Rustam

As we were leaving the school today, I found out that the first of our students was leaving. Rustam was originally in the beginners class, but I soon realized he knew too much English when he started listing out all the vocabulary before I had a chance to write it on the board. I encouraged him to move up to the elementary class, and during break, he switched classes. He even knew more than some of the students who were already placed in elementary. Since then, he has made such an effort to get to know all of the teachers as well as the other students, often acting as a translator. He has many friends, which actually proves to be a frustration for his teachers since he'd rather talk and misbehave than pay attention in class. Nonetheless, he has always had a good attitude towards school. When I realized that today was his last day of class (his family is going to Issykuhl? lake for 10 days), I found myself feeling emotional. I didnt' cry, but I almost wanted to! Our team had just had our mid-trip discussion the night before, and I shared that that day was the first day that I felt like I was going to truly miss our students after we left. I knew that he proably felt emotional as well because our team leader said that he started tearing as he was saying goodbye to him. SIGH it's amazing to see the relationships that can be formed in such a short time.

Anyway, there isn't much time to process a lot of things that are happening everyday. I hope that by the end of the trip, I'll have a lot more to share about what I learned on this trip. It doesn't seem as if I could do that now. There are many things to think through during this trip, and I hope that I can really try to meditate and not dwell and use my mental time wisely.

On another note, we have a lady who cooks for us every night, and her daughter is one of the students. The other night, her daughter made some amazing oatmeal chocochip cookies (which is my favorite btw), and I got the recipe yesterday! So prepare for some awesome cookies when I come home :]

van-kim