I love my students.

All of them.

Completely.

Today I received a hand-crafted book about four inches thick, inside which was over 100 portraits of me, drawn in crayon, by kindergardners.

Nothing was left out. Dreadlocks, earrings, five-o-clock shadow: all completely rendered in Crayola.

I shook hands with a few hundred kindergardners today, and said "bye-bye" a few hundred times.

Two days ago I sat and talked for over two hours to Satoko, Natsuko and Chizuru. It was sports day. They played basketball, I cheered.

I don't think they understood everything I said about being sad to go.

I don't think they will understand how much I'm going to miss them.

Two days ago I had a going away party in-front of an auditorium full of junior high students. A small girl whose name I never learned came up to me with a tear stained face and said "Don't go, don't go!" Her lip trembling and her face flushed.

"Don't go, don't go..." she keeps saying to me... and it's painful.

I only have 3 more days of school left.