spirit...

The best way I can describe how I feel is, raw. I feel emotionally fragile, like a glass vase that needs one more push before shattering all over the place. I have had to begun the process of saying goodbye to my students and my schools and it is tearing me apart.
I don't know how you real teachers do it.

I have had everything from tears to children literally running after my car as I drove out the parking lot. I am not prepared for this. I suck at saying goodbye and to have to do it so many times to so many people who have shaped my life so dramatically over this year, is breaking my heart.

Crying has become a pastime in trying to just deal with it all. I have fallen in love with this place, these people, and this culture. I am not the woman I was when I left New York a year ago and will never be that person again.

My apartment is adorned with roses given from the school I had for the last time on Friday, handmade calendars, and posters from the children. My body has felt everything from depression, to anxiety, to love in its purest form. Dare I say I might even have found religion. I wonder if standing in front of a shrine in the darkness of night, crying, thanking the Gods for the course my life has taken automatically means I am now Buddhist.The world knows I have always had spirit.