our average math score is only about 70.

Other parents said this math teacher is really bad. So they changed the math teacher into a stern one.

The new math teacher was good at teaching, at least better than the first one.

She mostly talked about the handwriting, which I was bad at that time. She criticized me.

Our school had a big lunch one day. Every parent brought something to eat to school and we had a buffet.

The food was so delicious that my saliva was about to fell out.

The lunch in fourth-grade was so bad. They are disgusting. There was only rice every day, cause lunches in public schools are bad.

We can select food in Smic School. There were spaghetti every day, which was my favorite kind of food, sometimes even pizzas, french fries, and hamburgers.

My dream was to just eat these foods every day. My dream came true.

I ate so much chickes that my tummy was about to burst.

My mom brought dumplings. It was not as good as chickens, almost nobody liked it.

My mom had a talk with my new math teacher after lunch. They talked about math competitions and how I would not write my homework messy again.

My math practice book was so messy. Papers were about to fall off. I glued them up after I came home and wrote very slowly to make sure I did all the problems right. I made sure my practice book was neat.

The new math teacher's manner to me had changed since then.

The nest day in class I raised my hands very often. The math teacher asked my to explain the solution in front of the class.

I was very careful at math tests. Carelessness is a serious problem for me. I got ninety-eight on the first test. I was the first one to finish the test and also the highest score in my class.

The math teacher started to be nicer to me.

Final Exam

Time went by like a flash. October and November were gone like one hour or even less. Shanghai became colder, we started wearing coats. December came.

It was an important month because lots of things happened this month.

I started to like English books more and more. Nobody made me do it. I read by myself.

I skipeed the words I didn't know, which become less and less

By the end of November, I had only read less than twenty English books. In December, I read more than fifteen.

In December, I was the top ten readers in our school. I actually read two and a half Junie B. Jones books in one day. i couldn't believe it. I started reading a lot.

Christmas was also coming. In my previous school there was usually a Christmas party to celebrate Christmas. Many studnets performed, I played accordion every year.

In my new school, it became a party. We performed Jingle Bell Rock. We play flute in front of all the audience, which included principle, teachers, and students.

My. Weng gave us some Christmas Carols. I liked Angles We Have Heard on High, Twelve Days of Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer best. They were lovely songs.

We watched a movie about the Nativity story.

I also went to visit my previous school students, when our International school had one more day off. They were surprised to see me again.

Then Christmas ended and a new year started.

I made myself a reading sheet. I would write all the books I read on it. I was hoping I could read over fifty-two books this year, which is the same number as the weeks in a year.

The final exam started. I prepared very well. I did all the tests carefully, espeically math. I didn't have any problems in math. I studied math on extra classes on weekends. I finished math tests within thirty minutes. I didn't look around or do other things, I looked at my math test again and again.

I concentrated hard on the math test. I was almost sure I got a good score.

I got a good grade in English Language Arts.

I got eighty-eight in Chinese.

That's not all, most of all, I got 100 in math!

Teachers were proud of me.

The math teacher previously mad at me became very good to me. She sent me snacks. Mom and I also sent here a gift. She said I am a good student.

I had been here for only one term and started doing things well.

I smiled at myself.

My Math Competitions

My winter vacation was busy. I studied math very hard. I was preparing for some math competitions.

There were four math competitions. I can still remember two of them clearly.

In January 24th, I went to the first competition. It was a cold day in Shanghai, the coldest day in a year. Water pipes broke down, everyone wore coats when they come out and never forget opening the hot air conditioner at home.

I haven't finished the test when the time was almost up. But luckily, he teacher first got out testing papers. I still had my answer sheet. I used my memory to remember a problem and actually figured it out before the teacher got my answer sheets. I got the third prize. I realized I was only two points higher than the third prize score, that problem really helped me a lot.

Before I knew it, the winter vacation had ended. School started and everything went back to normal.

I went to the Olympic Math Competition. If someone passed the preliminary one, the second one, and the third one, the person will go to Singapore. I thought I couldn't go to Singapore even if i study an extra year.

I was in a good class in Xueersi, the extracurricular math training camp every weekend. I went to the second one directly.

In the second test, I got a second prize and was seventy-six in the rank of Shanghai! I used to get three hundred or even more. I passed the second test easily.

In the third test, I finished the problems pretty fast. I remembered to check whether I had written the answers on my answer sheet or not. I remembered last year when I was in fourth-grade and also participated in the same test when I forgot to write my answers on the answer sheet and the teacher started collecting our answer sheets so suddenly, and I hadn't written three of them, but they were all wrong answers.

Then time was up. I gave my answer sheet to the teacher confidently. I was sure I got a good score.

I waited for my score anxiously and curiously for a long time. I couldn't even sleep on the day the score was announced.

If I was the first twenty in Shanghai, I would go to Singapore, but that was a dream.

However, I was fourth-forth in the rank in Shanghai in the third test. Though I didn't get the opportunity to go to Singapore, I was joyful by getting such a good score!

Spelling Bee

I had read a lot of books this year.

After I finished Junie B. Jones series, I started reading Ready Freddy. It was not as good as Junie B. Jones. All the books were the same kind about how someone is first sad, persisted, and was then happy, or even just someone thought of a good idea or whatever. I felt tired reading almost the same books forever.

Magic Tree House is what I read this March. It is good because it was more realistic for people to believe. It was better than Magic School Bus, which I just finished a couple days ago. Magic School Bus was disorganized and looked like fantasy so much. In Magic Tree House, there might be only one or two magic tricks while in Magic School Bus there were many and people turn into germs or whatever. There were also things like doing a project being nearly dead.

Anyway, I felt spelling a lot easier than before.

One of my most important events this year was the spelling bee. Mr. Weng gave us a whole list of words. When I came home, I read all the words and recorded them all on my iPad. I then listened to it and wrote the words on a paper.

The first time I got three of them wrong, which was "obstacle", "perform", and "precipitation". I made a mistake on perform because I was not sure if e or r is first, I spelt it "preform". I circled the words and prepared for them.

On the day of our class spelling bee, Mr. Weng let us play a spelling game.

"Everyone stand up and I will call each of you to spell a word. If you spell it wrong then sit down, whoever is the last one standing wins."

Everyone stood up and Mr. Weng called each of us to spell the words he said. Many students sat down.

I spelled communication right on the last turn. I was the last one standing there.

Reading English books really helped on spelling. I could feel my English skills improve so fast.

Mr. Weng gave us a paper and we recited the words down, whoever recited the most correct can go to the school Spelling Bee.

Mr. Weng gave us fifty words. They were harder, but just a little bit. I used the previous way to recite them. I got a little bit wrong. I still remembered the list began with "education" and "immigration". It still sounded familiar to me.

Mr. Weng let us watch a video of American state spelling match. There were words so long that I could not remember. They were so difficult.

He then told us that they don't spell a letter wrong. There was a judge. If you spell some letters in a word wrong, then the whle word was wrong.

He told us about another thing, think before you spell. You couldn't cancel some letters in a word, so don't spell too fast and immediately realize that it was wrong, but also spell the word within fifteen seconds.

There were three students in each class to compete with other students. Our class competes with Chinese track fifth-grade and English track fourth-grade.

The day finally arrived. I expected it to arrive faster since the day I was announced to enter the school spelling bee. I was number fifty-four, the judge was the teacher that taught the class next to ours, I think he is stern because he ripped four students' testing papers when they talked in a test. He even said they cheated.

The spelling bee started in a very official way. Every member wore a card that has their numbers on it. We went to the auditorium and sat on the front rows. There were eight competitors, including me, from six different classes.

We went on the stage. We sat on eighty chairs. The judge started calling each of our numbers.

The student whose number is being called goes over to the microphone and spell aloud the words they were supposed to spell.

The audiences were all the Chinese track fifth-grade and English track fourth-grade students and teachers. I never did something in front of so many people. I was nearly scared to death.

When the judge calls fifty-four, I went over to the place scaredly. I almost fainted.

I was afraid that I might spell the word wrong, failing to live up to the expectation of my teachers and classmates.

Luckily, I spelled it right.

After many rounds there were still six of us, including me. Then the judge started to give us another list of words to make it harder.

Then my number was called and I walked up with a panic expression on my face. I could even feel my heart beat as fast as a speeding rocket.

The judge asked me to spell the word "especially", which is simple because I kind of have seen this word before. I remembered it.

So I spelled it right.

Well, the new list isn't as hard as I thought, you know, just spell it according to the judge's pronunciation.

Three students failed in the first round of the new list of words.

But wait.

Then my number was called again.

"Fifty-four."

I walked up again, this time more relaxed.

"Specialization."

What the heck is that? I haven't seen this word before, not in the books I read, not anywhere.

I saw the face of Mr. Weng, which was kind of hard to describe.

Think more, I thought to myself, maybe you can do it.

I could divide the word into two parts, one is special, the other part is "lization". I had seen "globalization" or "desertification". I said them one time in Mr. Weng's class when he asked us to say words ending with "tion", and Mr. Weng was impressed.

So, back to the spelling competition. We were at the significant round to find out who is the champion. The first part of the word is "special", the second part "lizaion", I put the two parts together and formed "speciallization". I kind of spit the word out, but then paused.

Wait, is there anything wrong with "speciallization"?

I realized maybe it will be better with "specialization".

Then I spelled "specialization" aloud.

I was not sure if it is right, but I didn't give up.

Anyway, i just said the word.

After the judge said "correct", I relaxed.

Mr. Weng smiled at me. I saw that clearly.

The other two competitors both speed wrong.

I could not believe in a million years that I was the champion!

I was so terrific.

Two weeks later, I got a Collins dictionary and a "Compact" dictionary. Most of all, I got a trophy.

Life is better than I thought, it simply is.

Other Unforgettable Memories

After Spelling Bee, next came my birthday.

I used to invite a lot of my friends to come and have a big cake on my old birthdays. My last one was horrible, when I accidentally invited a boy and he brought a gaming engine and started playing computer games crazily. I hated it and my birthday was ruined.

This year, my friends from previous school were away from me. Though I had made many friends this year, they weren't close.

So no friends came to my birthday this year, which meant I would have it alone. I waited for something to cheer me up when my mom's phone rang.

It was an invitation to interview in a very good middle school called "Shibei Middle School" in Shanghai. I was so excited to hear that news that I even forgot my birthday party!

The teacher who interviewed me is kind, she asked me to read a paragraph and asked me a question. She then asked me what I would do in the future. I just said I will be a scientist or a mathematician. If I ever get tired, I would read books or play football.

Then the interview was over, after three days I was admitted. I was terrific.

My heart is like a blue sky with no clouds. I thought everything in the world is good, sadness all flew away. Yes, I was good in math competitions and then Spelling Bee and was going to one of the best middle school. So far, I was a wonderful student.

After my birthday, I knew about Flat Stanley. It is a fantasy about a normal boy who became special when a board fell off and he became flat.

After doing exercises about the book, Mr. Weng gave us a paper with the drawing of Stanley on it. I colored my Stanley and cut it off, then laminated it.

Since then, I brought my own Stanley with me every time I was on a trip.

My father's birthday was coming.

Last year I gave him a book with my essays, it was special. I just gave him a better essay book this year.

It was a surprise. I wrote my best essays in that book.

I did prepare for a long time, about two months. I first wrote them on a composition notebook with pencil so I could erase easily. But then I realized I erased too much and that book was too messy. I copied them again to another notebook.

I wrote about my school, multinational corporations, and all kinds of other things.

However, the birthday present hadn't turned really wonderful, mom saw me writing for him and told my father a day before his birthday.

But I just pretended that day is his birthday, so it wasn't bad, also. Plus I found out that reading improved not only spelling but also writing.

Graduation

Fifth-grade was about to end, before I knew it, we started giving each other signatures and our telephone numbers. We were still going to communicate after graduation.

Many things had happened this year. I began enjoying fifth-grade so much.

I remembered my reading journey, and I just finished "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe". I thought Junie B. Jones was hard at the beginning of the year! I had already finished two hundred books. My aim of books to read this year was only fifty.

I read so many books this year. I was proud. I just spotted "The Baby-Sitters Club" when I was walking around the library, and started reading fascinatedly. I had also finished the "Nancy Drew" series.

It was just like a wonderful chapter in a book which is about to end. I still wanted to start over again.

I was a little said, but a graduation trip cheered me up.

The graduation trip was fun. It was a cool day with a blue sky and white clouds, the land swept by a gentle breeze. We got inside a big school bus and went to Shanghai Binjiang Forest Park.

We divided into groups and played. Every group had lunch themselves. We brought our lunch and went to a big rock near the seaside. Then we climbed up the rock and had lunch on it. The rock was just enough for several people and we fitted in with our food tightly.

I brought much bread with me. I ate that on the rock and starred at the sea, the unlimited view, where waves are roaring and only boats can be seen on the sea. There, we shared our corners of the universe and our year of fun.

The day flew by, I really enjoyed myself, especially the lunch.

The day of graduation arrived so soon that I did not expect it to be here so fast. We sang the graduation song in Chinese. Our principle gave us a speech. Everyone had a photo with her, I felt so nervous standing beside the principle, but happy too.

After singing the graduation song, everyone was about to leave. Each of us received a book that had name and picture of everyone else in the school in it.

Then all the students went home. Fifth-grade ended full of joy and happiness.

Sometimes, I thought, Smic School is like a puzzle. It was missing a piece a year before. The missing piece is me. I was supposed to fit in perfectly. That's why I came in and had an impressive year.

Epilogue

I learned many thing in fifth-grade. Playing flute in one of them. I can play many songs now.

I improved my English so much that I could feel it. Tests became easier a lot. I read more than three hundred books now, where my old aim in the beginning of the year was only fifty.

I became busier, I am in middle school. I stopped playing babyish stuff. I went to geometry classes every Monday after school. I have a math and Chinese class every weekend. Things changed a lot, and fifth-grade was just a piece of the beautiful memories.

I knew my biggest harvest this year, I grew up.

The autobiography I wrote above is not really good, but it narrates one of my best childhood year. it is unforgettable forever. The story ends here.