岡枝小学校のスピーチ

It's been a rough week of farewells. I said goodbye to all of my town elementary schools. Today I said bye to the one who has meant the most to me, Okaeda. They have been my pet school, of sorts, the one where I did the Halloween Day and baked Christmas cookies. Even the bratty 4th graders were good for me. During the 5th period, they had a farewell ceremony for me. Hopefully some folks will e-mail me some photos of the day to post at a later time. At the end, I made the following speech:

みなさん、こんにちは．２年間私は菊川に住み、岡枝小学校で教えてきました．２年間はあっとゆう間でした．アメリカにもどり、家族に合えるのは、とてもうれしいです．でも、日本を離れ、菊川のすばらしい人たちとわかれるのは、とても悲しいことです．みなさんを教えるのは、とても楽しかったです．私を通して、みなさんが英語やアメリカの文化について、少しでも勉強できたことがあれば、とてもうれしいです．私に日本の文化や日本語を教えてくれて、ありがとう．

菊川に来て、私の生活は大きくかわりました．私の世界が大きく広がリました．菊川のことは、わたしの心のなかから、きえません．みなさんの笑顔は、決して、わすれません．これからも、がんばってください．そして、つぎのALTの先生にも、私のときのように、親切で元気にせっしてください．本当に、今まで、ありがとうございました．みなさん、お元気で．

Granted one of my junior high JTEs helped me translate this speech from English to Japanese a few weeks ago, but I think it's rather amazing that I was able to read all of this in Japanese considering I came only knowing one Japanese word [こんにちは]. It's really easy to get frustrated about all the Japanese we don't know. But I think we should focus on the progress that we make and the things that we do know instead of all that we don't know (which is a lot and can get very overwhelming at times!)

It went very well. I started to get choked up a bit when I said how I will never forget their smiles. And when I finished I saw the female teachers brushing their tears away, but I didn't look at them and was fine. I did lose it a bit afterwards when I was by myself. But overall, the day went very well. I was touched by all the students' messages and their kind little hearts.