2020-03-10 river town 5

Storm

A fire in the mountain lit not only the forest up there but also started stories in this chapter, the beginning of which pulled out a series of events connecting to one another: a thousand or so volunteer students went up to help put out the fire but on their way the accidental storm helped them. Perhaps because of staying in college too long they were as excited to go uphill as to go downhill back. Being poured by the rain, lots of people got fever and so and so. A series of small things as no one may care about the details. 

One passage of his students' essays raised my curiosity. It was an essay on 'happiest day of my life', most of the students wrote about the day the received the offer from college. I didn't go to my ideal school so I barely remembered that day even that moment, not to mention calling it a happiest day of my life. A student wrote "This is the result that I worked hard for fifteen years. During fifteen years, I had studied very hard all the time. As a son of farmer, I wanted to go out of the countryside. It is the only way that I study harder than the people in city or town." Definitely, I was once one of those people who were just as the same as this student, thinking all my efforts finally paid off after several years. Now I often question and reflect on thoughts like this: it sounded like the life of study had ended when the day of this day came. And to many, it really ended, the life of study ended and it seemed to them that the study was only for the final test instead of the rest of their life. This is why I think a lot of students lose their direction after graduation. Then I see the aim of this kid's is to get out of the countryside. I feel bad about this because it reminds me of the contradictory of going back to the countryside or staying in the city. How I envy such a kid without hesitation to pursue life in the city. I was raised by may grans in the countryside, and I have lots of good memories about life when I was chased by a boar, and when I was herding a flock of sheep, and when I was climbing the trees to catch a bird in the nest, etc. But considering of the next generation's education and my own health care in the future, I am still concerned whether to leave city to live an ideal countryside life. 

As usual, I note down some expressions that should be learned. 

Our Opium War didn't end in victory or loss; rather they quietly slipped away.

I think "sipped away" is very ingenious to describe the thing that hasn't been discussed anymore. It makes me think of one of my ex-romance that died without officially proclaimed. It just slipped away quietly. 

But at the same time part of me was starting to wear thin, both physically and psychologically. 

to begin to become weaker or less acceptable

开始变弱；变得不受欢迎；变得兴趣索然

Ostensibly,

ostensible