unraveled

We’ve been home for exactly 3 ½ months today. My last post was nearly a year ago. How is that possible? This May 5, 2010, I will be in Bolivia with my husband seeing his family and home. He hasn’t been home for three years and is anxious to taste the food, hear his language, and see the montañas marrones grandes in contrast to the cielo azul. My memories of Korea are still fresh, though it often feels like an eternity ago that we were living there. I’m convinced that 3 ½ months never passed by this quickly when we were living in South Korea. Since I’ve been home, people have been asking me if I will move abroad again; I always answer yea, probably, and then I think about how slow time passed by when we were living there. Of course it doesn’t seem that way now, but I won’t forget counting down those days. I wonder if everyone living abroad counts the days like we did.

One memory in particular runs through my mind when I think about our year in Korea. It comes to me weekly, if not daily, and always sends an instantaneous sadness through my heart. Teachers aren’t supposed to have favorites, I know, but we all do. It’s unlikely to avoid caring for one or two students more than the rest. My sweetheart was, well, let’s call her Bella. She was my favorite. Her black eyes full of confidence caught me every time. Her skin was slightly darker than the rest of the students, and in the summer her mother would cover her in thick globs of white sunscreen, even though we never took the children outside.

Bella had tough skin. She wasn’t as girly as some of the students and didn’t care about bending the rules to suite her. I’m sure she knew that I let her get away with more than she should have. I scolded myself for this, but I couldn’t resist her. She walked through the halls so haughty and sure of herself. This is how I’ll always remember her, but she was quite a different student when she first arrived in my class.

Not knowing a word of English, Bella was timid and uncertain for the first few months of school. She sulked and cried to go home. She resisted any involvement in the class, refusing to participate. With time, she began to open up. It’s difficult to say exactly when, but somewhere in April or May she found herself, and what a beautiful, self-assured self she was. She started talking to me in English and about the most obscure things, taken completely from her imagination. I was enthralled. Her stories were so fictitious, so exaggerated. By the summer she had created a character she called Mr. Lion. He was a pet lion who lived in her home. He had flown there from Africa, where her grandparents lived, and was living under her bed.

As the weeks progressed, I realized that I looked forward to two things every morning: my coffee and whatever new story Bella would have about Mr. Lion and his stupendous adventures full of magic, imagination, and childhood wonder. One morning Mr. Lion had attacked her baby brother and announced that he greatly disliked English and American music. I fed into it, of course. How couldn’t I? We printed off a picture of a lion and pasted it to our white board; it became Mr. Lion’s portrait from when he was living in Africa, where people danced to funny music, according to Bella.

Every morning we talked about Mr. Lion. We started having story time for the first half of first period a few times a week. I encouraged the students to tell stories, true or make-believe. Some mornings we would turn the lights off, crawl under the tables and share stories together. They loved for me to tell them stories – wild and completely fictional adventures that they (my students) were always the main characters of. Mr. Lion would commonly show up in these stories, flying the students away from certain death or danger. These story times became therapeutic for me. They reminded me of my father, who is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard or known. He ingrained in me the importance of oral tradition, folklore, and imagination.

To my surprise, the students’ verbal skills began to progress rapidly. By the middle of July (six months in), several of my students were reading and writing in English, Bella being one of them. Their handwriting was immaculate and their overall competencies in English were already exceeding my expectations. I was impressed and exhausted. Teaching nine classes a day was wearing on my mind and body, but our ten-day vacation was coming up, so we pushed through looking forward to the opportunity to meet my mom in Greece.

After our short vacation it was difficult to find the routine at work again. I felt disenchanted with my job and the amount of responsibilities resting on our shoulders. We were taking six credit hours online for our MA from the University of Central Florida. By September we started having serious problems with one of our directors. I wanted to quit, but I couldn’t leave my kinder babies, and especially not Bella. I was too attached to them at that point, and I couldn’t give up when we were so close to finishing anyway. Between Josh’s encouragement and my determination, we kept going to work, despite what had become a mostly hostile work environment.

By the end of November, many of the problems at work had been resolved. We started realizing that the end was in sight, which felt somewhat bittersweet. We were yearning to see our family back home; nonetheless, we knew that goodbye really meant goodbye, and that it was very likely we would never again see our kinder babies once we left. Each one of them had become special to us, and some tremendously special. In December we explained to the children that we would be going home soon; they didn’t understand. “Ok, but when you come back?” they would ask, or, “You come home bring me American sticker, Ok?” They didn’t understand: we weren’t coming back to Korea. Korea wasn’t home. The United States was home.

The last month went by with tremendous speed. Finals for grad school, packing, Christmas in Seoul with our dear friends, training the new teacher who had arrived… saying goodbye. Bella was being cold toward me. She was angry, extremely angry. I knew why, and I understood, but it broke my heart all the same. One recess, when all of the students went running down the hall to the gym, she stayed behind, lingering next to me. I sat down and pulled her petite body up into my lap, closing my arms around her and exhaling deeply. I didn’t want to ever let go.

“Teacher, I come to America,” she said, with every bit of certainty that I loved about her, that sureness that had been missing the previous several weeks.

“Oh, yea? You want to come visit me in America?”

Narrowing her eyes, she shook her head yes.

“You can come see me whenever you want. And we can write letters, and even talk on the phone if you want.”

She hugged me and ran off toward the gym to play with her friends. I knew that I would become a distant memory to her one-day, but that day, I was a very special person.

A few days later was our departure. We were scheduled to work a half day before catching a bus for the Incheon Airport in Seoul, where we would spend the night in order to make a very early flight to Japan, where we would catch another flight which would take us to Houston where we would wait in long lines, go to the wrong gate, nearly miss our flight, and finally board a plane that would take us to Orlando, Florida and our family.

Our last day at work we played games with our kinder babies. They gave us cards and so much love. The day was ending. All of the children lined up in the gym and did their end-of-the-day routine with the director. We usually were not a part of this routine, but today was different because it was our last. I struggled to keep my tears in. the children were begging us not to leave. Josh and I looked at each other; he reassured me with his eyes that I needed to get through this without losing control of my emotions. Most of the children lined up in front of the elevators and left, but my Bella was still there. Her mother arrived with several of the other mothers, giving me an enormous gift: a photo album with pictures of the children, a Korean tea set, a beautiful handcrafted ceramic bowl and serving dishes. (We paid $150 in overweight charges at the airport the next morning, but I couldn’t leave any of it behind).

I hugged the remaining children over and over again. I begged the mothers to please keep in touch, but it was time: we had to go in order to make the bus to Seoul. I walked to the elevator with Bella, her mother, her baby brother and the few other students and mothers who still remained. Bella didn’t want to let go of me, and I of her, but we parted. She stepped back into the elevator with her mother standing behind her. I waved goodbye and then bowed to her mother, saying, “Aneonghegaseyo,” goodbye.

The elevator doors began to slide shut, and Bella yelled, “Teacher, don’t leave!” with such sorrow in her voice. She was crying.

“I love you! See you soon!” The latter was a falsity, but what else could I say?

The doors closed and the elevator descended. My head fell into my hands, and I cried. Josh looked at me knowingly.

“We need to finish packing. We have to go,” he was being calm for my sake, but I could see the sadness in his eyes, too.

We hurried back to our little Korean apartment that had been home for the previous year and packed all the little bits that remained. Josh managed to fit more than was possible into our duffle bags. I wasn’t much help. I felt so confused.

“How is it possible that we’ll be home tomorrow?” I kept asking. We had been so far away from everything familiar for so long that it didn’t seem real or possible to just be home, just like that.

Bella took a piece of my heartstring that day and it’s still unraveling. One day I’ll be a distant memory to her, but she’ll never be far from me. More than anything, I would like her to someday know how much she meant to me, and how her stories, confidence, and carefree glances helped me live that year in Korea.

The End