Summer Camp Is To Children What Alcohol Is To Adults

I finished teaching classes more than a week ago, but this past Thursday I was able to go to "camp" with my students for one day and night.

Before we left the school there was a dodge ball tournament and watermelon eating.




Just after we got to camp, it was already time to start getting ready for dinner, because students making their own fires and cooking their own dinners takes FOREVER!


It's a Lincoln Log fire!



The students played a quiz game after dinner. I loved the way they looked in the yellow light.



After the quiz game it was time for fireworks. It was a bit terrifying at times, kind of like a hot, flammable free-for-all!



During the late-night free time, I played the card game "daifugo" with the kids, and I even won a round! The kids saw how hard I was thinking and compared me to one of their brainiest classmates! It was a flattering comparison in my opinion!

All throughout the evening, I walked around and inserted myself into my students' conversations. It was amazing the things they told me! Crushes were whispered into my ear. One girl told me that her secret boyfriend likes to kiss. I heard the details of junior high "dating life", betrayal and so on. It blew my mind.

Apparently, summer camp is to children what alcohol is to adults! Perhaps some of the kids also realized that this was their last chance to talk to me, and to share some final connection by spilling their secrets.


Post-Card Game

The next morning, the students and teachers surprised me with a bouquet of flowers, a present, and a declaration of their love for me! What a perfect ending to camp and to my life in this town.



Bye-bye!

Sad, funny goodbyes


Well, I am done being an ALT after three years of working in Taiki Town, Japan.
Wow!

My final days at my five schools were stretched out over three weeks. I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride in a Belle and Sebastian song. I would break into tears at school, at just the thought of saying goodbye to my amazing students. Then I would actually say goodbye and cry more. Then I would walk to my car, sobbing. Then I would start driving and sob more. Sometimes I would even moan with the physical pain of the sadness and sense of loss.

I felt loved during my last days of school, but I also felt confused and at times frustrated. I suppose it was fitting, since those emotions were a normal part of my experience being the only foreigner working in my schools. I received drawings, letters, origami, posters and so on from my elementary school students. At one of my schools the students made a human tunnel with their arms that I had to walk through. I still remember when a sweet, little first grader told me that his first grade teacher and I were his favorite people in the world! Oh, melt my heart!

I knew that saying goodbye to my students would be difficult, but the reality of it was more raw and ache-y than I ever could have imagined.

I know without a doubt that coming to my little town, sight unseen, and working with these kids for three years was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I feel truly blessed by God to have experienced the good, the bad and the unbelievably blissful.





































As I drove away from the little fishing village for the last time, the clouds were heavy, like my heart.