Chapter 20: Halloween

Hi.

Remember how I promised you an adventure ? and how...if this was a romantic story...Something would happen on Halloween or Christmas or something like that?

Well. Well. Well. ...You won't believe what happened!

So you know, me, being the nerd and introvert that I am, was more mindful of how it was a Sunday than it was a Halloween...because. ..you know...back where I came from there never was a holiday called Halloween....and in the places I went to(i.e.Asia) I never actually got costumes or dressed up or partied. ...

But on the weekend....you see, I get my wild side out and take it for a run. I get high-not by smoking or drinking-but rather by taking to the highways I've never been on and running as far as my legs would take me, as fast as my feet can manage. Then when I feel like 70 percent of my energy is gone, I turn back, take another new road....and take the next turn till a place I am familiar with shows up and then go back home.

Such was my intent when I put on my sports pants and shoes and bright yellow T shirt and black sweater today. This was what I had in mind when I jogged through that thin backway alley behind our Student village. The sun was bright and shining, the wind was howling and pushing the Orange Autumn leaves up into the air. ...there were trees on either side of the road and there was not a Single human on site. The road is actually a short cut for cars. ..and since there was literally nothing on either side....nobody ever goes there.

Untill I moved to the student village and went exploring that is. Last weekend, I went out and took to the left and just followed the road till I ended up in a village and guessed my way home. Then yesterday(it was a Saturday )...I took to the right and followed the road till I reached a crossroad that the bus home usually takes and I jogged back that way. Today....my plan was to combine the road I found yesterday and the park I found last week and run all the way to the beach.

I assumed three hours was enough....and it should have be so.

I....put on my headphones, passed by some boys who were playing basketball(They must have been surprised to see me walk past them since they were at the playground-which was....by itsself at the very corner of the village... ) ...went to the woods. ..I wonder if they expected me to comeback....and when I didn't. .maybe they too. ..might have gone to the edge and found the broken fence.

Anyway, not my concern. I...as I've already told you ,I had only one thing on my mind, a wild- free- excited run aganist an equally wild wind of October, racing down the cars, ALLLLLLLLL the way to the beach. I was determined to see the beach- for I passed by it in a bus- all the 39 days I have been here.

I was to be fully busy the next week- and my head was all boozed out from all the data analysis stuff I had tried to do in the morning.

So I opened up a BTS playlist- cuz them boys got some sick beats- and I started off...nicely and casually...I zigzagged my way to the roundabout I found yesterday....cars stopped for me here and there wherever I had to cross the streets...and no dogs tried to bite me. The wind flapped my hair behind me. ..keeping me me cool even as blood rushed to my brain...

I got to the park- the one I found last Saturday_ and casually jogged on. ..Untill...I

found my road blocked by an iron fence...I remembered I had ran past that gate, but I couldn't remember how, so I turned back and tried to find a footpath...when I didn't...I tried to cross through the field.

And that's where disaster started.

Apparently it was raining all morning and the grass was so dump and muddy I continually found myself slipping and sinking. I tried to tip toe around out of the mud and almost fell into the mud. My hands went down first and saved me from a humiliating splock and splatter on the ditch tho.

Buuuuuuttttt. ...My mask was tied to my right hand so it got a full dressing of sticky, stinky, earth stuff(I dare not think that dogs might have peed on that stuff. ...)

My shoes got quite a magnitude of the mud on it, but I'm telling you~ it could have gone worse.

After the fall, I dared not jog on the mud.

When I reached the nearest foot path....then I followed it all the way. ...out of the park and on to the streets. ...and Behold at last. ...the Beach!