Henry Wang Hengle, Grade 8, BASIS International School Shenzhen

It was a feeling of heaven, a feeling of the gods, which was cast down to Earth for the blessed people. It was a feeling of solitude; it was a feeling of togetherness; it was a feeling of generosity; it was a feeling of hope.

These were the sensations of happiness, a feeling unmatched by no other feeling on Earth.

The first part of the journey was relatively easy, as it was represented by a comparatively flat terrain of fields and trees, a void of steep mountain ranges or valleys. The sky was still dull, the air was still filthy, yet they all suddenly felt a lot lighter and brighter to me.

For the first two or three hours, I encountered nothing at all except some gray birds, chirping away dully, and several bulls, no doubt belonging to the herders who owned large estates nearby. The road that the old man had indicated was less of a road, more like a path, cutting curvingly and windingly through the terrain of rough fields. There were almost no buildings along the road now, and the buildings that did appear were barns for the domestication of animals.

I passed these dangerous areas hastily as I was afraid of being caught by the owners of these barns and sent back to my working position in Monroe. But more and more, I became unafraid of these possible encounters.

Ah! The feeling of freedom! I felt completely at peace now. It brought the jolly tunes into my head that I once heard my grandmother play on an ancient piano.

I tucked my bag more tightly to make sure that the picture of my grandmother sitting by the piano was still safe. The tune lifted my spirits beyond anything else. This joyful mood persisted in me for a couple more hours, until the sun slowly lost its radiance and brightness, sinking rapidly into the horizon with a faint golden glow.

At this point, the sky had darkened, the world had darkened, and I was forced to abandon my joyful tune and mood and to proceed forward more slowly, carefully feeling for obstacles that might be under my feet and groping my way forward in the absolute darkness.

One looming question now entered my head with a grumble in my stomach: There was no food.

“How foolish of me,” I thought miserably. “I should have bought some stale bread at the local store before embarking on this journey. And now I have no food!”

My stomach grumbled more loudly, and a sudden cramp of pain crossed my insides. But a solution to this looming question suddenly entered my head: “I am going to find food at one of these farming estates and ask them to exchange a couple of eggs or stale bread for some pennies. Yes, I’m going to do it,” I reassured myself as I suddenly felt a jolt of nervousness.