SU XIAO DONG: I’m from Sichuan and I had a dream in the night of the earthquake. I dreamt I was on an isolated island together with some of my classmates. The water was rising, but there was a big ship that came to rescue us. Somehow a car came along and took my classmates away, but it left me behind. I screamed, the water was almost reaching up to where I was standing. I heard the noise of chain saws, then I woke up.
    When I woke up, I saw the rescue team that had come to save me. I’m going to Dongqi middle school. We were in class when the earthquake happened, I remember it was a mathematics class. We felt the house shaking, the teacher told us to run. We all stood up but in five seconds the whole building collapsed. I got buried at the very bottom. At that moment, I wished my father would come and get me out of there so I could get something to eat and then go to sleep. I waited for a long time but nobody came. Then some of my classmates and I started to scream and shout for help. But the people outside didn’t dare to start digging because there still were aftershocks all the time. Only after 20 hours or so the rescue team came and got us out.
    I was a rainy day. The rescue team put me in an ambulance and gave me first aid. Then they brought me to the residence building of Guanghan technical school. I spent the first night after the earthquake there. But there were too many patients, so the next day I was brought to a hospital in Guanghan. I stayed there for ten days but my condition didn’t improve, so I asked to be transferred to Changsha hospital. I arrived there on the 26th, together with some other patients. It was a sunny day and quite hot. All the nurses were standing by the side of the road when I arrived, I was very touched by that.
    Now, after two months of treatment, I’ve almost recovered. While I was in hospital, many people came to look after those of us who got injured in the earthquake. Later, a school’s headmaster and his secretary came to visit us and they invited us to study at their school. So after we got out of the hospital, we started going to school here. This was on the 1st of September. Now I’ve adapted quite well already, I think my classmates are pretty nice. I want to study hard so I can go to university. I want to be a scientist and build a spaceship.
    My legs, arms and back were injured from the pressure of the debris that I was buried under. Even now, some of my muscles are somewhat stiff. We didn’t have to spend any money on the medical treatment. After I came here, my father started building our own house, one month after the earthquake. Later the prices started to rise, everything is getting more expensive now so the construction goes more slowly. My mother is working in Chengdu. My father works every day and in his spare time he works on building our house.