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Saying goodbye
Jul. 28th, 2005 06:18 pmI have, by and large, managed to avoid saying goodbye to the most significant people.
That is, I said good-bye to a lot of important people -my dance teacher, my Japanese tutor, students, other ALTs- but not the really important ones. (One of the advantages, incidentally, of absolutely useless JTEs who go from mostly okay to absolutely useless and no good whatsoever at the time when you really need them, is that it does ease the pain of parting.)
But today, I said goodbye to Katy, the prefectural adviser. She's the one that introduced me to Hirohana-sensei (our dance teacher). We'd go to dance, do dance events, talk a lot in the car, have dinner... She's one of those people that are really just *good*, you know? Just good people. And there was lots of mutual ranting and some raving, and I'm going to miss her something rotten.
Anyway, I dropped by to give her my appartment key and we went out for lunch, and it's probably the last time I'll see her, at least until she visits the UK in, oh, five years or so.
And it really didn't feel like a good-bye. No sense of leaving, no sense of-- something. I almost cried, but didn't, because it just wasn't... it was like saying goodbye at the end of lunch, when you know you're going to see that person again in a couple of weeks.
Except we're not. And there's part of me that just doesn't quite get that. It probably has something to do with this slow leaving, with the relative normality of the moment and the knowledge that I'm going to see Jen and Louise within the week, but...
Weird.
That is, I said good-bye to a lot of important people -my dance teacher, my Japanese tutor, students, other ALTs- but not the really important ones. (One of the advantages, incidentally, of absolutely useless JTEs who go from mostly okay to absolutely useless and no good whatsoever at the time when you really need them, is that it does ease the pain of parting.)
But today, I said goodbye to Katy, the prefectural adviser. She's the one that introduced me to Hirohana-sensei (our dance teacher). We'd go to dance, do dance events, talk a lot in the car, have dinner... She's one of those people that are really just *good*, you know? Just good people. And there was lots of mutual ranting and some raving, and I'm going to miss her something rotten.
Anyway, I dropped by to give her my appartment key and we went out for lunch, and it's probably the last time I'll see her, at least until she visits the UK in, oh, five years or so.
And it really didn't feel like a good-bye. No sense of leaving, no sense of-- something. I almost cried, but didn't, because it just wasn't... it was like saying goodbye at the end of lunch, when you know you're going to see that person again in a couple of weeks.
Except we're not. And there's part of me that just doesn't quite get that. It probably has something to do with this slow leaving, with the relative normality of the moment and the knowledge that I'm going to see Jen and Louise within the week, but...
Weird.
