Break

The Chinese school where I have been teaching will finish its school year this Saturday. On that day there will be a students' show for their parents. We have rehearsed twice. My students did great. I am very looking forward to it. It has been a great experience to teach Mandarin to middle school kids every Saturday morning. The school has six or seven classes for kids of different ages to learn Cantonese and Mandarin. During the class break, seeing students fly around and hearing their noise is very enjoyable. Also, seeing my students improve makes me feel I have accomplished something. It is a good feeling. We have reached a point where they are used to my teaching style and where I know how to teach them well. So it is sad to leave them. Next year, they will have a new teacher. I hope they will have a great transition.

My volleyball league has come to a break too. We finished the spring season. The summer one will not begin until a month later. Again we ranked No. 2 out of the six teams. This was the fourth time that I played with this team and the third time that we ranked the second place. There is always something missing in my team that stops us from getting the championship. "We have issues in our team", one teammate said. Our passing is not always that great; we don't have a fast-running setter; we have a few short people... Well, we just play for fun. A bunch of grads, posdocs, and lab researchers get together to work out a bit every Tuesday evening. The good thing for me is that I finally got the feel of passing in this season: Form my arm platform and place it facing the setter, ninety percent of the times, I'll give a good pass. During this break, I can focus on improving my hitting technique.

I had wanted to take a break with T too. After seeing him for several months, I told him the points in his personality that I had difficulty coping with. He was a little upset with me for a couple of days. Then one night before we went to sleep, he popped the three words. "I want you to know it", he said. That moment my heart was moved. And I decided to take this three-year younger, ghetto, completely spontaneous, not always patient, very judgmental, but very loyal, always supportive, and hopelessly romantic kid. I'll accept his personality. Certainly there will still be many issues. But my attitude has changed from "I don't know whether it is worth working on them" to "okay, let's work on them".

Some breaks mean farewell, some getting better.