Galentine's Day...Navaka's Version

This Wednesday was a day a lot of people look forward to each year, a day where you get to express your love for your loved ones and be able to tell them how much they mean to you. Everyone has their own way of expressing it, whether it’s through cards, candy, or other gifts. Not everyone has dates though, and so my friends and I celebrate it in an even more special way. Galantine’s Day!

Being at a rigorous school, it’s always fun when there are special fundraisers for gifts and other items we can get for our friends. This time, in the occasion of Valentine’s Day, the fundraiser was about presents, where you could buy cards, a small teddy bear, flowers or a Hot Wheels car as a present for one of your close ones at school. So, my friends and I all marched towards the line gathering in the middle of the 1st floor, right by the main office. My friends and I got each other cards and flowers, smiling and laughing as we stared at the arrays of pink, blue and yellow cards we could choose from. There were fruit shaped stickers with pickup lines, spiderman inspired cards, and my most favorite, 3D race-car cards.

For me, Valentine’s Day is not just about having a great group of friends and family, but more about looking back at all the memories you’ve made with them, and how far you’ve come. At least for me, there have been different groups of people in my life each year. This was after I moved to the USA and established myself with a group of friends. When I moved to high school, a world full of new people opened up to me, and then I changed schools again, repeating the cycle. Everything in my life has given me new experiences I can’t forget, and it’s what I celebrate during Valentine’s Day, because those experiences are my favorite things in the whole world.

Speaking of memories, whether good or bad, we also spent the day of love taking a practice AP test for the sophomore class, environmental science. Since AP classes are college level, we must take a test in May, which covers all of the units we learned over the course of the year. To be able to do that though, like always before any tests, we need practice. This is why all the sophomores were pulled out of our normal periods 1-4 and taken to a bigger room to take the test.

As we crowded around the doors before they opened, a spackle of pink and red clothes as I tried to wade through the crowd to reach my friends, I was quickly informed by them that the best way was to get a seat at the table. Otherwise, you would have to sit on the bleachers (which are pull open chairs ordered one after the other on the sides, without a desk) and manage to hold 4 booklets of paper on a pad, maneuvering your way from the question sheet to the answer sheet.

As the doors had just began to open, I rushed to the front of the room and scored a desk and settled in the seat next to one of my friends. Now all that was left to do was just start the test, I thought as I stared at the multiple choice and free response booklets I would be filling out for the next three hours of my life. As if AP Environmental Science was my one true love, I started the day by taking the test, arms clenching as I wrote my free response in my best handwriting, glad that it was going well.

As we finished the test and piled it in the front of the room, the room got chattery as everyone started discussing about how it went. We slowly started tumbling out of the room like hay on a lazy summer day. Already being late to 5th period, everyone quickly said bye and rushed out in all directions, casting the test aside and enjoying the last few hours before break. As 7th period rolled around, the last one before school ended for the day, we were all but tired to receive our gifts for Valentine’s Day. We were all supposed to get our goodies then, me eagerly wait for the cards and flowers my friends had gotten me, to be able to read what they had written.

When my teacher started handing them out, one after the other, moving around the desks in order to get the gift to its recipient I was buzzing with energy, wondering when my name would be called out. It turned out that I didn’t have to wait that long, as my teacher slowly made his way to me, handing me my first card, then my second (a flower), all the way to my 7th one, this being a car! The last one was a total surprise, because I wasn’t expecting to receive one from my friends. I was smiling as I opened all of the cards, smiling till my cheekbones started hurting, but I still didn’t stop. Giddy, my friends and I took pictures together, another one of our events stored in our phones as memories to cherish as we got older.

As the day came to an end, I was filled with gratefulness and compassion for that same tight knitted group of friends who will tease me with a crush or engage in friendly competition but will always be by my side through thick and thin. Happy Valentine’s Day! - Navaka

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