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I Miss the House Where I Grew Up
Lin Yen which is located on the southwest coast of Taiwan, where I grew up, is a small, peaceful village. My family moved there from Kaohsiung the summer when I was six. I still remember the house I lived in, but my family left there for Taipei, where the capital is, when I was ten. Later, when I was studying at the university, the house was destroyed by a tropical typhoon. All my childhood was spent there, and it is very hard for me to forget the time when I lived there. To me, this was the most wonderful place in the world. My mother was a teacher in the elementary school, where she taught after graduating from the teacher training school. All her students, whom I always played and chatted with, were very kind to me. My father worked in a plastic factory, which produced various buttons, and he always brought many colorful and specific-shaped buttons to my siblings and me. We helped him choose which shapes and colors were more beautiful and attractive. My parents had a mango orchard, which was 500 meters away from my house and near a river where the farmers planted watermelons by the riverbank. It was my favorite place. My cousins, who lived nearby, always played hide-and-seek and picked mangos with me there. In the summer, we went to the river and stole watermelons. I will never forget the satisfied smiles of a group of tikes. They looked so innocent. My classmates and I sometimes went fishing and swimming in the river. We competed and had a lot of fun. In the winter, the farmlands were dormant, and we baked sweet potatoes over burning briquets. My grandpa usually put a leaf above the ground, where the sweet potatoes were to tell if they were done. My relatives, including my family members, gathered together to cook a lot of special food. These memories are so vivid; it's as if they just occurred yesterday. I cannot let go of my memories of what happened at that time. My parents, my siblings, and I still miss the happy times when we lived in Lin Yen. It is definitely a delightful childhood memory, one that brings me a lot of joy.
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