This is a response to a writing prompt given to second period.

Tromp! Tromp! Tromp! I clumped across the bridge crossing the Lipniczanka every day, and Monday through Friday, it was the beginning of my favorite time of day. Crossing over the small creek that ran through Lipnica Wielka, the village in which I lived for seven years, was a moment of accomplishment: it was the end of the school day, and I seldom crossed that bridge feeling I’d wasted my day.

Teaching in Lipnica gave me an opportunity to see daily improvement: a student who couldn’t say “I would like a loaf of bread” the day before would be able to say it that day; a class that didn’t understand a particular tense the day before could begin using it that day. Learning was immediately evident in the English classroom, and it always gave me something to smile about as I walked down the gravel drive that led to the house where I rented a room.

It was more than the sense of accomplishment, though. The bridge I crossed daily offered a lovely view of the Lipniczanka it flowed down from Babia Gora, its mountain source, through the village, behind the church. In the winter, with the creek frozen and covered with powder, I couldn’t help but stop almost daily and look at the snow–laden trees that drooped over the creek, with the snow–covered church in rising above the trees in the background. It was as if the world had been powered with sugar at a galactic bakery, and I was lucky enough to see it every day.

Crossing the Lipniczanka reminded me daily about the purposefulness of even the most trivial events in our lives. “Every step I’ve taken has led up this moment, this thump, thump, thump of boots as I cross the bridge–a seemingly inconsequential act,” I would think as I crossed the bridge. I would trace the steps–literal and figurative–that had led me to that day, and I knew that everything in my life prior to that had led me to that moment of walking across the bridge, savoring the view and the sense of accomplishment. The realization gave way to something more significant: the understanding that everything in my life happens for a reason, leads to something knew, and that ironically enough, I can control it.