Cleaning house

I just finished cleaning out my desk, sorting through the files on this old, slow PC, writing a letter to the next native speaker (not a Fulbrighter---a woman from New Zealand who I actually met back in August and played ultimate frisbee with a couple times). I remember so vividly coming into this room for the first time, and sitting down at my new desk, and seeing the post-it on my monitor from the last ETA, telling me the password to log in. And reading the letter from that ETA, a handsome Korean-American guy, devoutly Christian, who knew exactly what he wanted to do with the next 10 years of his life (I mean it, he actually did a 10-year plan type lesson with his classes).

Tomorrow is my actual last day at school, but all there's really going to be is an end of semester ceremony and then I'm going to say a few words to the teachers, and there'll be a lunch or party of sorts in my honor. I think I'm dealing with my anxiety over leaving by being alternately irritable and melancholy (and worrying too much about the gifts I'm bringing back for my family, and who I should get good-bye gifts for here in Korea). I haven't gotten too emotional with any of my classes, because I know if I did, we'd just start feeding off of each other and we'd all get sentimental and I'd probably end up in tears. Not that that would be a bad thing in and of itself, but I think the students and teachers would probably be more uncomfortable than appreciative. But it might make me feel better, and be sort of appropriate if I did burst into tears at least once before I leave Korea, since I cried suddenly and unexpectedly last summer when saying good-bye to both parents, at different times.

Might as well get sentimental. I said good-bye to the kids at SOS, the place I volunteer once a week, except I felt horrible afterwards because I decided at the last moment to make that particular day my last day and I don't think all the kids knew it. And also because I'm going to miss those kids a lot, those hyperactive, somewhat bratty but brilliant kids. So I'm going back to SOS one more time, a couple days before I leave Korea, to have the little good-bye party with them that I'd always pictured I'd have. To do it right this time I guess, though it feels too sentimental because I know it won't necessarily make it easier, and maybe I'm just doing it because I hope they'll seem less indifferent this time. Even 10 year-olds try to play it cool, I guess, it's not just me.

This afternoon I'm going to go to the noraebang (singing room) with some students from one of my favorite classes. That feels like the proper way to say good-bye, laughing and making a fool of myself and pretending that life is normal and I might see them all when classes start again. But instead I'll be in Portland, probably still looking for a job. The world keeps turning but I'm on the other side of it.