A week from yesterday I will leave Yunomae for good. While I’m happy to be coming home and seeing everyone, it’s so incredibly tough to say goodbye to everyone here. Last week was the most emotionally challenging week I’ve had here.
It started off with saying goodbye to my ES kiddos on Wednesday. It was my last class day at that school, and I wasn’t exactly sure if I was supposed to write and deliver a speech or not. (Generally when teachers leave, there’s this big assembly for the teacher, and he/she is expected to make a teary-eyed speech.) My suspicions were confirmed when I got to school and saw my second period class scratched out of my calendar and replaced with some strange kanji. I asked my vice principal what that meant, and he confirmed it….an assembly for me. I needed to give a speech. Hello, Google translate! I quickly translated a few sentences before rushing off to my first class of the day, 6th grade.
When I walked in the door, I noticed that the backboard was covered with drawings, decorations, and the message “Thank you, Melissa-sensei!” My heart melted at that!! We played fruits basket for the whole class period, alternating between grammatical concepts learned in the past trimester. At the end of the class, one-by-one the students came up to me and gave me hand written cards to express their gratitude to me. I couldn’t help it, but my eyes teared up. Even though I couldn’t read most of them, it was such an amazing, beautiful gesture!
After that class was the assembly. Ugh! The entire school, students and teachers, sat down before the podium. My emotions were already on edge after my sweet 6th grade class. I had to sit at the edge of the stage and wait for the 6th grade teacher to say a few words about me. As I glanced out over the crowd, more tears came to my eyes. All of those cute, smiling faces tore at my heartstrings and reminded me about all the good times we’d had. I was really afraid that my Japanese grammar and pronunciation were going to be terrible during my speech, but I think that high pitch whiney/wailing sound that comes out when you cry is the same in all languages! I had to stop and pause a couple of times as I gave it to wipe my eyes because I couldn’t see the paper. Once I was finished with my speech, all of the students stood up and gave me a deep respectful bow. Then I had to walk out of the gym by myself as the students and teachers clapped and gave me one last cheer. Ugh! I was an emotional wreck!!! Once I went back to the teacher’s room, the Vice Principal, who claims to be my “Japanese father” gave me a plant and regional famous wooden toy that he had made. More tears.
My last class of the day was 5th grade. Like the 6th grade class, they had drawn on the board and made me notes. It was precious! Then as I left class, each of them wanted me to sign anything that they had…hats, notebooks, pencil cases, random pieces of paper, English books, etc. I felt like a celebrity! Then they wanted me to draw pictures of me and Ian. No shock here, but I’m not the best artist. Instead of drawing actual imagines, I drew the silliest and goofy looking couple ever. I gave Ian spiky hair and made myself cross-eyed. Ha! Ha! Ha!
At recess all of the kids wanted to play one last game of tag. It was really too hot, so we wore out quickly. Instead we decided to sit in the shade and make clover chains. A couple of the girls started playing with my hair and putting flowers in it. I didn’t stop them because they were being just too dang cute!
On Thursday it was another heaping helping of goodbyes. My final 3-1 and 2-1 was that afternoon. Since my favorite class is 3-1, it was especially hard to say goodbye to them. They are such a smart and well-behaved class! At the end of class, each one of them came up to give me a goodbye letter and shake my hand. Their letters instigated more tears. Some of them were as simple as “Goodbye, Melissa-sensei. Thanks for teaching us. Lesson was fun. Have good life in USA,” but some of them were a page length and went into more detail about what they will specifically miss and told me to return. Once again, waterworks.
I had to brush off those tears quickly because then it was off to 2-1. While I don’t often enjoy 2-1 as a whole, I do love a lot of the kids from that class. A lot of kids from that class also wrote really sweet letters, too! After reading all of these kids notes and seeing their reaction when I say that I’m leaving, I realize that I actually have made a difference here. This whole time I thought that I was just a walking tape recorder, but it turns out that I have made some pretty darn strong relationships with some of these kids and have affected their lives.
Thursday night I had my last eikaiwa with the kids. It was a cooking class, and we made pizzas! I first went to the kitchen to set down my things, but I heard movement from the normal classroom. I figured that the kids forgot about our cooking class, but when I started opening the door to the classroom, they yelled out for me to stop and told me to wait. They had arrived early to plan a surprise for me! Awwwwww….. I went back to the kitchen to prep stuff. They soon came into the kitchen and said that they would give me the surprise at the end of class. Hurray!
We busily started making pizzas for the class. I think the girls really enjoyed learning how to knead dough. I also think that they thought it was amazing that we could make pizza….from scratch. Even though the kitchen was already sweltering, we had to turn on the ovens to cook the pizza. However, we wiped the sweat from our brows and got busy rolling out dough. We ran that like a well-oiled machine. Three girls, supervised by Ian, separated the dough and rolled it out to acceptable pizza sizes. Three other girls, supervised by me, put marinara sauce on the pizzas and added toppings. The last girl, supervised by Hiromi, was in charge of the ovens and slid the pizzas in and out. We were running a little behind time, so as soon as all of the pizzas were out of the ovens, I basically was like, “EAT! EAT NOW!” I was too busy cleaning up the mess that I didn’t get to eat my pizza. Instead I bagged it up and said I’d eat it at home.
By the time we were finished picking up, the kids were already five minutes late on getting out of class, but they insisted on giving me my surprise, so they hustled back into the classroom and told me to wait. When they gave me the OK to come in, they set off party poppers. There was a huge banner on the wall that said, “Thank you, Melissa-sensei,” and the white board was covered with drawings and little notes. Each of them gave me a thank you card and even brought little presents for us. How sweet!! I gave them my presents that I had made for them as well. I could not believe how kind and considerate these girls were. They got to class EARLY and STAYED LATE just to give me the surprise that they had planned all by themselves. They didn’t have to at all, which makes the gesture that much more sweet!
I’ve still got a ton more to write about regarding goodbyes, but I’m going to end this here and separate it into two blogs. Stay tuned for more!
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