Elegy

The first year I lived in Korea, I had a dream that my dad had died.  It scared me - I woke panicked in the night, so scared that the worst had happened that I immediately called home.  My dad answered the phone, reassured me that everything was okay, that a dream was just a dream, and told me to go back to sleep.

I wish it was still just a dream.

A week and a half ago, my sister-in-law called as school was finishing for the day.  It took me a second to realize that it was the middle of the night in the US, after which came panic, and finally heartbreak.  My dad was gone.

I've been trying to figure out how to talk about this for the last week.  When my siblings and I were trying to write his obituary, words failed me.  How do you sum up the life of the most influential man in your life?  How can you narrow down all the things he's done with just a few sentences.  It turns out, you can't really understand the impact your parents have on you until you're faced with losing them.  It feels like I never talked much about my dad, but when he got sick last fall, all the things he'd ever done for me hit hard.  He taught me how to gently pet a kitten, after my first cat had babies.  When I was a fifth grader obsessed with the Legend of Zelda, he made me a triforce in his tool shed.  I remember getting sick one night when nobody else was awake, and him holding my hair out of my face while I threw up.  There were so many little memories that I took for granted as they happened, whose weight I finally understood.

When I was in college, he would drive to Kansas City without a moment's hesitation, whether it was because I couldn't hear after falling down stairs or because my car window wouldn't roll up.  I also think this was one of the reasons he was so worried when I first decided to live overseas, but after he saw that he wasn't going to have to fly to Korea to get me out of trouble, I think he was proud of me for the life I chose.

While he was taking me to the ER or after fixing my window, he told stories.  Everyone in the family knew about the job he had driving the bread truck - he talked about it quite a bit - but I got the special Kansas City edition of his "misspent youth" - stories about fights in bars and how he used to live across the street from that radio tower, so he could always find his way home.  When I asked him if he'd ever told these stories to Shaggy, he just laughed.  I'm guessing he wasn't worried about them inspiring his innocent Mormon daughter to try and surpass them.  

My Dad was the second of four brothers, and he had lots of stories about them, too.  In spite of that - or maybe because of it - he never treated me any differently than Shaggy.  We both got to go on motorcycle rides around Kansas City - and own our own little dirt bikes, when we were a little older and living on the farm in Excelsior.  Me being a girl didn't change anything.  I couldn't fish to save my life, but that didn't matter.  I still got to go fishing with him at Roaring River when we went down to the farm, and if I spent all my time at the hatchery feeding the fish instead of catching them, he didn't mind.  We went on float trips, too - in fact, the love I have for nature and any of the skills that might help me to survive if I were suddenly dropped in the wilderness are because of how my dad raised me.

My dad loved animals.  I don't think I can remember a time when we didn't have pets.  When a Himalayan kitten was dumped on their doorstep, he proclaimed that it was his cat.  A few years ago when the black lab he got for Game Boy died, he got the same kind of dog I remember my own grandparents having - a Border Collie he named Joe and proceeded to spoil.  My dad drove that dog all over the countryside, to the point where he couldn't drive his truck without Joe wanting to go for a ride.  He grew up with Dirt Devil and especially Princess, and was the reason they came to call my dad "Grandpa Joe."

I never wanted for a thing, because my Dad worked so hard to provide for us.  Christmas was always magical - waiting to see what would be under the tree.  One year I begged for a piccolo.  I left the one gift that I thought might be my piccolo to open last, and I can only imagine how tickled he was when I fell for his trick - he put some shirts on top of it, so that I was disappoined and then ecstatic when I dug in and found it.  

The Christmas before the pandemic he messaged me before I came home to make sure I brought my camera.  He had this great vision for the next year's Christmas card photo - had even driven more than a hundred miles out of the way to get the most important prop - an honest-to-goodness toboggan long enough for all five of his grandchildren to sit on.  Only, we hadn't got much snow - there was only a bit that hadn't yet melted.  We did the best we could with it, and laughed about it later.

The last year I stayed at home, my dad retired from Union Pacific, where he had worked my whole life.  For some reason, Shaggy and Babysis started talking about a trip to Mexico with their spouses, and this turned into the last family vacation before the grandkids - the last one we all took together.  It was different from the way I'd come to travel, but also familiar.  He was always a fan of driving, taking the long way round and stopping at roadside attractions.

My dad is probably responsible for my love of spicy food.  When Shaggy and I were still the only kids, a Mexican place in Excelsior called El Lazarro was the dinner out of choice, and that became a theme that ran throughout the history of our family.  Even better was the salsa he made himself, using the tomatoes, onions, and peppers he grew in the garden.  It was a challenge for him to get his kids to help out with weeding and picking vegetables, which I think made it even sweeter when the grandkids enjoyed those chores and eagerly helped him out, the last summer that he put in a garden.

When I sat down to try and figure out my taxes again a week or two ago, I remembered how he did that for me the first year I lived overseas.  He researched the forms an expat needed, filled them out, and sent them to me in South Korea to sign.  Here it is twenty years later and I still don't really know what I'm doing.  But he knew.  He never did make it overseas to visit me, but I know he read this blog, because he told me once he was printing my posts to take to my great-uncle JD to read.  When I started looking for photos of my dad so that I could put this post together, I felt like an asshole, because I'd missed so much time with him.  Unlike Shaggy and Babysis, I didn't have a wedding or grandkids, or so many other moments of my life that he was a part of.  Unlike Gameboy, I wasn't here for him through these last few years, watching ball games and taking care of the animals. I know that's going to keep bothering me even as my grief becomes less sharp in the coming weeks and months.  But at the same time, he was always there to pick me up, and made more early morning trips to drop me off at the airport than I can remember.

As I sit here waiting to take one more trip back, I can't help remembering all the friends I knew who lost a parent living overseas.  It hurts even more than I thought it would, this great fear that has finally manifested.  But there's solace, too.  There's this week that was spent remembering him with my family, letting the grief sublimate into something less sharp, to become another memory of him, even if it's the first one marked by his absence.

I love you, Dad, and I'll miss you.

Week Without Socks

Before I get this party started, I feel like I should begin with a few disclaimers.  For starters, this blog takes a generally overdramatic approach to humor.  And uses a LOT of cursing.  If you're here you probably already know that, but it bears repeating.  Secondly, I hate hospitals.  Like, medical stuff in general is just squicky.  If I could go the rest of my life without ever having to interact with a doctor again, that would suit me perfectly.  And finally, my doctors were excellent.  While parts of my experience weren't entirely to my liking, the two doctors I primarily interacted with (the gynecologist and the interventional radiologist) were fantastic and - possibly most importantly - very patient with my histrionics.  Which is why I have left out names...this post is more about experiencing a fairly major medical procedure as an expat (I know, I know...I don't really write about the expat stuff much these days, but this was a doozy of an experience, and I thought it was worth writing about).

The previous paragraph makes it sound like I don't go to the doctor much, and that's definitely not wrong.  I DO avoid doctors (they can't tell you you're dying if you don't go to them in the first place), but it's not like I've never been to one overseas.  Actually, I think I've actually seen a doctor in every country I've ever lived in, not only for the standard visa health check, but for some small ailment or other.  Foot pain.  Constipation.  Food poisoning.  Mostly the kinds of things that they give you a prescription for and send you on your way in 15 minutes.  This time, though, was different.

Content warning: Lady Parts.  Also, Gratuitous Use of Capital Letters, but back to the first warning: if you're squeamish about women's reproductive health, I'm not sure what you're doing here, (my target audience is made of sterner stuff), but this is probably the time to close the tab.

So.  Back up about 6 years.  The first time I remember anything weird was my fourth Junk-To-Punk fashion show.  That morning the school went down to the river en masse to pick up trash, and my period went batshit crazy.  According to my estimates, I should have been fine with the tampon I used before leaving the school, but when I took the fashion victims back to the school I had to make a quick stop in my apartment to change clothes, which irritiated the fuck out of me.  Over the course of the next year, "batshit crazy" became normal, but while that was irritating, I was in my late 30s, and every woman my age that I talked to reported similar issues, so I figured this was just getting old.  Along the way I learned the "lite/regular/super" system of tampons I'd been using since my 20s also had "Plus Ultra" and "Bloodbath" iterations...which was good to know because super was no longer enough.

(If you're regretting sticking around for this, sorry, but I did warn ya.  Women bleed.  Fuck off).

Well, among the women I discussed this with, one was the Evil One.  She is probably the best friend I will ever have in this life, and she loves me very much, enough to be straight with me even when I would very much prefer to just Not Go There.  And she said, "Yeah, you really need to go to a gynecologist and get that checked out."  I ignored this the first time she said it, but eventually, for something else entirely, I took her advice (it was two years later, okay, but I DID go in the end).  That is another story that I won't be sharing in this blog post, involving High Blood Pressure and an Awkwardly Answered Question...but for the purposes of this story, the doctor found myomas.  I had to Google to figure out what the fuck those were, but before I could get "non-cancerous growths" out of the internet, she was explaining that they would try to remove them surgically, but based on the size and number they would probably need to do a hysterectomy.

I've always found the fact that this procedure is called a hysterectomy a bit comical as well as insulting.  Like just because I have a uterus I'm a bit unhinged?  But when the doctor suggested that they would need to remove it, I did get kind of hysterical (and this is definitely one of the reasons for the aforementioned high blood pressure).  I maintained my composure pretty well until I got back to my apartment, and then I Lost It.  Ironically, when I first learned about body changes in 4th grade and discovered that I would be stuck bleeding from anatomy I was previously blissfully unaware of ON A MONTHLY BASIS FOR THE NEXT 40 YEARS OF MY LIFE?!?!? I would have done anything to get rid of it.  Which I guess means I've matured somewhat since then, because a hysterectomy has huge consequences, and without even being aware of all of them, I knew I wanted to avoid them.

I wasn't thinking clearly enough to ask Google about alternatives until after 1 AM that night.  Imagine my shock when I learned that there are LOTS of alternatives, none of which the doctor had mentioned.  I'm not blaming her, BTW...skipping over everything else to surgery seems par for the course with uterine fibroids.  I kind of figured that maybe they weren't really options here...Mongolia isn't exactly on the forefront of medical technology.  But you know who is?  Korea - and I had already booked a ticket to spend my fall break there.  So I did some research, found that Seoul St. Mary's has a whole Uterine Myoma team, and made an appointment to get a second opinion.

I prepared myself for this visit by doing the bloodwork my doctor prescribed, and the MRI that she suggested.  I had a small freak out because the MRI came on a CD, and who the hell uses CDs anymore?  And the day before I left, the radiologist here talked to me about the MRI, and said that if I decided I wanted to, that they could do a procedure called uterine fibroid embolization here.  This was actually the procedure that I felt the best about.  UFE is clever.  Rather than cutting you open (or, possibly more horrifying, going in through your vagina past the cervix to nip the little bastards), the interventional radiologist goes in with a teeny, tiny tube through puncturing your artery (either the one in your wrist or the one in your leg) and uses real time x-rays to find the blood supply for the myomas.  When he gets there, he blocks it by shooting nanoparticles into the artery, which eventually causes the growths to shrivel up and die.  It's about 90% effective in alleviating symptoms, which in my case means I hopefully won't experience shark week on a monthly basis anymore (there are worse symptoms, btw, like needing to pee all the time or getting constipated...comparatively, a little anemia doesn't seem that bad).  And apparently it was a procedure that they CAN do here, if he was recommending it.

Which was all well and good, but I had already pretty much decided that I'd hit Seoul up on my way back at Christmas, get my procedure, and spend a couple of weeks crashing on my friend Happy Tree's couch til I was safe to fly.  The only problem was, when I talked to the doctor in Korea, she said I could just wait and see.  My anemia "wasn't that bad," and if two excruciatingly bloody days out of the month were my only symptom, it was okay (she has obviously never had that symptom while teaching a class of teenagers for 85 minutes straight, fully knowing that her feminine hygeine was NOT going to make it to the end of the block).  Maybe I should have said, "That's reassuring, but I'd rather have UFE and get it over with...can you make that happen?" but I didn't.  I went and paid my consultation fee back at the international clinic and left to eat a burger.

I guess I could have tried to schedule it with a different hospital in Seoul, or elsewhere.  The US is kind of out due to financial reasons, though, and other than Korea, I wasn't sure there was anywhere I wanted to try and get it done.  Maybe Japan, but that seems like it would be expensive, too.  The idea of putting it off didn't really appeal to me, and I also thought there were probably going to be more hoops - initial consultations, more tests.  Under the circumstances, I decided that if I could get it done here, that would be best, or at least easiest.  Although I did have one small trepidation...I didn't want to be the first one done in Mongolia.  I didn't ask that question directly, but I asked our office manager if there was any way to find out if a doctor had done a certain procedure, and she said she'd talk to her mom.  Within 24 hours she knew his history, and while she wasn't sure that he'd done UFE, he had 14 years of experience and was well known for being a good doctor.  From the previous interaction I'd had with him, his English was good and he had a reassuring manner, so I decided to go for it.

Well.  It was not quite as simple as that.  I had to schedule an appointment again with the gynecologist for the pre-procedure consultation.  In addition to scheduling me and telling me I needed a bunch of tests (including Covid...goody), she informed me I would need to stay in the hospital the night before and the night after, which freaked me the fuck out.  There's the fact that no matter where you are in the world, hospital food is shit, and trust me, that was pretty high on my "FUCK NO" scale, but there were more rational reasons I wanted to avoid a hospital stay.  See, thanks to the previous high blood pressure, I was now the proud owner of a wrist monitor, and I knew for a fact that it wasn't just that the pandemic had Done Things to my health...my blood pressure was completely normal when I took it at home.  It was only while I was at the hospital that it shot up.  Having Everest-scale blood pressure for an extended period of time seemed like a really, Really Bad Idea.  I also didn't think that I would be able to sleep at the hospital, and I've been in my skin long enough to know that rest is probably the most vital component to maintaining my health.*  Followed by food, which brings me full circle.  In the end, I didn't have to stay in the hospital, but there was a long, circuitous route to get there, and they really only let me leave because I told them I was staying with Engrish, so there wouldn't be stairs and if there was any problem she could help me get back to the hospital.  I should buy her a really nice Christmas present...

This is turning into a really long post...you might want to go get a drink if you didn't have one when you started.  I swear I'm trying to avoid unnecessary exposition, but this really has been an ongoing saga over the last two and a half months of my life, occupying most of my mental space.  That said, we've gotten all the way to the procedure itself, so hang in there.

So I was scheduled for Tuesday, November 29.  This is probably not the best time for a teacher to take a week off (the typical recovery time til you're back to work), but the week the doctor originally suggested we already had two teachers out, and the following week was my period, and I couldn't think of anything worse than that, if it was even possible.  The 29th was really about as late as it could be and me still be cleared to fly home for Christmas (officially there are no restrictions, but everything I read recommended avoiding travel for two weeks).  I got my leave approved, made my lesson plans - boring writing assignments that my students should have been able to do without me, although I haven't worked up the courage to actually read any of them yet) - packed so much stuff in a bag that it probably looked like I was moving in for a week, most of which I didn't use afterwards, because I was too weak to look at my phone, let alone crochet my blanket (seriously.  The nurse had to get my phome off the floor multiple times while I was in "day care").  And then showed up to the hospital over an hour late on the day of the procedure, because the traffic was fucking ridiculous.  And that was because I walked the last block...if I'd stayed in the Enkhaa Express, I probably would have been over an hour and a half late.

All things considered, I was flustered from the get go, but my doctors agreed to consider sending me home that day, they found hospital clothes in my size, and tested me for contrast dye allergy (apparently it's a different dye than they use for the MRI).  Somehow I managed to not chicken out, and found myself lying on a zoomy motor bed thing, with screens positioned down by my legs and a little x-ray device overhead (overhips???).  They started the contrast dye, and gave me another IV for my NSAIDs - not sure which one they used, but I was feeling pretty detached by the time they all came in and started the procedure.  They had to use the artery in my groin, which I wasn't happy about, because it meant I had to lie down for at least two hours afterwards...according to what I read online.  In actuality, it was 5 hours before they agreed to let me stand up.  You may be wondering what that means for going to the bathroom, as was I.  Initially they didn't put a catheter in my bladder, for which I was profoundly grateful...

Okay, you may be wondering about this hyperactive hospital phobia (nosocomephobia, if you like to know these things).  Please remember that all of this was 100% new to me.  In addition to the fact that I don't even like going to hospitals to visit, I've never actually been to one for myself.  The only time I've been under anaesthesia was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out.  My primary mode of dealing with illness is "ignore it and hope it goes away" and this has served me pretty damn well, even if I do say so myself.  So yes, having someone stick a pee-pipe in me was a major point of anxiety for me.  Until the procedure was over and the pain was kicking in, and I just KNEW that part of the reason it felt so bad was that I probably needed to pee.  When I told the nurses and they said I would need a catheter, I requested that a female nurse assist me with it, but otherwise bowed fairly gracefully to the indignity.  Maybe I covered my face while they were up in my bizness, but Baby Chicken Wing was telling the truth when she reassured me it wasn't that big a deal, even if I had to experience it for myself to believe her.  I honestly hardly felt it.

The procedure ended up taking 3 hours.  Everything I'd read online said it was usually over after an hour, so I guess I'm special.  The doctor explained afterwards that my uterine artery was longer than they were expecting, and it took them some time to locate the correct access point to block the blood flow.  Which, I mean, it takes as long as it takes, but by probably halfway through I was no longer in a state of dreamy detachedness brought on by a combination of sleep deprivation and pain meds.  I was pretty much fully lucid after an hour and a half.  I told them so, but I wasn't really experiencing any pain, so it wasn't really an issue - until it was.  Probably about the last half hour or so I could begin to feel the cramping that I'd read about, and I told the doctors that, but I still had to wait for the anaesthesiologist to come before they gave me anything.  And while she was administering the fentanyl, she remarked on my low pulse, seeming to think I had an irregular heartbeat and that I should come back to see the cardiologist.  To which I wanted to reply, "FUCK YOU."  Like, let me get through the current health issue before you conjure up a new one.

Which brings me to the vindicating portion of this post: IT REALLY MIGHT GO AWAY.

Because my previous approach is not entirely off-base - I'm not being completely frivolous.  Turns out iron deficiency triggers a bunch of related shit.  Everyone thinks if you're anemic, you're just tired all the time.  Which I am, but let's write that one off to being a teacher, because that is definitely a truey.  On the other hand, at some point in the last two and a half months I have googled everything I've experienced over the last 5 years that made me go, "Hmm, that's weird...guess this is what getting old is all about." All those things can be triggered by anemia.  Slower metabolism, lowered immune response, allergies, and yes, even arrhythmia can all be effected by the fact that your blood is too weak to carry around all the oxygen it needs.  Sure, it might not be fixed just by getting my iron up, but I'll still take a hard pass at immediately freaking out and going back this week to see a cardiologist...once the Red Sea ebbs and I've been taking these stupid iron tabs a bit longer, then I'll go in and see if it's still an issue.  

I'm not going to lie - waiting to leave the hospital was a nightmare.  Maybe this was my fault for insisting that I wanted to be an outpatient, but I didn't have my own recovery room.  As they wheeled me past the door I saw a sign that said "Day Care" (haha, so many jokes to make), and noticed there were two Mongolian men in the room.  I asked about the curtain and they pulled it, but it didn't go all the way around the bed, so I still had one old guy on an IV for something within view.  They gave me my phone, my tablet, my plushie, and a call button, and then they left.  Which, I guess I wanted to be left alone, but I also wanted to be comfortable, and that was Not Happening.  For example, I had to ask for pain meds three times before they finally gave me an IV of something (and I still have no idea what it was).  By the third time I asked I was on the brink of tears.  They also only gave me 9 tablets of ibuprofen to go home with.  From everything I've read, it sounds like UFE patients typically get a narcotic painkiller which they can take up to twice a day, as well as a prescription strength OTC painkiller and a stool softener.  Maybe something for nausea.  I didn't want to go home with a whole pharmacy, but if my pain had been worse, this could have been problematic.  

And - oof - the pain was bad enough!  I feel like The Literature kind of glosses over this one.  I mean, doctors tend to do that, tell you you'll feel some pressure or a little pinch when they mean it's going to hurt like fucking hell.  And I'm not even that sensitive to pain!  However, the websites I read gave the symptoms of embolization syndrome (crampy pain, flu-like symptoms including fever and chills, and nausea), without giving the degree.  For example, "crampy pain" should be interpreted as, "IMAGINE THE WORST CRAMPS YOU HAVE FUCKING HAD IN YOUR LIFE, EVER, AND THEN MULTIPLY THEM BY 10."**  Also, when it comes to nausea, someone should mention that you probably won't have had anything but small sips of water since midnight the previous night.  You're still going to throw up, but nothing's going to come out but bile (at least, not the first three times; the fourth time I had gotten to casa de Engrish, and she had bananas, so it was banana puke the fourth time, for a fun new twist).

Well.  Nothing lasts forever, and eventually they released me to go to Engrish's place.  I mean, first I had to pay my bill, and that was mendokusai, because the hospital doesn't do direct billing with our insurance company.  I only owed a little less than $2,000,*** and I had plenty of money in my accounts to pay for it.  However, there's a little problem with Mongolian banks...they don't like you to spend more than 3,000,000 tugrugs in one go at the same place.  So the cashier tried to put 6.5 million tugrug on my Mongolian bankcard, and my card said, "Nope!"  So I had them run 3, successfully, and then they tried to do another 3.  And of course that didn't work.  Well, fortunately the day before I'd dropped the last $700 of my fall bonuses into my US dollar account, so I had them put 2.5 mil on that card, but that left me with one million left to pay.  I was able to pay the rest of it by using my mobile app and just skipping the card entirely, but I feel like this is a flaw in Mongolia's banking system.  If you are paying a hospital and you have enough money in the account, the charge should just fucking go through.

So that was it.  This is Day 6.  I finally started to get some rest on Day 2 (back in my own bed cuddled up with my dakimakura).  Gradually regained my appetite by Day 3.  Stopped freaking out about constipation on Day 4.  I've left the apartment today and the previous 2, and feel like I'll be okay at work tomorrow (it's the day I only teach 2 classes anyways).  I'm not totally Over It yet, but I'm getting there.  The first 24 hours or so, I questioned if I'd made the right choice, but compared to the recovery time for myomectomy or hysterectomy, this has been a cakewalk.  All the same, I'd still rather go the rest of my life without visiting a hospital again.  Hopefully this will make it more likely.

*Fact: I never used to take OTC meds because I believed my immune system was Tough Enough.  Then I took a Nyquil once when I couldn't sleep from coughing, and after a full 8 hours of sleeping like a baby I woke feeling fresh as a daisy, and decided that being Tough Enough was bullshit - quick recovery was MUCH better.

**This is somewhat subjective...my cramps have never been that bad.  On the other hand, I feel like I only made it to an 8 on the pain scale at the worst I felt. 

***Fun fact: According to the internet, you're looking at about $10,000 for the same thing in the States.

Your Home is Behind You

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."  -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

My first post after arriving in Japan pondered the possibility that it was better to be a tourist than to live here.  After two years I'm not sure I figured it out.  On one hand, I have had far more experiences and learned much more than I ever could have hoped, even if I'd spent every vacation I had in the last two years in Japan.  However, the truth remains that work was...challenging, at best...and my salary low enough that after two years I've decimated* my savings.  It was a two-year whirlwind, but the school year finally edged its way into thankful oblivion.  I got my Mongolian visa, eventually** finished packing and cleaning, and headed back to the States for the summer.

Iowa might not exactly be my favorite place in the world, but it's got a few things in its favor, other than my family.  There are times that I think you could film a live-action Studio Ghibli film here.  Although spaces as green as the shady spot in a corner of my dad's field are few and far between, the sheer numbers of fireflies are mind-boggling, and the number of butterflies this year was just unreal.  I mean, every time I drove anywhere I felt like I was mowing down nature, although this presented an excellent opportunity to collect...let's say...art materials, although I don't have a project in mind yet.  It was also pretty cool to feel like I was stepping into the Shire whenever I left the house.

Under the circumstances, maybe it was inevitable that I'd want to celebrate achieving Level 40 with a bonfire/fairy party.  I spent so long making wings for the various Winter Lords and Summer Ladies that it didn't turn out to be quite as big a dog and pony show as I originally envisioned, but that was probably for the best.  The kids had fun playing together and the mortals invited to the revel all went away unscathed and still in fashion, as we broke up the fairy ring somewhere short of a hundred years.  

A couple of days before that my old rival and fellow Faerie Queen, Baby Chicken Wing, invited me to go see Japanese schoolgirls (and one schoolboy) play in a handbell choir.  Could there possibly be a better event for me?  I say nay.  Both of us were familiar from handbells from attending a certain church in our hometown...Babysis turned down the opportunity because she still goes there, thus it ain't no thing for her...so we kind of had expectations about what a handbell choir would be like.  Which they proceeded to smash with their first song, the main theme from Star Wars.  They played some jazz, a traditional Japanese song, Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers...of course they played a couple of hymns, but they were so completely entertaining to watch that these couldn't even be compared to the old ladies that play at church.  My mind was also occupied with thoughts of the social dynamics of the boy in the cultural club from a Japanese high school, when it wasn't busy thinking that I ought to reread the Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix (necromancers with handbells...you tell me YOU wouldn't have been thinking it, too).

The family, on the other hand, convinced me to go to the zoo with them.  Okay, it was actually Shaggy - I figured if he drove (just under) 5 hours (in his new Beemer, no kids or dogs, obvs) to celebrate with me I could brave the heat and sun, especially when he promised we weren't staying all day.  He kept referring to the Henry Doorly Zoo as "the best zoo in the world," and while it is a damn fine zoological park I have reservations about it being the worlds' best, although since zoos aren't really my thing, I can't provide any annoying counterarguments.  It was neat to see how much it's changed since the last time I was there, which was probably around 10 years ago, and I loved seeing the niblings together.  Later I shared the photos with the family, prompting my dad to admit this might be the best way to experience the zoo.

On my actual level-up day my Mom and I packed up the niblings - detained to give their mom the chance to get shit done - and headed down to Shaggy's place.  This is kind of important, since it gives me the chance to visit my grandmother and my great uncle along the way, but what I was really looking forward to was...less a mini-reunion than a micro one, since it's always just me and the Nice One.  

That said, this is the third or fourth summer we've gotten together to catch up, providing some much needed sanity and at least a couple of reality checks.  Also, a good browse through Barnes and Noble and more food than is probably a good idea.  I mean, seriously, America!  Who puts brisket on a burger?***  And THEN tops it with a bajillion onion straws???  That thing won't even fit in your mouth!  For the record, I ended up knocking most of the onions out of the middle and eating them dipped in sauce, which, also for the record, was excellent, but probably made the order of onion straws we ordered as a side totally unnecessary.  Hours later we chased it with custard from Andy's, which Shaggy pointed out they sell at the restaurant, but even if he has room for ice cream after a burger like that, I sure as hell didn't.  We discussed taking a road trip for our next act, and now that I've seen this year's school schedule, we might actually be able to make that into a mini-reunion after all...the Evil One's going to be Stateside in January and with a longer vacation the fates may, perchance, align.  We shall see.

Somehow vacation was over before I felt like it had really started.  My mom always complains that my holidays are too short, but this time I couldn't really argue...in spite of the fact that I spent a whole month at home, it seemed to fly by.  I'm not really complaining, since I'm happy to be back in Mongolia, although I'll be a lot happier once school starts and I get to spend time with my kids.  Still, it felt strangely short, the way time is a little different in the realms of faerie, where a year can go by in the space of a cicada's song.  There aren't any of those here in UB, but I have a feeling the next year will pass in the blink of an eye nonetheless...

*I mean that very literally...I have 10% of the savings that I had two years ago.  But if my parents are reading this right now, fear not - I'm planning to save more this go-round.
**6 a.m. the day I left Japan...
***Blaaack Sheep, that's who.

The Morning Commute

In all my life as an expat, I've never had to take public transportation to get to work.  The only time I've been more than a short walk away from my school was when I lived in the Emirates.  Back then, I'd either rely on taxis (because I could afford to) or bum rides from the other denizens of the Sunrise building.  That all changed about a month ago when my current employers moved us all to a shiny new, purpose built school.  I'm still not entirely sure it's a good trade.  On one hand, the air doesn't make me feel sick and there are tons of good restaurants to try out.  On the other hand, I have to be exposed to the public before 8 a.m., and that almost never turns out well...

It turns out that, as much as I claim to love public transportation, what I actually love is my freedom.  I love being able to go anywhere, anytime that I want, and not have to drive myself.  But when that turns into a daily forced migration, for which I must wake up when my alarm goes off (rather than ignoring it for an hour), public transit loses most of its charm.

This post actually began long before we moved, back when I went to that mokuhanga workshop. At the time, I was impressed by the fact that Tokyo commuters could all be dressed up in business suits and not spouting waterfalls of sweat off their jam-packed bodies, or that the women on the train were actually wearing make-up and it wasn't melting off their faces in a sheet.  Also with the fact that they commute on a daily basis without killing anyone.  Let me tell you, there is nothing like being crammed into a train car with a shitload of strangers to bring out your aggressively antisocial side.

Now, it was originally my plan to take one bus from my neighborhood all the way to Yokohama Station.  That first morning - which dawned way too bright and way too fricking early - I found myself puzzled that Google Maps was instructing me to walk from Higashi-Kanagawa Station instead.  Well, when I started looking at the bus stop sign, I discovered that my bus didn't go all the way to Yokohama for another hour and a half.  So I ended up taking the train the rest of the way.  My feet just were not up to a walk from Higashi-Kanagawa.

The next morning I took a different bus, one which stopped closer to my apartment.  I figured if I had to take the train anyways, I might as well make the bus part as convenient for myself as possible.  And then then bus showed up, already jam-packed with commuters.  Two stops after I got on, the driver started letting people in through the back door,* since there was no more room for people at the front.

As it turns out, I'm not cut out to spend even ten minutes each morning with the sweaty bodies of strangers pressed up against my various parts.  It brings out my impulses to smack people with my umbrella, fan, or hell, just to plant my elbow in the crotch of the individual who keeps bumping against my shoulder (with extreme prejudice).  Since I decided it would probably be a bad idea to get in a fight on the bus, I decided to go with the original bus, the one that wasn't crowded.

And that is the way things progressed for the first three weeks at the new school.  Maybe I had to reward myself with McDonald's for breakfast most mornings for making it in one piece and still letting people live.  I'd pretty much worked out the best route to go - the bus where I'd have a seat, the train with the easiest walk from the bus stop - but it really didn't matter.  I am not cut out to be a commuter.

And then Golden week came and went, and sometime during those days of freedom I got it into my head that I should walk to the nearest train station.  I needed the exercise after spending most of the previous month eating McMuffins for breakfast.

So about a week ago I started walking.  It takes me about a half hour, but it's flat the whole way, and at least half of my walk is by the stream that runs through the 'hood.  If I feel like as much of a zombie as my fellow commuters appear, well, that's only to be expected.  But I still feel like maybe a bit of an apology is in order.  Fellow commuters, I am so sorry.  If you hear me growl or hiss, or possible construct sentences strung entirely together with f-bombs, please understand that it isn't personal.  I hate literally everyone in the mornings right now.  Half the time I haven't even had my morning coke when you are seeing me bare my fangs.  I applaud you for the fortitude that it must take to deal with this day after day, stretching into years.  Personally, I'm just counting down the days til I'm back in Mongolia, where I can make it from the door of my apartment to the door of my classroom in two minutes or less.

*In Kanto, you enter the front of the bus, and pay when you get on.  In other parts of Japan, you get on through the back, and pay when you get off.

By the Book

Okay, so once upon a time I never wrote about art on my blog.  Now it seems like every other post is art-related.  Part of me is really proud of what this says about me.  The other part of me kind of misses the sort of madcap capers I used to write about instead (after all, it's kind of hard to work swearing and dirty jokes into most art posts...most).  This is at least in part because I've been operating under the assumption that nobody wants to read about art, except for the Evil One and maybe a few of my old students, but here's the thing: Art is for everyone.  As an art teacher, allow me to educate y'all.

Or, you know.  Close this tab and try again next week.  As you like.

So one thing I'd read about last spring and not had the chance to try yet was the Art Byte Critique.  I've been stalking their facebook page since I discovered it, but each month a group gets together to participate in an actual critique, sharing work and getting feedback.  It seemed like half the time it was on Sunday, and the rest of the time it conflicted with my nihonga lessons.  So when I got the announcement in August before I'd started painting again, I decided that the time had come.

I actually met the founder a couple of weeks before the critique took place at my mokuhanga workshop.  Arthur was kind enough to give me an overview of what to expect - I mean, I've done plenty of critiques, but haven't been the subject of one in person since my undergrad days.  I was at least a little nervous.  But I got to Ikebukuro in good time and found the place easily enough, art in hand.

One of the reasons why it was intimidating is because many of the Art Byte artists are pretty accomplished.  Arthur had just been accepted to a biennale in Nakanojo, and another of the artists wanted advice on how to install a piece she'd been commissioned to create for an exhibition in England.  I'd like to be in their shoes someday, but it feels like a long road from where I am.  I shared three pieces - two of my gouashi paintings, and the nihonga wave I'm still working on - and got some really good feedback.  I'll go again as soon as the stars align, which will unfortunately not be this month - I'm supposed to hop a bus for Kyoto three hours after the crit ends, and since I'm leaving from Yokohama this time I don't really feel like cutting it that close.

One of the items of business at the critique was the artist book exhibition coming up at the Launch Pad Gallery.  Back at UMKC I had a professor who assigned us to make an artist book, but mine was garbage.  I've attempted them a few times with my students, but the concept has been challenging for all of us, so I was interested in checking it out.  Then a couple of weeks ago an event for it came up on my news feed, and it was a book making workshop.  I was a little put out that it started at 3 on a Friday afternoon, but then I realized since it was in Yokohama I'd only need to miss about 15 minutes of my last class to make it on time, so I begged my principal to let me go.

The books were fantastic.  It was a collaboration with a group of artists in England, so there were a lot of different interpretations of the artist book concept.  The gallery provided gloves so that you could pick up and look at the books without damaging them (although to be honest it was still pretty nervewracking...if anyone was going to break one of them, it would have been me for shiz).  After I'd checked them out for a few minutes the workshop was ready to start.

It was taught by Nick West, who had a solo show up at CLOUDS right before their contest that I participated in.  He brought one of the books that he made for that exhibition to demonstrate the technique that we were going to use, using a basic stitch to bind sets of pages together.  After we made our pages, he took apart a sketchbook to give us cardboard to make the cover, which we covered with book cloth before putting the whole thing together.  It was a nicely educational way to spend a rainy Friday evening, and it made me appreciate my school for letting me go (particularly because I'd only given them a few days warning!)

Strangely enough, although I've been writing about art more often I've actually made less since coming back from the summer.  Blame it on the sewing kick I started in July.  I'm in the middle of winding up a few plushies and then I should be able to get back to my art (assuming my bloody research course allows me to).  Which is good, since Art Byte is having a group show at the beginning of next year, and I still have no idea what I'd like to enter.  I feel like it's strange that I feel confident in my art until I have to put it out in the world to be judged, but maybe that's normal.

Scarecrows and Firelight

Friday I made a decision: I would swap out my summer clothes for the ones in what I thought of as my autumn suitcase.  This was predicated by the fact that I had just ripped a hole in one of my linen (ie, summer) pants, and wanted to be sure the rest made it as least as far as the beginning of summer.  It might not truly be cool (yet.  Most of the time), but my standard cords will stand up to my demanding teacher lifestyle a lot better.

Yesterday started a helluva lot earlier than I would have liked.  The school has an annual picnic in September, and this year we held it at Kishine Park.  It's not that far away, but have I mentioned Yokohama's hills?  I could have met everyone at the school and gotten a ride over, but I decided it would be much more after my own idiom to find my own way there, and that went well enough, but to make sure I caught the right bus I was out the door at 7, where I found this friend waiting for me. 

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that the week had finally reached terminal velocity, and this week I found that at least some of the people around me didn't suck (probably none of them suck, but you know me and my antisocial tendencies).  Monday I found myself chatting with three of the people I miss the most from Mongolia, feeling like the world was at an end, but by the time work was over the following day, I felt much better.  The expat life is kind of like that - rollercoasterish, with its ups and downs.  Still, when the clock ran out on the "family picnic" I was ready to get the heck out of Yomaha.

Last weekend I stumbled onto Tokyo Cheapo's events page, and found out this weekend there would be a firelight Noh performance at Zojo-Ji.  Putting it on the Cheapo site may have been slightly inaccurate, since the cheapest seats were still 2,000 yen, but since we got paid on Thursday I was flush with cash, and so that was my plan.  And then I found out there was a local street festival "next door" at Higashi Azabu, and I figured between the two it would make up for working on a Saturday.

After finding Zojo-Ji and figuring out if tickets were available and how to buy them (if you're reading this around the end of September 2018, they'll set up a table at the bottom of the stairs near the main entrance around 3:30 or 4), I had two hours to kill, so I wandered past Tokyo Tower and found the area of the festival.  It was...interesting.  It's called the Kakashi Festival, which means scarecrow but also happens to be the name of my favorite character from Naruto (which may have influenced me to go check it out, cause, you know...nerd).  Apparently it was an import from Tohoku, where some of the residents of Higashi Azabu originally came from.

So scarecrows are the main part of the festival, although this being Japan, there were plenty with their own cute twists.  A tent was set up with several on display - entered by local businesses and maybe schools?  I kind of wanted to find out if anyone could enter one, because it would amuse me to no end to participate next year by entering a huge version of my Kakashi-sensei plushie. 

There were tons of street food stalls, and games, of course.  I decided I needed one last shaved ice, only to discover it is not nearly as tasty on the last day of September as it is in mid-August.  For some reason that I still haven't been able to fathom, no matter how hard I rattle my brains, there were hula dancers, as well as a kind of cheesy magician.  I thought his tricks (ILLUSIONS, MICHAEL) were fairly transparent, but the kids seemed to be enjoying the show, and I had to admit he was still better than the magician who performed at ASU's TEDx last year.

Finally, I headed back to Zojo-Ji.  When I first got there, I was so busy trying to figure out about the performance that I didn't fully appreciate it (that and the incense.  I'd been trying to fend off a headache all day and the incense wasn't helping.)  There is a nice prayer hall, and apparently the treasure house is currently open.  But I didn't really pay that much attention.

See, the reason I knew the name Zojo-Ji is because I'm an art nerd, and once upon a time the Joslyn had a copy of Hasui Kawase's "Zojo-Ji Temple in Snow" on display, and it made enough of an impression to remember.  While I don't intend to visit all of the famous ukiyo-e scenes of old Edo...probably......I mean, really, there's just too many of them...this was too good a chance to pass up.

So I got back from visiting the scarecrows and entered the crowd, finding my seat and reading while waiting for things to get started.  The special thing about the Takigi Noh - which is what it's called - is that it's performed by firelight, with a little help from some electric lights.  When they finally lit them, I was pretty stoked.  They got the stage set up, and finally, the performance started.  And once it started, it didn't take me long to figure it out.  Noh is not really my cup of tea.

Japanese aesthetics can be a bit...subtle.  In a print, or painted on a paper screen, that comes off very elegantly.  As I sat and watched the first of the three performances - a number of priests sitting still while the two main characters declaimed at each other (calmly and thoughtfully, I thought, although I had no idea what they were saying) I had the entirely inappropriate urge to burst into a rendition of "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."  While the wailing of the flutes was poignant and the hits of the drums called out into the night, the stillness of the actors failed to move me.  So maybe I can't be called a weeaboo in the truest sense of the word, because I left after the first play.  This might have been unfair - the second was supposed to be kyogen, which I've read is comedic, and the third was about a woman who turned out to be a demon, and maybe on a normal Saturday I could have appreciated them, but after the picnic, I was just done.

As I walked away from Zojo-Ji, down a street lit by lanterns and lined with restaurants, I realized there is a good chance I've been unfair to Tokyo.  True, it doesn't have the same magic as Kyoto, but there is something about walking down its streets that feels entirely right to me.  It reminds me of how Seoul used to feel like it was my own personal amusement park, except more.  Walking through Tokyo feels like the whole city is just part of my home.  After all, there was a reason why Hokusai and Hiroshige's most famous prints were of Edo, not Kyoto.

The World Ahead

It's one week tonight since I stepped through the arrivals door at Haneda Airport and into my next great adventure, here in Japan.  It's been a long time since I dealt with the upheavals that go along with rebooting your life from a new server, so to speak, and over the last week I've been dealing with a dawning realization that goes something like this:  being a tourist may be better than being an expat.

Okay, stick with me for a while and hear me out.  The whole premise of my so-called career is that I'd rather see the world long-term, rather than the snapshots you get breezing by in a week or less.  However, the last seven days have presented some rather compelling evidence that perhaps I would have been better off staying in Mongolia and spending every vacation here instead.

For starters, there's the major issue of not having the internet.  Which is to say that I, in my very humble abode (pictured above, and a lot better looking on the inside, but you should know better than to think I'll show you that until I've got everything the way I want.  Yes, Babysis, I am looking at you), have no hope of getting an internet connection for possibly months.  Apparently the Japanese bureaucrats like to jazz that shit up with red tape.  Now, I dealt with this very issue once, many many moons ago when I moved to the UAE, but it was Ramadan and I had no options but to suck it up.  This time around, I cracked after 3 days and ordered a pocket wifi router, which is why you're getting this blog tonight.  You're welcome.

There's also the fact that I have been in Japan for an entire week and not visited a single temple.  Last fall I think I made it to at least one every day, but no.  Even when I haven't been at work, I've been too busy setting up my apartment and finding my way around Yokohama, particularly to the Ikea...yeaahhhhhh, who am I kidding?  My first excursion was actually to the Animate at Yokohama Station, and it was a glorious experience.  I mean - look at all the Gachapon machines!  Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?

I did manage to stumble on this section of a walking/sightseeing trail my first morning at around 6:30 while looking for someplace open that would break my 10,000 yen note so I could get a coke.  It spit me out onto a street that had a 24 hour cafe called Jonathan's.  I enjoyed both the trail and the "drinks bar" at Jonathan's, which featured free refills of coke, but I haven't seen more of it, because it's Too Darn Hot, and no part of me is interested in sweating that much.  There is only so much a fan and a hankie can do for you.

Working also kind of sucks.  Not the actual job of course - so far, I like everything about my school - but rather, you know, working.  Instead of running around all day seeing cool shit I spent Wednesday and Thursday getting orientated for said job.  And here's the thing: I haven't actually been a newbie in five years, and I forgot how incredibly, painfully awkward it is, not to mention the vast information overload that goes along with it.  Meanwhile, Pikachu Outbreak was happening right over in Minato Mirai while I was sitting in meetings.  Admittedly I had a three-day weekend to check it out, but it was rainy, so the airship didn't take off, and although the Pikachu cruise went when I first got there I was too far away from it to wave to them and they apparently cancelled the next launch - at least the people in the official shirts said some stuff in Japanese and everyone went away so I assume that's what happened, and the big ass carnival parade is tomorrow, and I won't make it down after work in time for it...

What's that?  You feel no sympathy for poor old me?  I suppose you probably shouldn't.

I can NOT overemphasize the fact that adjusting sucks.  It is a ginormous pain in the ass, especially when you're out of practice, but the ability to be in the front seat for all of the wonderful, weird things that happen in Japan - and the Pikachu Outbreak is a quintessential one - is exactly why I gave up working with people I absolutely loved and jumped into the unknown.  And it turns out that the hardest part thus far is not having those people around.  I'm not the most social person by any means, and although my introversion suits me well in my lifestyle of choice, I've been around my family non-stop for the last month, so I feel a little untethered.  What I really want is the chance to chat with Engrish about my impressions of my school, Blondie about the trials and joys of living in Japan, and my little Weebs about all the cool shit I see on a daily basis.

From experience, I know it takes me a while to find my place, and that when I'm patient, I find the people who appreciate me - not in spite of my craziness, but because of it.  Til then, I'm lucky to have extended friends around.

It's funny how when you announce that you're moving somewhere everyone comes out of the woodwork.  I'd already tracked down a family I went to church with in Shanghai, but I learned I have a distant (as in, I'm not sure what ordinal to assign him) cousin in Nagano, that the Evil One's nephew is in Yokosuka, and that a dance sister from Seoul's best friend lives right here in Yokohama.  When I posted a photo on Facebook at Minato Mirai, he replied that he was there too, and I had the chance to meet him and two of his friends.  Even though they weren't Engrish, or Blondie, my Weebs, or the others now scattered to the four winds, they were my kind of people, and it made Japan feel a little more like home.

The End of All Things

I was sitting in Ulaanbaatar's Chinggis Khaan airport as I began this post.  My flight was scheduled to leave in an hour and ten minutes, and I was completely shattered.

It's been five years since my last leaving.  I remember thinking at the time that things seemed to go remarkably easy.  Maybe it was because I accepted the job with the American School of Ulaanbaatar in early March.  Knowing where I was going made it easier to accept the fact that I wouldn't be in Shanghai.  Also, the fact that I kind of hated Shanghai...

Mongolia, on the other hand, I loved.  I didn't expect to be there five years, but ASU supported me and my students were the best.  About a month ago I found myself asking why the hell I gave up my job.  I was paid well, had friends, loved my work - but I just HAD to go looking for something else.  >le sigh<

A few days later, I got up early on a Saturday morning to try and get a grip on my packing.  My own personal procrastinatrix showed up to crack the whip only after our fine arts banquet, graduation, the end of year camp were looming (I probably should have backed down and let a few things go this year...but that just wouldn't be me).  But during my morning look at the interwebs my delusions of productivity smashed to pieces when I saw a job posting for an art teacher at a school in Yokohama (if you've been paying attention, you've noticed I never mentioned the name of my former school up to this point.  This is where the new school becomes It Which Must Not Be Named and it's okay to reference the old one).  Instead of spending my morning packing and cleaning, I put together a cover letter and sent off my documents and prayed.  The answer to my prayer came that evening in the form of a facebook message from a guy I knew my first year at ASU whom I wasn't very close to, so at first I was a little pissy about being offered help, but eventually I told myself not to be a bitch and replied, thanking him for the offer but that unless he knew someone at School X, I didn't know that there was much he could do for me.

"Believe it or not, I do," he replied, and after three interviews and some cost-benefit analysis I accepted the job.

Now, over the last six months I have told myself many, MANY times, "You need to clean your apartment."  Because I did.  I never actually fully cleaned the damn thing, which made dealing with the detritus accumulated over the course of five years much harder to deal with, but since we can only manipulate time going forward, my options were limited.

I left Shanghai after moving about three times.  My first year I lived in an apartment right next to the school, and moved about 5 minutes by bike away for my second, onto Laohongxing Lu.  My realtor negotiated with my landlord to let me out of my lease early, and so a few weeks before I was scheduled to leave Shanghai, I had to move out of my apartment.  This turned out to be the practice round for leaving the country, since I wasn't bringing all my crap to my friend Meen's, who was letting me take advantage of a spare room, and the momentum really did help me get ready for the big bad goodbye.

Moving out of the teachers' apartments never actually crossed my mind during the last five years.  While they weren't super-deluxe high-rises, and my view left much to be desired (because who wants to look out their window at work everyday???) there was plenty of room and I was comfortable.  I was never too cold, it was a quick walk to work, and I felt secure surrounded by my colleagues, even the more eccentric ones, of which we had a few.

Admittedly there were more than a few times when I wished I were on the side of the building that wasn't directly across the parking lot from where one of these eccentrics would practice his sad sax every evening, and perhaps because I spent so much time going between the two, there were times when I used the wrong key.  But when I needed to run home at lunch for a coke (or occasionally at the beginning of a class because I promised to bring a kid my markers or some other supply for their project) it was hellaconvenient.  Nonetheless, the inertia of a life lived well in one spot was hard to break, and I was still dealing with tic tac shit the morning I flew out.  (If you're wondering what it looked like when my apartment wasn't empty...this was wrtiten in my first year, so it wasn't anywhere near as full, but it gives you the idea).

A wise woman (named Engrish) once told me, on my very first ger camp, that Mongolia gets under your skin and makes you fall in love with it, and it was true.  It's a beautiful country with wide open skies, but I think more than anything it's the people that make it the place that it is.  My frantic packing and cleaning over the last week was broken up with goodbyes - one last brunch at Blondie's, a final massage with Five, dinner with a family I'd known since the first year, and being driven to the airport by my principal. 

That aside, though, if you've been with me for these last five years, you've probably noticed that even though this blog is supposed to be about traveling there is an endless string of references to my students, and the hardest part of leaving has been leaving them.  The end of the last day of school was brutal, a massive attack as they stopped in, teary-eyed, for a final hug as I promised that I was coming back, that I'd see them in next year's musical.  And then there were my brats.  The original, "accept no substitutes," kids who have been with me since day one organized a farewell dinner for Time Lady and I, and came to the airport to say goodbye two days later.  It's been a long road since we first sat in the teeny-tiny classroom that was mine that first year.  Many of them are gone - studying in the US or England - and they've had their challenges along the way, but I'm proud of them and wouldn't trade the pain of saying goodbye for anything in the world, because it's a testament to how much it meant.