lives again. The May Fourth Square was the first of the many places
we went to and I quickly discovered that Qingdao wasn’t so bad after
all. The people were friendly, and everything was just as cool as
Caterham. Although I didn’t have friends yet, that was bound to
change, especially as I had already naturally picked up the language.
Jordan was excited to start school and he was positive that he was
going to make a million friends in five minutes. The only thing he had to
worry about were all the clocks on the walls, but he figured that if he
didn’t look at them, he would be ok. I was apprehensive about school.
I had so many questions running through my head. Would my new
classmates be friendly? How was I going to cope with an entirely new
system, especially when Muncho was understandably so much slower
at learning the language than I was? My questions were many, and my
parents did their best to allay my fears.
“It’s going to be fine,” Mother said in her soothing motherly voice.
“Is it?” I whispered.
“Yes squishy Josh, it will,” she motherlily soothed me.
“What if nobody likes me?” I worried.
“They will like you,”
“Why is that?” I whispered, hardly daring to ask such an emotional
question.
“Because you are my son,” Mother answered, “and you have the
natural chatting talent that resides in our family genes ever since
Charlamagne and Geoffrey Chaucer. Your brother has it too. All it takes
is that you believe, believe, believe in yourself.”
But still I worried. I doubted, doubted, doubted myself instead.
Just like every place in Qingdao, my new school was bigger than
my previous one. My parents were with me on my first day, and my
mother would not stop gushing over the size and beauty of the school.
I think she was trying to convince me that it was a wonderful place, I
think she also believed it too, but I sometimes find it hard to tell when
someone’s being sincere.
“The playground is huge,” she said enthusiastically. “You will have
enough space to play leapfrog and roll wooden hoops with a stick.