Mô tả ký ức thời thơ ấu — IELTS Speaking Part 2

The happy memory I'll talk about is going to my grandparents' house in the countryside every summer, and specifically the afternoons there. It was in Ben Tre, about two hours from where we lived. My parents would drop us off in June and collect us in August, which as an adult I now realise was partly childcare. Who was involved was me, my sister, and about six cousins of roughly the same age. That number matters — with eight children nobody organised anything, so we just went outside after lunch and came back when we were hungry. Why does it make me happy? Not the big things. What I remember is very specific and quite small: the sound of the ceiling fan in the afternoon, the smell of the mat we slept on, and the fact that nobody knew exactly where we were for hours at a time and nobody worried about it. That last part is what I think I actually miss. It wasn't that we were doing anything remarkable — mostly we were in the canal, or arguing. It's that there was no schedule and no way to reach us. My nephew is eight now and I can't think of a single hour in his week that isn't accounted for. So the memory is happy, but I'll admit it's also a bit sad, because I don't think it's available anymore.