Goodby Sweety Kim

No, Mom-- I didn't spell the title wrong, as you can see this is how they spelled it. As they are my students, I only hope that they just ran out of room.

My students had a good-bye for me on the second to last day of class, and I was very, very touched. We had planned sort of an end-of-the-term thing but it was supposed to be about them, not about me. These are my 6B students, and so after this class they are finished with MALI and are moving on. I know that they are going to do great because they are some of the most talented kids I have ever met (except for Fouad, who isn't a kid, but is rather old enough to by my father.)

Assem wrote a great speech wishing me well and making suggestions for each person in the class. Fouad wrote a poem about the "Dancing Teacher" (I will do anything to get my students attention) that I was also very touched by.

The group shot is my entire 6B class. From left to right: Mohammed, Elvira, me, Fouad, Abdullelah, Mohammed with glasses, Afif, and Assem and Ahmed in the bottom row. They brought sparklers and drinks. Ahmed even brought a can of "fake snow" that he covered me with because he thought that perhaps I missed the snow in Seattle. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that there wasn't really any snow in Seattle.) It was a blast, and I will miss them terribly.

This picture is me and my two female students, Elvira and Khlood. I was teasing Khlood right before the picture was taken by telling her to wear the veil that covers her eyes over her face. She thought I was serious and pulled it down. I laughed and went to push it away when the picture was taken. You can see the light material that covers the eyes in the picture and the thicker material that covers the face. She rarely pulls down the eye-covering material but always wears the face veil-- I have no idea what she looks like, and neither does anyone else in the class. She's a great student and one hell of a writer. Elvira is the girl next to me, a student from Russia who I held dear to my heart because neither of us spoke Arabic. She pronounced her w's as v's and sounded like a little vampire. Although she begged me to, I refused to correct her accent. It was way too cute.

And here is me cutting the cake. It dawned on me that I haven't posted a picture of myself wearing a veil! I am really getting sick of it but I can't take it off. My students, most of which have seen me without it, asked me to take it off and I felt like I was stripping for them.

Teaching 6B alone made Yemen worth the trip. Thanks, guys.

(Check back, I will be posting Fouad's poem here in a day or so.)