Taj Ultimate and Tottori Farewells:

I went to play in Tajima weekend before last; this is the same tournament i took an 8-hour road trip to play in back in the summer of 2005, when I first studied abroad in Japan, though this time it was only a 2-hour trip from nearby Tottori.  Another pickup team, another great time.

We had to book it back a day early, however, for our sayonara party with the other JETs.  Some superlative awards were given (I won for best dance moves, for reasons I'm sure you all are aware of), speeches were made, but generally we just had a great time with our last hurrah as this group of JETs.

Many of us are leaving and scattering across the globe, and though the goodbyes were sad...in a strange way, I feel like leaving will make us closer.  While here we were acquaintances, forced to be something more than that by circumstance (namely, the circumstance of being part of the .5% foreign population in Tottori); should our paths ever cross again, that same shared circumstance will lend us a camaraderie in many ways greater than the sum of our time together here.  It's not just the time with each other, but the shared experience of having lived and taught here, in our Tottori, that strengthens this bond.  No tears for these farewells, but strong emotion, in large part nostalgia.

final farewells

My final day entailed three visits.  One was to an elementary school (similar to the prior post; at this one a student read a message to me in English with tears in her eyes and it was all I could do to avoid breaking down right then and there).

The other two went to my junior high schools.  Both were difficult farewells, but one was especially tough.

Of the anecdotes above and throughout the past year, most all of them have been from one school in particular.  If you recall graduation in March, I was pretty bummed to miss the ceremony at one of the schools--it's the same one.  I've come to love all of my students, but I especially relish every chance with the ones at Hatto.

...I try really really hard not to cry.  Call me bull-headed, old-fashioned, stubborn, whatever; it's an emotion I take very seriously.  I try especially hard not to cry with an audience.

I cried when I said my goodbye at Hatto. I wasn't the only one.

I thanked my students for fun classes, and for their smiles--their smiles, welcoming me from the beginning, when I was nervous about my life as a teacher in Japan.  I told them that I enjoyed seeing their energy, in class and out, and that they had gone from shy students to friends who would stop anywhere to say hello.

I told them that I was going to medical school, and that, since I was becoming a student again, we should both do our best at our studies, together.

I told them that I'd never forget them.  And I sobbed out a final "thank you".

They gave me flowers.  They gave me a book full of farewell messages. They gave me a round of applause as I left.

Elementary Goodbyes

Farewells at the elementaries were really bittersweet.  At one they had a rather elaborate ceremony* worked out, including one of the students reading to me in English (granted, he was reading it with Japanese phonetics as it was written, but still, !!) while at another they all sang to me.  Really touching stuff--mementos aplenty, with drawn-up thank you notes from all my 5th and 6th graders, complete with picutres of us together.

I was doing really really good at not crying until I was leaving one school--they accompanied me to the exit and saw me off from the parking lot; I was still good pulling out, but as I went down the hill by the school to drive away, the students started running along the top of it alongside of me, waving and shouting "goodbye!"

I could still see them in my rear view mirror as the tears welled up.