Goodbyes

Warning- cute kids here.  These are my two 6th grade sections on our final day.  While the goodbyes were heartfelt ones all around, twelve year olds really feel things like that close to the surface.  In one class I finished reading The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell, a story I'd started a while ago.  In the other we wrote haikus- a form that makes students at home roll their eyes, but the exercise of counting syllables and making meaning in 17 of them was a novel challenge here.  Of course, there are some universals.  One boy wanted to write one about an AK47.  I said, "A poem about a machine gun?" and he didn't understand my dismay.  I reminded him that the name alone was 6 syllables thinking that might end it.  He solved the problem by writing about an AK46.  I received many sweet hand made cards, pictures, and little gifts.  All of noted that such appreciation never happens at home, although I think I recall Pape Diop, another Fulbright teacher, got the high school version of such appreciation when he left SPA and returned to Senegal.  

As usual and apt, I'm ready to come home after these five weeks.  First, it will be very nice to see family and friends again.  I'm also pretty excited to escape the humidity here.  If there was any hint of exoticism associated with monsoon season, it's certainly lost on me.  Constant sweating is straight up unpleasant. Bring on the 50 degree mornings.  I'll gladly exchange the cappucino delivered to my room for a regular coffee on the porch.