Sun Dong felt lonely.

The first grader of Beichuan Middle School sat on his new bed, waiting for his classes to resume.

After May 12, the day his school was destroyed by the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, the 17-year-old no longer has dreams of becoming a pilot. Instead, Sun wants to be a doctor because physicians can heal the pains of his classmates.

Due to last week's quake, Sun will have an extra month to prepare for his college entrance examinations that will help bring him one step closer to reaching his new-found medical aspirations.

Sun was the first to be saved among his class of teachers and students that dark afternoon. He is the only male survivor of his class.

Most of his classmates are still missing. Some were supposedly dug out from beneath the rubble, but Sun has not seen any of them.

The only classmate he has seen these days is Xie Xin. The two tried hard to recall the horrible memory and the names of all their teachers and classmates.

"Headmaster Zhang Ping is alive," Sun said. "I saw him the day before yesterday. He had some abrasion, but his wife and son died. He is very sad."

Xie told Sun their English teacher Huang Ying is okay. But, Sun's head lowered when Xie told him their Chinese language teacher Sheng Qirong was not so fortunate in the quake.

The two recalled the names of their classmates one by one. Mu Kun, Mu Huan, Tang Yun, Fu Xianxu, Zhang Xi, Mao Shunyun - then they stopped, biting their lips. They could not continue.

Sun and Xie's senior schoolmates came out of the disaster far luckier. While half of the high school's 2,600 students lost their lives, all of the 509 third grad high school students survived. In the suburbs of Mianyang, they are resuming their studies in a factory-training center.

Staff members drove to Beichuan to fetch the old sign belonging to the school. When the teachers and students saw the board marked Beichuan Middle School of Sichuan Province, many could not stop tears from streaming down their faces.

Yang Chao has a clear memory of the earthquake seven days ago. The Chinese language teacher was commenting on a quiz when the desks and chairs started to shake.

"I thought it was someone's mischief at first," he says.

But, soon he saw the lights on the ceiling were quaking, too. The teacher shouted to his students to keep calm. Another teacher rushed to their classroom from outside. Moments later, the five-floor building collapsed and the first and second floors crumbled into a pile of ruins. Smoke filled Yang's classroom on the third floor.