Musings from the Staff Room

Here I sit, alone in the staff room, having been required to come to school even though my Cherries have graduated and flitted away. The graduation ceremony went rather well, I think, despite desperate attempts by my boss to make everything more ritualistic than 6-year-olds needed it to be notwithstanding.

Two days before the ceremony I was informed via casual passing statement that "by the way, tomorrow is your last day of class." And here I was thinking I had all week with my kids, to tie knots in loose ends and soak up all the hugs I wanted. Nope.
So on Tuesday I told the kids to start packing up their things at the usual time. Somehow Evan had the good sense to be FILMING this whole scene. And we played one last round of the "Spider Game" (a variation of hangman that does away with death imagery), where I spelled out Goodbye Cherry Class. And when the class cheered because they guessed it right almost immediately, I completely lost it and started sobbing. And what do my kids do?

Jason: "Look! Miss Adriana's face is red!"

Yes, Jason, my face is red because I'm crying. Luckily my girls were a little more sympathetic. I had a rather difficult time trying to pry Stephanie off me. I hadn't planned on crying. Samantha, the girl whose contract ended a week after mine started, warned me it would happen. Unexpectedly. She also had issues with the administration - but leaving the kids will break your heart, she said.

I'm excited to be leaving. I'm excited to back to Ann Arbor and plan out my future, test the waters, take more risks. At the risk of making myself cringe when I reread this later: being back with Evan is all I really wanted. It just took a move to Korea to make me realize it.

Thanks Korea. I have a better idea of what I want. I'm a little better at handling the scary, unknown things in life. And I've collected all this great friend-making practice (making friends is hard!!). Time to move on