Undergraduate / 'Summers with senior citizens' - common app short essay - volunteering [3]

Hi :) this common app short essay has to be 150 words or fewer.
i wrote about vounteering for community service.
mine is currently 216 words, and i cannot make it shorter =( ahhhh
please take a look! Thank you :)
also please give me a feedback =) Thanks!

On Friday afternoons, I meet senior citizens at Sunrise Senior Center and play piano and flute. Challenges abound in Alzheimer's care: someone needs to use the bathroom every second or is so sick that calling 911 is necessary. At first, the time I spent there seemed meaningless. However, after observing a resident's tears, I never again thought about quitting.

One day, I played Take Me Home, Country Roads. After the performance, Mary, a resident, moved next to me. Tears streamed down her face. She said, "Will you play this song again?" I nodded and began to sing and play again.

As the song approached the climax, I stopped. I moved Mary's wheelchair beside the piano and said, "Mary, I need your help to finish this song. Would you hold my hand?" She held it in both of hers. We successfully finished the song. No longer crying, Mary looked satisfied. The manager said, "You made Mary think of this place as home."

I still spend my Fridays with senior citizens. A moment with these citizens gratifies me. They gave me precious opportunities to discover myself and realize a different aspect of life. They enriched my life with innocence and love. Next year, I'll find a new home that's miles away, but they'll always be by my side.

Undergraduate / "struggling to comprehend my nemesis" - a significant experience [2]

Hi, Gloria :)
I wrote my common app long essay!
It's about me learning about sarcasm because as a foreign student, it was confusing.
However, this challenge transformed me, and all that =)
please revise any grammar mistakes =)
Also, if you could give me a feedback about this essay, that would be great!
Thank you very much!
Have a nice day =)

*Also, I replaced lines ____ for people's names.

For the last five years, I have been struggling to comprehend my nemesis residing in America. This nemesis has been a source of great challenge and pain.

One day, ____, my sophomore English teacher, was a substitute for my math class. When I walked into the classroom about ten minutes late, I was perplexed. Everyone in the class including ____ looked upset. As I placed my heavy backpack on the ground, ____, one of my classmates, said, "___, we just had a pop quiz, and everyone failed it." I was intimidated. Moreover, ___, one of the best students in class, noted, "That was the hardest quiz ever."

____ asked me to take out a piece of paper and to have a seat while he prepared for the projector. I closed my eyes and slowly took a deep breath. Then, when I looked around the room, some students hesitated to make eye contacts with me for some reason, and Tiernan, looking back and forth between ____ and me, couldn't stop laughing.

"I am ready to take the quiz." I said. When he turned on the projector, nothing appeared. While I waited for him to put up the questions, ___ went in front of the classroom and used his two hands to make an acute angle. Then, he said, "Determine sine, cosine, and tangent of the angle I am making with my hands." Looking at the hands, my mind went blank; all I felt was an F on my quiz. As I strived to find the answers, I pictured myself a protractor to approximate the angle. After pondering for five minutes, I made the educated guess. As I was typing the numbers into the calculator, everyone including ____ burst into a laugh. At first, I was puzzled. Then, a smile spread across my face. I was relieved. "Oh, you were making a sarcastic humor."

This indeed turned out to be an unbelievable learning experience for me. Moving to America from Korea made me much more open-minded and whetted my appetite to learn about different cultures and sense of humors. Although this taught me a great deal about recognizing sarcastic humor as a part of American culture, in the end its greatest lesson was about life.

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." said Lao Tzu. I took a single step by adjusting to ____ High School in America. Now, a journey of a thousand miles is awaiting me in college. I am ready for a new environment, a new class to be a part of, and a new adventure.