It's my party... I'll pass on the crying.

Kyaw Hlu Sien made the students throw me a goodbye party which unfortunately turned out to be an awkward affair. Despite the fact that I has specifically asked for no party, he told them to throw one anyway and didn't even bother to tell me-- I found out secondhand from a student. The food was great, but the entire time I sat there wishing that I had just taken off a week early and announced my departure with a note.

The Karenni Math teacher, Soray, ran the thing like a business meeting. He stood up and said stuff like "we don't have an agenda" and "this meeting is to thank our teacher, uh--" he stumbled over my name-- "Kim, and say goodbye." He asked the students to make speeches. Class 1, who I didn't have this year, get into an argument over who would have to do it. Yoom lost and stood up and said some forgettable things. Class 2 and 3 were better prepared and had their speeches written. Their speeches were a lot more thought out but unfortunately they didn't write them. Nee Eh could barely make it through hers, so peppered was it with new words. I appreciated the time that they had put into them but would have liked a speech that was made of their own words, even if there were mistakes.

I think that the worst bit, however, was when it came time for the teachers to give speeches. My expat compatriots couldn't do better then yelling out "Kim Rocks!" which was hardly moving. Soray, however, proved that this was indeed better then something. He alluded to something during our last meeting and I was pretty shocked by the event that he'd picked-- during the meeting Soray asked the teachers to come up with a schedule for testing. We'd already been in the meeting for an hour and I was getting tired. After some hmming and hawing I finally jumped up and the room watched in silence as a drew up a schedule for the week that allowed the classes to take their tests. After I sat down Soray told me that "this wasn't the way it was done here" and drew up a new schedule which I felt was lacking since it involved one teacher having three exams at once. "Then why did you bother asking me?" I wanted to say. I was surprised and hurt when Soray talked about this as the event that apparently defined my experience as a teacher ere. He said something about "cultures coming together" and I realized suddenly that the event was actually rather telling of my time here-- my opinion is asked then ignored because "it's not the way things are done here." Then why am I here? Good question. Throughout the three years one of the things that I am bothered by the most is being shown off as the resident American. I guess I am expected to just be white and be quiet.

Unfortunately, I am leaving way too late. I should have probably left about a month ago when I realized that teaching English was no longer something that I wanted to do. I have been really unhappy and I think that I will miss teaching about as I will miss shaking cockroaches out of my clothes in the orning. I just wish that I wasn't ending this whole thing on such a sour note.