Teacher: Phoebe

It was really cold yet the warmest winter in my life. I have had 7 very lovely and precious friends since elementary school. I hung out with them a lot after school and we shared our secrets and talked about everything that we wanted, our family problems, cute guys in school, grades and so on. We also had a friendship diary that a lot of girls got jealous of; we wrote down anything that was on our minds and everyone got a chance to take it home for 1 day so they could read what others wrote and leave comments on it. We even got together almost every night to take a walk on the new bridge that glows beautifully in violet and blue-green!

 However, unfortunately almost all of us went to different middle schools after graduating elementary school and I moved to Busan which takes about one and a half hours by car from my hometown, Tongyoung.

 There is a saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” We kept in touch on Cyworld which is similar to Facebook. We also talked on the phone but I felt the distance from them, which was really sad. Three years passed like that, we were graduating middle school! We didn't talk often but we still missed each other so much. Hence, I decided to go see them during winter vacation. My father reserved a room in a pension for us and he drove me to my hometown!

 Even though I got there a little bit late, they were all waiting for me and they hugged me so tightly that I couldn't even breathe. We headed straight to the pension. I think it was around 9 at night when we got there and we were hungry. We ordered several boxes of chicken and snacks and they arrived very quickly! While eating, our chit-chat was going on all night. At around 4 a.m., we decided to go outside to take some pictures (it might sound weird that we went outside to take pictures at 4 a.m., but we like to do these weird things.)  We took a lot of pictures especially making funny faces, jumping and laying down on the road. It was so fun that the fierce cold couldn't even stop us!

We are now preparing for university and next year would be our last year of high school so everyone is studying really hard and very busy. I miss them so much and I really want to thank them for being such nice friends to me. Because of them I was really happy and I’m always looking forward to having fun with them again! Guess what? One of my friends is coming to see me this winter! Yay!

Discussion Questions:

Tell me about what you understood from the story!

1. Where is Minji's hometown? Where does she live now?
2. How does she keep in touch with her old friends?
3. What did Minji and her friends do when they saw each other again?
4. Why is Minji happy and excited at the end of the story?
5. What funny things do you like to do with your best friends?