goodbye, peter.

there's a boy named Peter in one of my classes... he a real shy boy that always sits (and sometimes cuddles hehe- which is totally acceptable for guy friends in china) in the back of class with his best friend Kid. Peter is a great singer and is really good at drawing... but his English is not very good- poor guy probably didn't even want to be an English major but was forced to by the school or his parents :(

anyways last friday during class i noticed Peter wasn't there so i asked kid, "where's peter??" kid said that peter went home to recruit (our school is sometimes more like a business and they make the students go home to recruit more students to go to the school) and won't be back for about a month! my heart sank and i looked at the board and realized that the date was may 14th- exactly one more month until i leave for america!! i started to get teary eyed just thinking that i never got to say goodbye to peter and probably won't ever see him again (i hope i can come back to visit in the future too and that one day i'll see him at home with the Father too with all my other students!)... then it just went downhill from there.

clearly there were tears in my eyes which turned.. into more tears... DURING class! talk about a professional college teacher... good job jodi! it's going to be really interesting to see what happens NEXT month when i actually have to say goodbye to all of my dear dear students... sigh- i'm gonna need a LOT of thoughts lifted up- i've become a really emotional person in china. it happens. :) some people are "pre-grievers" other's are "post-grievers"... but i've learned that i'm a "perpetual griever". i hope to have more perpetual joy too... even through the grieving!

one goodbye down, 150+ more to go... oh dear!

one of my first pictures of peter, with kid- naturally :)


later that day some i bought myself my first flowers in china and passed some out to the mothers in the back gate... flowers are so refreshing because there's not many in china!