The end is near...

...and I'm so not ready.

If only the apocolypse people had been right and the world ended with the Mayan calendar (although, really, who can blame a society for not projecting a calendar with prophesized epochs past the next few thousand years? ...even soothsayers must go on vacation sometime. I would've after the first 1,000 years of predictions).

But no, I wasn't saved from moving internationally by the end of the world, although the devastation wrought by saying goodbye to all 300 of my students (spread out at 4 elementary schools and 2 junior high schools) feels like pretty much the same thing.

They are so damn adorable. O asked me last week if it was illegal to take one home. I'm sewing seatbelts on the inside of my suitcases, and there's a waitlist. Although the 5-6th grade girls at the elementary school I said goodbye to yesterday (Toyo) had a better idea-- "We want to be with you forever." "You don't have to leave-- you can come live with me!"

..an idea I'd gladly take her up on if I didn't think her parents would be greatly surprised by a gaijin moving in.

There have been many touching moments in my last 2 weeks of farewells. At my next-to-last day at Hitakatsu elementary school, when I got a bit teary over my school lunch while sitting with 3rd graders but was trying to hold it in to not alarm them, one of them said, "You know, if you feel like crying, you should cry."

I've seen junior high school kids and 6th grade boys cry during our last class together. I've seen kids fall apart over their prepared farewell speeches (one class wrote theirs entirely in romanji, the western-alphabetized version of the Japanese language, and many kids had trouble reading what they wrote... but other kids just got too choked up). Yesterday the girl who told me to come live with her completely broke down in front of the whole school during my farewell ceremony and sputtered through her speech. I broke the unofficial no-touch rule with a big bear hug after she got through it. (She's at the top of the waitlist for room in my suitcases.)

I've never felt so much love as I have in the past 2 weeks.

I love my family, I love my friends... but my students here have completely stolen my heart. Teachers who have taught on the mainland say that Tsushima students, especially mine (the ones in the far reaches of the north), are special. They're naive. They act like kids, unlike their American counterparts who are forced into grown-up responsibilities when they should still be playing with toys. They believe me when I say my house in America is haunted.

And so every day for the past 2 weeks has been like junior high school graduation in late March, but worse, because I'm the one leaving all of them. Looking into their faces when I say goodbye, I can't remember why I'm leaving. Surely nothing could be more important than staying there and teaching them until they graduate or until I'm kicked out of Japan for overstaying my visa/length of time with the JET Program.

There are reasons, of course. I'm getting older, and going to grad school sooner rather than later would be good. While the kids are great, the other teachers can be difficult to work with. Many of my close teacher-friends left this March (transferred to the mainland or other schools), so it would probably be lonely staying on another year without them or at the very least difficult to make new friends. O is leaving this year, too, and there can be no replacing him.

So I'm soaking in all of the kids' farewell tears and handshakes and high-fives and impromptu 1-2nd grade hugs/let's-cling-to-Kimberly-sensei's-limbs sessions. I'm going to grad school to eventually teach at the college level, but I'll never get this kind of farewell from my students again.

In the past 2 weeks, I've been showered with bags of origami and handwritten notes from the elementary kids, some with precious stickers folded inside. The schools have given me quite a number of presents, too. I've gotten an apron styled with kimono fabric patterns, a Tsushima ink-stone, a rather large artistic representation of jizo statues with inspirational phrases, a mug, a teddy bear fashioned from kimono scraps, a couple of bags, a calendar with more jizo statues (I really like jizo statues ^^), a desk-weight with a picture of the Korean coastline at night behind Tsushima, two bouquets of flowers, and a shiny medallion fashioned from origami which was fastened around my neck (bestowed Olympic-medal-style) by one of my special-ed kids (who not only came out to cheer for me during the Kokkyo Marathon but got driven by a relative so he could cheer from outside of his home AND close to the finish line). Oh, and countless small posterboards of group class messages/thank-yous. And just today, a cute amulet/decorative pouch hand-stitched by a student who hasn't been to one of my English classes in over a year because she's depressed and doesn't attend any classes (she comes to school occasionally and has private lessons in the nurse's office, which I have not been asked to attend). Her gift came with a hand-made, pop-up thank-you card, which featured leprechauns and also said, "Happy St. Patrick's Day." I ambushed her with a hug and hoped she wouldn't regret making me a present because of it.

And so, going into my last day at school tomorrow, I'm a bit of a wreck. I haven't packed for my Kyoto/Cambodia trip yet, although that shouldn't take more more than an hour. But given the unexpectedly large influx of presents, with most of them having a certain level of fragility or weight issues, I'm also behind on packing to go back to America.

Luckily I've also been having a bit of insomnia lately, so packing-wise I should be able to be ready in time to go on vacation.

I think my heart needs another couple of months, though, and it's not going to get it.