ESS Farewell Party

After a week, I was finally allowed access to my classroom again by ESS.

The surprise farewell party was supposed to start around 9 (was tipped off by another teacher...), but I got pulled into the Principal's office in the morning for a small ceremony when I was on my way to the room. The situation was actually sort of funny. The prefecture gave me an official certificate of appreciation for spending 3 years in this school, so Kocho Sensei (the Principal), Kyoto Sensei (Vice Principal) and the head officer all stood in a line and congratulated me formally while I bowed and accepted the document. It was just the 4 of us and I kind of wanted to giggle because it was so formal for just a small ceremony, but I kept it professional and did my bows before running off to find the ESS girls.

When I got to the classroom, I knocked on the door, it opened a crack and an eye peered out to see who was there. I heard some shuffling and then the door was opened all the way so I could come in.

I was so impressed by my girls! Wow! They bought a ton of food for us to have while we hung out with, painted a sign, decorated the chalkboards and even prepared a little speech and had presents for me. I was especially blown away when Rachel and Hiroko gave me LUSH bath bombs (with rose buds in the middle) - LOVE them!! Awesome. Tsutsumi Sensei also gave me a really cool windchime and some playing cards with scenes from Japan on them. Treasures. They will definitely be moving to Boston with me. We went through all the places on the cards, too, and I think there were only 3 or 4 famous sites in the deck that I haven't seen yet... good icebreaker for home if anyone wants to know more about Japan:-p

I was talking to the girls about their new foreign English teacher (who will be replacing me) and some thing they could do with her, when I realized I still had 2 of the pinatas I made in Febrary left that we never used. I told them they should throw a welcome party and use them, but the girls didn't really know what a pinata was so we ended up filling it up with snacks, sewing up the bottom right then and there and using them ourselves. I put a bunch of pennies inside it, too, and each girl that got a penny also got a nicer prize (some candles, soap and candy I had never used but picked up on my travels here). I actually already had a hook on the ceiling from when I first planned to do the activity with the club last February, but the adhesive wouldn't stick with the humidity and it kept falling, so we improvised and I stood on a desk and held up the string while the girls swung the bat. Fun times!

After about 3 hours, we ended the party with one last hour of scary stories (lights off, curtains pulled... just like a middle school slumber party... haha). Most of the Japanese stories they told were pretty similar to the ones we told growing up in the States (guy with the hook in the back of the car, etc, etc), but everyone was a little jumpy after a few of them. Even I jumped and screamed at the end of one of them!!

When it was time to say goodbye, I think it hit me for the first time that I was really saying goodbye to my students for the last time. I almost started crying, but gotta say I am so lucky to have such awesome students. Great party. And an awesome 3 years.