Busy times.

Well, a lot has been going on lately, but I haven't been posting to this blog much and I'm going to take some time over the next few days to rectify that.

First of all, I'm on spring break and it is friggin' sweet. I have 3 weeks off (2 of which have now passed). Nice.

So, I guess I should probably start the catching up with the end of the school year. In Japan, the school year ends in March, so I had to say goodbye to my students. Here's how that went:

As you may or may not know, I was teaching at both a junior high school and an elementary school. For reasons not entirely clear to me, I finished at the elementary school a week before the junior high, which threw my schedule into a bit of disarray. No big deal.

Saying goodbye to the elementary students was not that easy, however. I'd grown pretty attached to them over the year, especially some of the little ones, a few of whom had become totally enamored with me over the course of the year. I'll *never* forget one morning when a little boy took my hand and escorted me across the entire playground, smiling delightedly the whole time.

On my last day, I had my last class with some of the second graders. At the beginning of class, I told them, in Japanese, that it was my last day. Except for an occasional word here or there, I don't usually speak Japanese in class, but my last days at the school I made a some exceptions to that rule. So, I told them that it was my last day and then we conducted the class per usual.

A popular game with the second graders is something called "Fruit Basket." It's a form of musical chairs that is played in an inward-facing circle instead of back to back. We played the game, per usual, at the end of class, and finally the last bell rang. I scrambled of the students out of their seats for one last round of the game, and they eventually got themselves seated in their chairs again (small children aren't known, necessarily, for their rapid decision-making skills). After they'd gotten situated, I sat down, myself, in the middle of the circle, smiled, and started waving to my students.

It's a little difficult to accurately describe the moment when you realize that you could be crushed to death by a mob of screaming 2nd graders. They seem so cute and innocent, but then when they are piling on top you like a pack of crazed howler monkeys, well...it's not quite so fun then, now is it?

I make light, but it was actually extremely touching. Some of the students were crying. One kid took a hit to the mouth in all the excitement and ended up with a bloody lip. A couple of the students gave me several dozen origami cranes that they'd folded themselves. One girl gave me a handwritten note (in Japanese, of course) thanking me for teaching her and for being kind to the students.

I walked out of that school at a little after 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. As I made the long walk, for the last time, across the playground, kids from all over the playground yelled my name and waved goodbye to me. I felt a lot of love from them on that last day, and it's not something I'll ever forget.