Bao Gao Student's Letter

The official countdown is on. We're done teaching June 15th, and
because we see our kids on an every other week schedule, we will only
see each class 1 more time. I've been starting my classes by
announcing this, which is always followed by exclamations of "WHY?"
and "We will miss you!"

When M & I came to Bao Gao last summer, we were nervous, knew no
Chinese, had no idea what we'd gotten ourselves into and felt pretty
isolated. On our desk sat hundreds of notes from last year's Senior 1
students (now Martin's Senior 2 students) welcoming us to China and
telling us how much they were looking forward to meeting us.
Naturally, we thought it was a good tradition to continue, so all of
my students have been writing their letters these past few weeks for
us to leave in our office for the next foreign teacher. The letters
have ranged from not making much sense, to just plain funny (will you
allow me to sleep in your class?) to ones like this one that are just
full of sweetness. This particular letter really touched my heart, and
I think expresses a lot of what has made our year here so amazing. The
students are so loving, happy and caring. How can you not love a class
of kids that say things like this?! The sentence about everyone not
being able to stay with someone forever also touched me, especially
now as we are feeling so many mixed emotions about our upcoming return
to the States.

Never would have thought I'd enjoy being a teacher, but I'm going to
miss these students immensely.

~The Goose