The beginning of the end

Do you ever have one of those days where you just wake up feeling low? Well I'm having one today. Here's why: Sometime late last night or when I woke up this morning, it finally hit me that we're leaving Japan in a month and a half.

The past three days were great. We had our school festival this weekend, so I spent all day Saturday and Sunday at school. It was a great time. There were performances by a lot of the clubs and all of the culture clubs had rooms set up all over school displaying things and selling things. The sports clubs sold food and there were big crowds of people from all over - parents, friends, former students, random people from the community. It was a big festival and a lot of fun. I walked around school going into the various rooms and talking to and taking pictures with students. I bought some things and made donations to some of the charity fundraisers. I spent a lot of time in the English club room where we were doing a fundraiser to raise money for Oxfam. We had a student doing a magic show and we gave away some bags with treats for everyone who donated at least 100 yen. In total, English club raised 20,747 yen (roughly $200) for my Oxfam Trailwalker team. I was very proud of them. They worked really hard this year and did a great job.

So the festival was a lot of fun. All of the students and teachers were happy and having a great time. There was just a positive feel in the air.

Yesterday was the annual sports festival that falls on the last day of the school festival. On this day, all of the homerooms compete in various athletic competitions. There are 100 meter sprints. There is a homeroom relay where every member of the homeroom runs 100 meters of a relay. There are about 40 students in each homeroom, so as you can imagine, it's a long relay. They have class jump rope competitions where all of the students in each homeroom jump rope with a giant long jump rope. There's tug-of-war, 5 people/six legs races, a girl's dance, human pyramid building, and all kinds of other crazy events. It was so much fun! We did a teacher relay as well where a bunch of the teachers compete with a bunch of students in a relay. I ran 1oo meters in that. Just like the festival, everyone had a great time. It's really neat to see how much pride the students take in their homerooms. They all tried their best to succeed.

After the sports day, there was a talent show to close out the three-day festival. Most of the performances were just ok, but they had fun and the students watching enjoyed all of them. One group of about 12-15 girls did a 10-15 minute dance routine. They closed out the show and they were amazing. It really looked like they had been practicing for a long time. I actually did a secret performance in the show as well. Secret as in very few people knew I was doing it until the curtain came up. I have a student who plays guitar, and I approached him a while back and asked if he'd like to do a song with me in the talent show. He agreed and we decided to do "Change the World" by Eric Clapton. He played and I sang. It went really well and the students all loved it. I've been wanting to sing for them for a long time, so I'm glad I got the chance to do it. I was happy to be able to perform with him. I think it meant a lot to both of us. I'll try to post a video of it on here soon.

So, after all of that, I woke up this morning feeling the post-festival let down. It's like the feeling you get after a vacation. You've been looking forward to it for so long and you have so much fun, and then it ends and you go through a few days of feeling a little glum.

But in this case I kind of view this as the beginning of the end. There are no more big events left at school. Just a few weeks of classes and then finals and that's it. It'll be over before I know it. I'll be up on the stage giving my farewell speech to the students in no time. It's going to be a hard month and a half. I decided a while back that I would start telling the students that I'm leaving after the school festival. Well, now school festival is over, and that time has come. I'll probably start letting them know next week. Not looking forward to it. Cue the tears.

So anyway, that's what I'm feeling today. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow to go to work I'll be feeling better. I know that it's probably the best thing for us to go home now, but right now the thought of leaving Japan is not a happy one for either of us. It's going to be tough.