Erica: “Time flies, see you when the rainbow arrives” Part I
29th June 2020
Erica, who just started her new school life in a secondary school in the UK last year, would like to share with us her thoughts and experience throughout the lockdown period. In less than a year’s time, she has been through lots of ups and downs; yet, after all the struggles, she has decided to live the life which she may work hard towards achieving her goals. Let’s hear her thoughts today!
“I am Erica, a 14-year-old girl from Macau, China. This is my first year of studying abroad in the UK. I haven’t been home for more than nine months already. It made me feel that I am staying in a country that is so very dangerous and I can be infected at any time. The more I thought about it, the more I feel worried, fearful, anxious, and drowned. After a while, I decided to go back to my UK guardian’s home with my friend.
Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, schools have been shut down all over the world, together with a national lockdown. Britain is no exception, school closure was announced by the end of March. I was awfully worried, and I had many negative thoughts. All my classmates and friends returned home, my British classmates stayed at their own home, and most of the overseas students had a flight back home. Yet, my parents worried that it would be too risky for me to travel on the plane; they then decided to let me stay in the UK temporarily. As an overseas student, I feel that I have been involved in this fight against Covid-19 from beginning until present. At first, I was very worried about my family and friends in Macau who were exposed to the early outbreak. Later on, I started to be afraid of catching the virus myself here in the UK. I puzzle when it will be safe and how I may ever go home.
At first, like most of my classmates perhaps, I simply stayed home and was being unproductive. Every day, I wake up and eat, do my online homework, scroll on my phone, and go to bed. This seemed to be an endless repeating loop to me. However a few days later, I saw the flowers blooming outside the windows, and the sky became so very clear, and bright. I looked back to myself, and I realised once again how ridiculous I was living my life every day. I found that I couldn’t endure this lifestyle anymore, I did not want to simply skip this beautiful spring and waste my life which I could cherish better. If I were to get infected at the end of the day, or even lose my life, then I would feel ashamed looking back to myself for the nothingness I have done in the past couple of months… I started to ponder, perhaps, if I were to use this time to rethink my life and my future, stop procrastinating and start picking up my work. Then perhaps, after this pandemic, I may well see a different me, a better me.
When we don’t want to work hard, we always use all sorts of excuses that we simply “ran out of time” to do anything. So I’ve decided to try my best to set a goal on the things that I want to learn, want to achieve, want to try, want to work hard on during this difficult time. In this case, even if I were to be infected, or when I return to school or travel back home after this tough period, I can still proudly say: I didn’t waste my time.”
– The end of Part I –