It was nearly 5 months after graduation day, everything of our school years seems to be very fresh in our memories just like it happened yesterday. We miss our good time we spent at ZAMAN. We miss each other and surely our teachers as well. We miss our trips that we used to take to various places. To cut it short, we miss everything we had 5 years ago. Although some of us have chance to meet each other, we are still separated because of different pathways we chose in pursuit of education and career.
Moreover, some of our dear friends have already gone abroad to pursue their studies such as Panha (to Canada since grade 10), Daro (to Turkey), Eamsea (to Malaysia), Sambath (to Italy), Nivoith (to Australia), Hak Seng (to Singapore), Panhawatt (to Sigapore),and Bunrath (to USA). There are some other guys such as Ratanak, Rithy, Kimvan, Bunly, and me who are willing to go abroad too.
That's why on 29th December 2008 (2009 was only 2 days away from us) we, 17 students of 12B, arranged a reunion party at ZAMAN. It was such a happy time for us. We enjoyed it very much. Let me briefly describe it. First, Mr.Gurkan planned to go to Kompungsoum, but since most of us were busy with their studies, we couldn’t go. So we decided to make a reunion party somewhere downtown.
I left school (IFL) at 4:30 that time, and I went to buy 20 boxes of rice for the party. Once I arrived at ZAMAN at 5:30, the first thing I did was to greet my teachers, Mr. Gurkan (our homeroom and physics teacher) and Mr. Ali (our math teacher). We would like to see Mr. Osman among us, but unfortunately, he couldn’t attend the party. There I saw some of my precious friends had arrived already and they were playing football. Everyone seemed to be happy to meet each other. Soly didn't play at that time, and Rano was helping Mr.Gurkan with the food. He was trying to lit the fire by fanning the ember. He didn't really know how to do it, but He just did it because he was told to do so. Later on, we started to play another kind of Khmer game called "Sey". We played it all together and stood in a shape of circle. The one who couldn't get "Sey" by kicking them with foot would be punished. The punishment was very simple. We asked them questions, and they had to tell the truth. If not, there would be consequences.
Oh, haven’t I told you yet what kind of food we had. Guess what, it was kind of BBQ (It's barbecue actually). We had chicken and beef (according to what Mr.Ali told us that time, the beef was mixed with some sort of special spicy ingredients from Turkey). The meat was grilled on long metal bars over an open flame. Each of us took one box of rice as side dish, and we went to get the meat.
First, Mr.Gurkan served each of us with the chicken. We sat in circle shape (there was no fire in the middle like in most movies because we had electricity and the weather was pretty hot. Instead, there were cans of coke). After a while, Eamsea, who is now staying in Malaysia, started to say goodbye to friend as he was going to leave Cambodia the following day. Then he bid us farewell and told us "I'll miss all of you. I’m very grateful to Zaman for organizing such a wonderful activity and for enabling me to get to know these friends. I love all of you and I'll always remember and keep all these good memories in my heart. We'll soon meet each other again in the future, hopefully".
It was such sad moment, but nobody cried or even shed a tear for that...lol. Instead, we just kept smiling and laughing, because we all are good at teasing each other. We wanted him to feel happy that time. We had so much fun. As for the chicken, it was delicious. We devoured everything in our plates in a matter of minutes. Then we asked Mr.Gurkan for some more. This action repeated again, again, again and again until there was nothing left. At last the time has come for the beef. We couldn't finish all of it because we were full as we had eaten a lot of chicken already. But we still ate most of it. There was little left. Umm... and after the meal, we just kept talking about the past and other stuff we experienced all together.
Then it was time for taking photos for memories. This time we took it in a new style. We lied down on the grass as the shape of letters: Z, A, M, A, N. After taking pictures, we cleared up the area that we used and left everything as clean as we found it.
One thing is for sure, when you have fun, u don’t realize how quickly time passes by. A few hours passed already as winked our eyes. As activity was approaching its end, we had to say goodbye to each other and to the teachers. The best thing was that when we left, it started to rain, so we got wet, and all of us rode motorbikes back home with happy and soaked hearts. When I arrived home, and I caught a cold (not really a cold, just didn't feel quite well). Well, that's all. Hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it for an hour or so.
And I hope that all my friends who are now studying abroad, after reading this, even if you couldn't join the party, at least you can feel the happiness and anxiety which I tried to convey via this article. I hope to see you soon enough. Bye until next activity.