(Lately I have sacrificed a lot of entertaining and sleep time in order to improve my English writing. Out of my expectation, the result was not bad. Let me give you an example. This afternoon with a friend at McDonalds , to give my best shot, in Chinglish , I told her the new story The Memories of Being Hungry I wrote 2 days ago. As she listened I found that her eyes were filled with sympathy, and then she let me take half of her fries. To tell you the truth, I hate to receive sympathy this way. She didn't know that I was interested in her quarter pounder. )
An Evening Ride
This evening my friend and I took a drive along a scenic route in a town just 20 minutes away from the city which we live in. Even though the price of gas is not low, I thought that seeing a sunset and color turning leaves in a mid-autumn sunny evening was still worth it.
So there we were, at the rush hour. As soon as merging into a highway I noticed that traffic was quite heavy. When we almost arrived at our destination, vehicles in front of us slowed down. Looking at the traffic jam stretching bumper to bumper for about 500 feet caused by the road construction I cursed like a longshoreman's sister. I hate kafuffles like that. My friends said that I was supposed to take that cut off earlier to avoid the jam, but hindsight is 20/20, so forget about it. Hoped after going down the hill cars could move faster, she comforted me. I said that I could not wait to see the sunset in the river shore. "Hold your horses, relax Little Man" my friend said.
Finally cars moved and before long we get off the highway and took the scenic route which leads us to the river. Driving on that scenic route, I found that the fall foliage in Canada never fails to delight me, even though I have lived in this country for years, I am still surprised by its beauty. Along with turning leaves on both side of the road, we could see quite a few apples trees with a lot of apples that also have already turned their colors. The nice fragrance of maple leaves and apples flowing in the air made me feel better. I took a deep breath, feeling like I was set free from the impatient mindset caused by the heavy traffic a while ago.
As I was busy with catching up with the train of my thoughts which was running fast, I also had a hard time catching up with what my friend had said...in English. So I decided to concentrate on driving. All of a sudden, through the windshield I could see river water flashing in the evening sun light. That is our destination. So I parked my car on the side of the road. " It is strikingly beautiful!" Getting out of the car, both my friend and I exclaimed. Not far away from where we stood lies a quiet bay of the river, and quite a few yachts stood there with flags flapping in the evening soft breezes. Although the foliage sceneries on the islands in the river afar could not be seen clearly, and the sun seemed to be shy and hid his face a little bit behind the clouds, we still enjoyed ourselves very much.
Facing the sunset, seeing some fishmen fishing by the river shore in mild breezes I could even smell the salt in the water. I could not find my camera in my purse while thinking about to take a picture of the peaceful evening. A picture is worth one thousand words, it is said. I also wished that I could have flair for writing poems so I could describe what I had seen in my stanzas, in spite of the fact that I hate to see the coming cold winter.
