Galloping That Heralds Unicorns; Not Horses, Not Zebras

Quick. Somebody tell the Unicorn that he finally exists. I've managed to find enough free time to write this post. Anything's possible now.

And so the school year has mostly come to an end. We still need to evaluate the program -- prune and rearrange topics here and there. But that's all work for the coming school year. The work for this school year is all done. I am all shades of sad and lonely and nostalgic and relieved.

The thing about being a teacher is the inevitable goodbyes. The kids are with us for just a year and, like it or not, they will move on. Kids being kids, they're usually resilient enough to move on fairly quickly. It'll take a while for me to completely let go though. Just a few days ago, as we were moving in to our (finally) newly renovated offices, I was segregating my stuff, determining what to throw away, what to keep. I stumbled upon a class list, somehow unscathed, and I almost wept. Ugh, I'm such a dork.

I am also lonely because for the most part of the day, my kids were my source of comfort. I am not doing well (understatement and deliberately vague, I'm afraid), and with them gone, I am forced to...think.

Funny how nostalgic I feel now. All one has to do is to go back to my previous posts to see how challenging this school year was, how ready I was to throw in the towel. But nostalgia has given me fantastically rose-colored glasses. All I remember is how fun it was. Well, that's not true, I will also always look back to this year as having been the most personally exhausting year ever, but I shall miss it.

Which is why I'm relieved, I suppose. Not that it's over, but that I can have another year to make bawi. Because just as much as goodbyes and endings are inevitable, so are hellos and new beginnings.

Yeah, after all the huffing and puffing, the house was blown down. I just wasn't expecting the house to be what it is. So yeah, I'll be coming back.

Ugh. And now to more important matters.

(Please, Unicorn, take me and my daughter away from all this.)

‎"The Greek word for 'return' is nostos. Algos means 'suffering.' So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return." (From Ignorance by Milan Kundera.)