A girl was running to the school, she was late for the first class of the day. The school was starting at 9:00 AM, and it was 9:05 AM already. She was thinking of excuses that she can make when the teacher asks, “Why are you late Elizabeth?”. She was almost there, last right turn and 50 meters to the entrance of the building. Her school was a small village school far from the city, the students were mostly poor families’ children. The school had only five classrooms and one teachers room, and of course two restrooms, one for boys and one for girls. That was all under the Village School’s roof. Right, there wasn’t any principle’s room or any meeting room, the principle of the school was one of the teacher’s. His name is Jack, Jack is a nice, responsible teacher with good skills in any subject except math, he was never good with numbers. And the classrooms door knocks…

The teacher opened the door, Elizabeth was fifteen minutes late for her first class of the day which was an English class. The students looked at Elizabeth, they were so excited to see her. She was so nice, beautiful girl with a long wavy blondie hair. Some of the girls from the back waved their hand to say hi to Elizabeth. She sat down and started to listen to the teacher. English classes were so boring, the teacher was a huge man with a tiny sneakers shoes. When he walks to any of his classes, the students were starting to look at his little shoes and his huge body, they were trying to understand how can little, tiny legs are carrying that huge body. And the first bell of the day rings. It was break time.

Elizabeth and her best friends ran to the windows to watch the train passing. It was sunny day outside; the sun was reflecting from the lake between the railroad and the school. There was a train passing everyday from this little village. And each time it passes the kids were running to the windows the watch that exciting moment. The big black rocket flying on the ground from east to west, and sometimes from west to east. Even little kids were running outside of their houses to see the train. There was big coffee house by the lake side, old people were drinking some coffee and reading newspapers, the train passing was even making them excited. They were putting their newspapers, books, chess games on side and looking at the train and waving their hands. And the last bell of the day rings.

It was almost sunset, the sky was filled with shades of red. And further from the sun, the darker it gets. The moon was already up there waiting for the sky to get dark to reflect sun’s light to people of this little village. Elizabeth was at their house’s veranda, looking at the moon and imaging herself in ten years, then in twenty years, then in thirty years… She was only ten years old now. She was laying on the ground, her eyes were wide open. The weather was amazing, after the sunny day. After an hour. She was dreaming to get on that train and go far away, to a place where she can make her dreams come true. This village was so quiet, she wanted more. She wants travels places, get a better education and become a writer. She wants to write books and with the income from the books, she wants to build a new school in this village to give better education to other people. This school will not only teach young kids, it will also give reading and writing classes to old people. This school will also have extra programs such as astronomy lectures, reading hours, writing poem classes and more for interested people. Her dreams were so grand, much bigger than her little eyes. She fell asleep under the sky, under the shiny moon, under the beautiful stars, under her amazing dreams.

After twenty years…

Elizabeth is looking from the window of the school she built with some of her friends from college. It is a sunny day, with partly cloudy. And the black train is coming through the mountains. And it slows down, then in couple minutes it stops. There are people hugging their friends at the train station, waving hands to their children that are going to the town, and kissing their lovely ones from their eyes.

A few tears dribble down from Elizabeth’s eyes.