<Second Draft>
Heaven in My Hardest Time
201001006 Hyejin Kim
How many people can say that they've visited heaven when they were early 20s? Well, I can say that. I could find my heaven when I was spending the hardest time in my life. I went to England 2 years ago for volunteering work. I stayed a convent in a small town named Edenbridge near London. In the town, it hardly found a yellow person who was from oriental culture. So When I shopped in local supermarket, I could feel that people saw me by glimpses. And there were many sisters and staffs from various countries like Belgium, France, Switzerland and England in the convent. I cleaned rooms, cooked, washed cars and so on for about 5 hours a day to help the community operate properly and serve to guests who stayed for meditation with food and cleaned places. Sometimes I had to accept works, arguments, and treatments that I could not understand. For example, some of the sisters were little bit hysterical and often I couldn't understand their behaviors. Also I suffered from different food and different culture. It was really stressful and I hardly shared my feelings to others since there was no friend around my age. I was the youngest in the community and second youngest was around 45 years old. I was very lonely and missed my country.
However, I could find a place, "bridge to Eden" like the name of the town, to console my heart. The convent was surrounded by meadow and especially I liked a side that was near from my room. There were a couple of huge oak trees and brown colored wooden benches. The trees always had abounding greenery, so it spread the leaves to cover the whole meadow when wind blew. When I sat on the bench, I could see four of brown donkeys and hear the sound the leaves rustling. Wire fences separated the space for the donkeys from the building we stayed. However they were very meek. When I fed them with bits of carrots, they came closer to me and chewed them with their big and nice teeth. Sometimes I brushed them with a sister from Belgium named Beatrice, they seemed to smile at me. When I had free time, I walked around the meadow, listened to music with my mobile phone, and stroked the donkeys' bristly backs. Then they used to make me fun chewing and pulling my jacket lightly with their mouth. The most enjoyable thing was to see evening glow sitting down on the bench. I enjoyed a full measure of various colored sunset behind my favorite oak tree. It would be red, pink, yellow, and light purple. Sometimes it showed all of the colors that I just mentioned at the same time. It was too marvelous to hold back my tears. Almost every day I went to walk to enjoy the moment after having my dinner which they called 'supper'. Walking around or sitting on the bench, I smelled of fresh grass and fallen leaves. In spring, the meadow filled up with flower-fragrant air since flower garden was quite close from the place and the benches were surrounded by yellow daffodil. Therefore I felt as if I were in heaven when I sat on the bench listening to music and watching the donkeys eating the grass. Sunshine was gorgeous behind the donkeys and endless green meadow.
Coming back to home after 1 year that I spent in the convent, I forgot most of the bad memories. The only thing that I remember clearly is the breeze and sunshine that I felt in my heaven. The place surrounded by oak trees, grass, donkeys, sunshine and sunset was the comfort itself for me. It was the place where I missed my family, friends and country. It was the place that filled my heart with warmth and encouragement that helped me to accept all of the bad and good memories I had there. So it is my most meaningful place ever.
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