Goodbye to Snowy Michigan

There's many different ways this blog could have gone and many beginnings that were created depending on the day. For example, had I written this blog on my first day of travel, I would have spoken about the delayed and cancelled flights from Santiago to New York and the kind teachers who let us stay the night with them and gave us a ride to the airport the following morning. Had I written this blog when I arrived in Michigan, I would have talked about the joys of seeing my family again including my niece and nephew and the joy of seeing their smiling faces and their pleads to play with them or chase them around the house, or even sled down the hills with them. Had I written this blog throughout Christmas break, I could have written about visiting my grandparents in Illinois, or the excitement of Christmas day with my family or even the freezing cold snow that I was blissfully unaware of in the Dominican Republic. A las, I write this blog on the eve of my departure, so my thoughts are more focused on goodbyes, the happy goodbyes such as to the cold weather and the sadder goodbyes to my family and friends.

It has been a great Christmas break and I am very much looking forward getting back to warm Jarabacoa and seeing friends there again, but to get there you have to travel the road of goodbyes and sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones you don't see coming. It strikes me as odd, but a hard goodbye for me this winter break is saying goodbye to my students, not my current students, but my ones I had two to three years ago. It's amazing how all it takes is one year for students to imprint themselves on your heart forever.

One of the hardest parts of coming to JCS in the beginning was leaving my students behind and even though it's been two years, I'm still humbled by how much we still mean to each other. I enter the school and I hear my name being echoed down the hallways first in whispers and then louder and louder almost as a chant. Then come the hugs because even though we've grown in so many ways, we're still a family as well. Even though they've grown taller and their voices have dropped and they now know how to tie their shoes, to me they're still mine.


 I understand now why students have the same reaction to seeing their teacher year after year even though they are no longer the children they once were. During our year together they changed me, I changed them and together we became a family.

So, to all the teachers out there, wherever you are . Thank you, you are making a difference and your work means something because there are students who perhaps are now adults themselves who still think of you fondly for how you changed a little piece of their life forever.