arcyoung

Tuesday, the first snow day this winter. Upon finishing this sentence, I start to question the grammatical correctness of the usage of "snow day". I am not sure about how a native speaker (or, more accurately speaking, an English major) would describe such a day. Snow day or Snowy day? I don't know. But I'm insistent about this usage because the source of the self-justification comes simply from my feelings. Because I feel I'm rightly describing this day in a way that particularly appeals to me.

It's the first snow day. Snow has been falling from sky down to the ground for quite a few hours (I'm not sure if it continues to do so at this time of evening). But it's not the first day snow makes itself appear in this city. Snow secrectly landed in an anonymous night, without notice. It hastily left us in the following morning among students' laughters, workers' busyness and elders' slowness. In this first snow day, snow dropped down smoothly riding the blowing wind, quite visibily. It unselectively landed on earth and covers the yellowish grass.The yellowish grass must have been longing for this moment for some time -- it needs snow as the comfortable blanket, as the energy source for the next life cycle to transcend death and its inevitability. People react to snow differently, though. Some, like me, are pretty excited about the arrival of delicate snowflakes, who always regard the snowfalling as a natrual performance of subtlety, delicacy, elegance and unpredicability. Some, like Jamie, are indifferent. Perhaps confined to a certain space, citizens of this snow country have developed some immunities to the changes and swiftness of snowflake dance.

I always like snow. As someone from south sub-tropical China, I'm always amazed by the beauty of snow. I like its color, which is a symbol of purity and innocence. I like its shape -- regulated and structural. There has been 10 years during which I never had any snow in winter. The most recent memory of snow in my childhood dated back to, 1991. I was 6, the first-grader. We had very heavy snow  and a lot of kids slipped down because of the road conditions. It was early 1990s -- in the south, a lot roads were built without the consideration of heavy snow. It was somewhat unusual that year. Kids made snowmen and threw to each snowballs. That's all I got in my memory. But let me talk about some more recent ones. The first time I saw snow again here in Canada was 4 years ago. It was some day in late October. I was sitting at the study desk in the Schaffer Hall. I never anticipated that snow could come so soon. But I saw it. Little, fragile and meallable, snowflakes began to cover the campus. I realized that fragile entitiies could also form a union to extert the strength. Rather happily, I thought I was the some very few lucky ones in this world to have been able to see snow again. To my surprise, most regions in China that year also got snow. It remains strange thing in my mind because somehow my dream of monoplizing the joy of living in snow was awakened. Many people back home also had the opportunity to enjoy or hate the snow. It was no longer a previlege, at least to the extent that it was scarce anymore. After a few years, it remains a previlege I guess. Because when people back home don't see snow anymore, I'm still seeing it (big time!). Though much later than usual.