"Do you love we fourever, Miss?"

This week was my last week teaching 5 of my 10 classes. Next week is primarily devoted to tying up loose ends, packing, eating my fill of tempe, and generally saying goodbye to everyone. Still, I felt that if I didn't teach at all I would go crazy with an overabundance of free time and decided to teach half-time.

As a final small assignment I gave my students each an index card and asked them to write me a "postcard." I asked them to write down one thing they hoped I would remember--and share with my family and friends in America--about them, their class, their school, and Indonesia. Then I asked them to write one thing that they learned from our time together either about English or about the US. Finally, they could add any last questions or things they wanted to tell me.

I got a very wide range of postcards. Some of the students wrote that they wanted me to remember that they were a boy...not likely that I will forget that obvious detail. Some got the point and were detailed enough that I know exactly who they are: "I am is a boy. I am tall, fat and brown skin" or "I'm not clever, but I'm very funny, likes drawing on the table, and a little handsome." They urged me to remember a variety of things about their school and country including: beautiful places like Bali and Bunaken, delicious food like tempe and kupat tahu, traditional dances, that SMK N1 has the international standard ranking, that there are many trees here and lots of rain, etc. They claimed to learn a lot about American holidays, games, and food in addition to how to ask questions in English, how to pronounce "th", how to sing many English songs, etc. They asked last minute questions about verb tenses, about special tricks to learning English, about my contact information, and many questions about my leaving. Those about my leaving are the kind of questions that are the hardest to answer and the ones that make me not want to leave. "Why you want to leave us anyway?" Well, I have a life in America...it's my home. "You come back when?" I don't know...probably not for a very, very long time. "Do you love we fourever Miss?" How could I not?

2 OA
1 LA

2 LB

2 MB

2 MC