It was all hills and plains and late sunsets.

We were on a volunteer course to the suburbs of Hulunbuir, China—we, meaning most of our class. Before we set out, we joked about actually getting a vacation, and rather than doing volunteer teaching at local school we’d probably be taught.

Unsurprisingly, that is exactly the case. The few days we spent in that isolated little village are some of the most unforgettable days of my life.

We arrived after a plane ride and a long road trip. The sky, as soon as we touched down at the airport, can only be described as clear. A clear blue sky—clear, as in how you’d describe a lake. The highway was flanked by vast patches of green and distant black dots, probably horses or cows or other herd of animals. There was a rainbow also, shimmering, just bright enough to be seen.

But that’s only the beginning. What we’ve done after our arrival are the experiences that really sets us free.

At this time, I couldn’t even form words to describe the feeling of…pure freedom. Free, as in nature, as in leaving everything in the big metropolis we just left and embrace this calming life on the village. Because the roads were simple, dusty, some corners filled with dirt or wild grass. Because the shops were rather old and even smelled typically like an old grocery store. Because we can encounter our students—the kids we taught at the local school, which is also the only school in the village—and also we encounter goose and cows and horses. Because just walk over the bridge or a dry riverbed you can reach the hills and climb to the top, only to discover more hills beyond. Because this is everything we haven’t had the pleasure to experience ever before, and that’s the regret of living in a big modern city. Because at night we rushed out from our dorms onto the school playground and look up, and oh there’s stars and stars and the stars.

Clear clouds, sunset at eight p.m., jewels on the night canvas, lights shining at the rim of the hills and casting light over the flat rooftops, laying on the grass, sitting on the parallel bars in the afternoon chill, running uphill and up the ground spattered with green and brown, the river that is said to be beyond the hills, the old railway tracks, the stars, and all the stars.

We’ve been taught. We’ve been punched in the face by the fact we can relax—like we never have know before. I still believe that the place is a true blessing. As we run across the playground with the students, as we walked down the grey roads only to hear the boys riding a borrowed cargo motorbike catching up behind us, as we stood under the velvet black and pointed out the north star, we were free.

It sounds easy. It sounds it’s easy to get there, to that state of mind. But nowhere else have I ever again, since we left Hulunbuir and back to our big city, feel such careless and free.

I’ve considered going back. We’ve all talked about wanting to return. But in the end no one did—it feels like disrupting a sacred memory, because when you go back expecting something you can get upset easily. This is not what we’d want. So we refrain from going back.

The plains and the village live in my mind only now, and there they stayed. There we laughed carelessly. There we’re warranted to not think about school and work and future. There we live and we only live in the present and what the present offered. There is my plain.