I will be the first to admit that this entry is a tad late. For that matter, I will also be one of the first to agree that calling this a "tad late" is akin to calling forty degrees below zero just a mild chill. It certainly has been a busy month, and apparently so much that not only was this blog pushed to the back burner, but away from the stove and out of the kitchen entirely before I managed to remember it once again.
Although it's probably safe to say that 95% of my readership knows this already, I nevertheless will take the time to report on the fact that after many an hour spent in the classrooms, countless corrected essays, innumerous consumed bowls of scrambled egg and tomato, and a host of other odds and ends, my time in Jilin and as a proud member of the Maryknoll China Teachers Program has been over for a little over a month now. Even now sometimes it is a bit difficult to believe that I just spent two years living and working in northeastern China, but try as I may, I cannot find so much as one clue to suggest that reality is trying to fool me. It was indeed not long ago at all when I was still a full-fledged foreign resident in the middle of Manchuria, a most curious chapter of my life which has finally come to a mostly low-key end.
Besides the fact that I could undoubtedly feel myself start to run on empty, for the most part the end of my fourth and final semester at the medical college was like any under. I was busy, but mostly with rather routine duties of wrapping up final classes, exam review, and overseeing my final tests. The bulk of it all passed by quite quickly, and to my great relief with the lowest incidences of cheating on any final examinations that I have ever given (though to be fair, I probably gave my classes a minor scare when I took the time to describe in detail all the ways that I could and have caught students trying to give me funny business). After that was all taken care of, it was only a matter of correcting several dozen more tests, plugging the grades into their repsective Excel spreadsheets, and handing it all in for official processing into the school databases.
Finally, it was time; all that was left to do was give out a veritable plethora of farewells to what had been my de facto home since my university graduation. Thus, it was time for a farewell to you, Jilin City....
Goodbye, Songhua River.....
Adios, campus of Jilin Medical College and the various academic buildings that I taught and worked in.
So long to you in particular, old administrative building....
Home of never quite-well-lit hallways....
And also the largest personal office that I will probably ever have, ever.
Au revoir, teacher cafeteria that I wish I knew about a lot earlier and used a whole lot more instead of just my last two months working at the university...
Special goodbyes to you, building #4....
Sayonara, familiar but occasionally treacherous stairwell to the fourth floor...
Ciao, apartment that I overloaded with far too many photos of home and family up on your walls...
Apologies to you, next resident of said apartment who will find himself landed with far more brightly-colored cheap plastic photo frames than he will probably knowed what to do with....
Finally, to the tiny but resilient expatriate community of Jilin City...
The students that I taught for and the faculty that I worked side by side with....
And to my Maryknoll brothers and sisters....
A very warm 再见 to you all...
Which is probably the most fitting way to put it, because 再见, as many of us know, when roughly translated....
.... means "see you again", which is what I dearly hope to do in the future.
Some of these parting messages were relatively easy to make, while others weren't so much. However, emotionally difficult or not, it was definitely time to go home.
Mind you though, in the very begining I stated that this was all a mostly low-key ending. The goodbyes, the packing, and the final school business? No real problem whatsoever. Actually getting from Jilin City to Terminal 1 at JFK airport? Unfortunately, that turned out to be not quite the least stressful journey that I have ever taken...
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