Tums & goodbyes

Today things started finally setting in as I said goodbye to my first class of students. It was my last Friday at work as next week I only work until Thursday, so my Friday afternoon honors class that I see once a week was going to have its final class with me. I didn't think anything of it, as with it being a class I only saw 4 times a month I didn't think it would bother me to say goodbye. But sure enough the nerves and the anxiety set in about an hour or two before the class started and as I walked up to the class at 5:45pm I started to get teary-eyed. I thought to myself, "Get it together, you barely even see these kids!" This is true, and I don't have any particular attachments to any of the children but it is more of the symbolism of what my first goodbye represents that was getting me all choked up.

Coming to Korea was a huge leap of faith for me and it has been such a struggle and pleasure to live here. So the end of this chapter and the end of having a class full of Korean kids staring back at me is a bit hard to swallow. I remember when I first got here I thought it was so odd to not have any American kids in my classes, but now it will be the opposite. I will get home and look around for adorable little Korean kids running up to me and speaking broken English yelling "Ms.Nikki, come look at this!" These will only be memories though. This coming week is the last week I will hear any of that.

So I am going into my last weekend here, ready to celebrate, and feeling nervous and anxious about the enormous chapter that is closing in my life. It always seemed so far off in the future that I would be going back to America, that now it seems unreal to be so close to seeing my Dad, my sister, my puppy, or my city. The nerves have been bouncing around in my stomach all day today but I'm determined not to be sad, but to celebrate the amazing year I have had. So I'm popping some tums and going to keep it moving, because Korea will always have a place in my heart even when I'm not living here.