The English Olympiad

Well, this is quite a long story, so I will start at the very beginning. It was a snowy day of february. During the morning, I was born on this world. Not very interesting, is it? This is probably the peak of iterest this story will give you, so don’t expect anything spectacular.

I slept while travelling, and also I slept in the most weird positions and during some really awkward moments. Like I was speaking with my room-mates and suddenly I fell asleep for half an hour, then I woke up and panicked, while thinking “What year is it??!?!”. Also, I fell asleep in the taxi while we were going back to our temporary homes. I’m a freak.

But enough of this. Now let’s get to the point. The rooms were awful, 4 beds, strange sheets, old windows, american school lockers locked with chains. The bathroom was on the hall, and the showers didn’t have anything to cover nudity. So it was actually everyone for himself. I mean if you woke up at 3 in the morning, you would go take a shower just because you know there’s nobody to bother you. The food was almost edible, but mostly awful. One time only, and probably because the planets formed a nice shape and because a black hole was born and Chuck Norris did another awesome thing, the food was quite good. But not even that could satisfy my hunger.

People were very nice, I roamed the city a lot and I was in places I didn’t even know. Well that may sound quite obvious, but I liked it when people would call me and ask me “Where are you?” and I’d answer “I have no idea!”. The city was clean and beautiful, even though it is smaller than Suceava. Things are really different there, and some of the people I met had a hard time understanding me, as they found my way of speaking weird.

About the olympiad itself, it was bad. I mean, who in the world would consider the phrases “magnificent views”, “It will”, “Roger that” wrong, or any other proficiency level word wrong?! The examiners were totally dumb, and they have probably read only “Dora the Explorer” books. Oh, and the listening exam, the sound was brilliant. I had to rely on my instincts mostly to answer, as the audio quality was awful. And, as expected, when I contested their decision I got half a point more. That makes 6 exams in a row when I get my grade increased after the re-calculation of the score.

All in all, I can say it was a nice experience, even though I was hungry and sleepy most of the time. I look forward to doing it again, and I hope next time I will be able to use “It will” without confusing people. I didn’t mean to shock them with such a “Queenglish” expression.