See You Later, Shanghai

Shanghai has been my home for the past seven years, and for comparison, that’s more than half the time I’ve been alive. I’m twelve this year, so I’ve been in Shanghai for a loooooong time. And while I’m writing this post, when I had to say goodbye to some of my long time good friends (if you guys are reading this post and know who you are, I miss you tons). Man, it’s really making me want to turn back time and go back to the very beginning, when we first moved to Shanghai.

Now all you viewers must be like, “Bruh, why are you looking back?” or like, “You’re going on an amazing world trip, you shouldn’t be thinking about that.” Well the simple fact is that there are lots of things in Shanghai and in China that I have developed a real connection to. Like friends, my compound, the school and lots of other stuff (so if you ain’t mentioned, it’s not personal). Take my friends for example, I just said goodbye to some really close friends that I’ve been friends with since 1st grade a few days ago. I won’t mention them here today as I don’t want to draw attention to them but you guys know who you are. 

During my years in Shanghai I have tons of memories, but I most certainly will not bore you with all of them. A long time ago, there was a Greek philosopher named Socrates. (I’m sure you’ve heard about him.) He made a speech so long that his friends mercilessly killed him for it. I definitely am no Socrates, nor do I want to end up like him, so I will make this part short and only tell you about my favorite memories.

Just during this year, I have been to the twins’ house many, many times with our other friends. When we are there, we usually play a fun game called granny. It’s kinda like tag so I’m sure I don’t have to explain it. A few times at the twins’ house, we had very fun team cooking competitions. One of the the competitions we made burgers and the other one we made fried rice. Unfortunately, my team lost both at last place. I love having these cooking competitions because when I cook alongside others, I can have lots of fun and absorb the talents and techniques of others. We always do cooking competitions at the twins’ house because they have a giant kitchen, much bigger than mine (which I am extremely jealous about) and we always have a great time. I said goodbye to them.  I didn’t want to, but I did.

And also a few days ago I just went to my Colombian friend’s house. Over there we usually play lots of soccer and sometimes we play this super cool star wars game on his PS4 called Battlefront 2. One time when we were playing piggy in the middle, a very hyper stra `y dog came running up to us and started sniffing. So you see, my friend has a giant fear of small dogs as he was bitten by one a few weeks ago and had to get the ‘dreaded rabies shot’. Hanging out with him is very intriguing and fun when he teaches me new soccer moves, plays battlefront with me and when he kindly shows me his expensive and nice lego builds. It was really hard to very painfully say goodbye to him as well.

To all of my friends and teachers and all who know me, I wish you well. I hope all of you reading this post can feel the pain I’m feeling, you know it’s hard to leave your home that you’ve lived in for 7 years and all the familiar places and faces. But within all that sorrow, I can still see happiness. As master oogway said, “yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future, but today is when you can make the change, and that is why it is called the present.” And that has pushed me to enjoy and cherish everyday like it is my last. This gives me the confidence to leave my home and go on this trip.