Chapter 91: Chapter 91: A sad journey to the competition
In the next few days, visitors came in droves. Third Uncle brought Third Aunt for a visit, and Uncle and Aunt brought Lin Rui for a visit. After arriving, they always had to be checked and reminded. There was nothing they could do about it, as they were still young!
Fortunately, they didn't come empty-handed. For the sake of the things they brought, Feng Yiping always behaved very obediently, taking everyone's advice and remembering it carefully.
It was Saturday again, and it happened to be Feng Yiping's turn to be on duty this week. There was nothing much to do on duty, as after all the students had left the classroom, he was responsible for closing the windows and locking the door, and then handing the key to the homeroom teacher.
This week, it was the first time that these second-year students had been at school for two weeks, and they were all eager to go home. In just a few minutes, the classroom was empty, except for him, Xiao Zhijie, Wang Changning, and one girl, Zhang Qiuling.
The group of them were having a lively discussion, because tomorrow Feng Yiping and the others would be going to the county to participate in an essay competition. In previous years, for competitions like this, the school would only select students from the third year of junior high, but because Feng Yiping was somewhat famous, the school had broadened their thinking a bit and selected students from the first and second years to participate as well.
It seemed that the first year student was a girl, the second year student was Feng Yiping, and the other was Zhang Qiuling – there was no choice, having a father who was the vice-principal meant that he had more opportunities. As for who was in the third year, he wasn't sure.
The competition was organised by the city, and there was only one examination centre in each county. This examination centre was, of course, in each county. Although the examination was scheduled for the afternoon, it would take three hours to get from the school to the town, from the town to the county, and if all went well.
In the office, the headmaster put down the phone and said to the head of teaching, with a face full of annoyance, 'Old Zhu from the town said that they couldn't rent a car and were going to leave this afternoon.'
The director of education was also taken aback. 'Didn't we agree that they would find a car and we would leave together tomorrow morning?'
'Who knows, I think we shouldn't count on them for anything in the future. Go and get Teacher Liu, the leader of the group, to come here. We'll leave in the afternoon too, even if it costs a bit more!'
Before lunch, Liu, the head of the Chinese teaching and research group and the Chinese teacher of Class 3, came to inform everyone that they would gather at the principal's office after lunch and go to the county in the afternoon.
When they gathered in the afternoon, three boys and one girl from the third year came, so there were seven students in total.
Before they left, the headmaster gave them a kind encouragement, and when the head of the teaching staff saw them off to the school gate, he looked stern and stressed that they must listen to the teacher in charge, consciously abide by the discipline, behave well, and especially not disgrace Liangjiahe Middle School in front of other schools.
A special car was used to go to the town, which was a small single-row truck from the next village with a green canvas covering the cargo compartment. Mr Liu, of course, was sitting in the front passenger seat, and the students had to huddle in the cargo compartment.
Although it was a competition, it was probably the first time they had travelled so far to compete, so everyone was very excited and kept talking and laughing.
However, sitting in this cargo compartment, sealed on three sides, was really not a comfortable thing to do in the hot summer. There was no seat either, just a wooden board. As the car bumped endlessly on the road, everyone had to hold onto the steel bars of the awning behind them.
This was not a problem, as long as there was a seat to sit on. However, it seemed that not many people were going on long journeys, and there were not many opportunities to travel by bus. After sitting on the bus for a while, several people felt uncomfortable.
The most pitiful was the quiet female classmate in the first grade, holding one hand on the steel bar and covering her mouth with the other hand. Before they even reached Meijiawan, she was already busy switching her seat to the back, sticking her head out of the bus and letting the wind blow.
Before long, Zhang Qiuling also moved to the other side and followed her example, sticking her head out to feel the wind.
When they arrived at the town bus station, Teacher Liu went to the office and poured two cups of boiled water for the two female students who were vomiting and looking pale. Then, when it came time to count the money for the motion sickness medicine, it turned out that only Feng Yiping didn't need any.
Feng Yiping still went and bought two catties of mandarin oranges, which really came in handy once they got on the bus. However, four of the seven classmates still threw up all over the place. Anyway, when they arrived at the station, the driver stopped Teacher Liu and wouldn't let him go, insisting that he pay for the car wash.
Zhang Qiuling was lucky; for Xiao Zhijie's sake, Feng Yiping sat in the same row as her and took good care of her the whole way, so she only dry-heaved a few times.
When they left the school gate, they were all full of energy, and it looked like a very fighting team. It wasn't until they arrived at their destination that they realised they were no longer a fighting team, but rather a group of defeated soldiers. Teacher Liu was a little afraid, and was grateful that the principal and the others were fighting with the town middle school and had come today. If they had left in the morning, there would have been no comparison, and it would have been lucky if three of the seven could have played.
Without stopping, he took everyone to a hotel opposite the education bureau, where they booked three rooms. He told everyone to get a good rest and get to know the environment tomorrow morning.
He wondered how the three girls were doing. As soon as the boys entered the room, they immediately got to work, studying the air conditioning, the colour TV and the toilet, none of them slept.
Feng Yiping was quite miserable. All the rooms were double standard rooms. In Mr Liu's room, there were just him and one other student, while there were three of them in this room. Therefore, as a junior, he could only sleep on the floor.
Fortunately, there was air conditioning, so he could turn the temperature down. He spread the quilt on the floor and made a bed, which was not hot and was quite soft.
He just ignored the two idiots, who were like the two old ladies entering the Grand View Garden, sleeping on the floor.
In the evening, in order to help the few students who were not feeling well to recover quickly, and so that everyone could enter tomorrow's competition with full enthusiasm, Mr Liu invited everyone to a restaurant near the hotel for dinner.
But he had underestimated the capacity of his students' stomachs. They were used to eating pickled vegetables and home-cooked food, and it was rare for them to go out to a restaurant. The food fried on the restaurant's professional stoves tasted of course very good.
When a glutton meets a good meal, it's like a chess match between two evenly matched opponents. The reaction was intense. Four dishes and one soup? That's too little!
The restaurant didn't serve everything at once, but one dish at a time. As soon as one dish arrived, everyone finished it, and then the next dish arrived, and everyone finished that too. By the time the four dishes and one soup were finished, no one had even finished the rice.
There was nothing he could do. Mr Liu had to go to the kitchen to hurry up the food. In the end, a total of nine dishes were served, which was the result of everyone watching his face, which wasn't very good, and holding back a bit.
Anyway, by the end of the meal, Mr Liu didn't even have the desire to speak.
When they left the restaurant, the students were all rosy-cheeked and full of energy, but Mr Liu looked a bit pale. Fortunately, the vice-principal's daughter was in the group, otherwise he would really worry about reimbursement.
Mr Liu still took everyone to People's Square for a stroll. After returning to the hotel, he gathered everyone together to study for the competition, but no one, including Feng Yiping, could concentrate.
On the morning of the competition, everyone slept in, even though they actually woke up at 6 o'clock. But they didn't want to get out of bed, so they just lay there watching TV.
At 9 o'clock, the student who shared a room with Mr Liu knocked on the door, asking everyone to get ready to go to breakfast together, and then go to Experimental Middle School to familiarise themselves with the surroundings.
For these big eaters, the bowl of wonton soup for breakfast was better than nothing.
When they finally arrived at the Experimental Middle School, the competition venue, it was already past ten o'clock. There were a lot of people coming and going at the door, presumably all thinking the same thing as they were.