Taking a Passion Abroad: Ending the Year and Saying Goodbye

It’s June 13^th. The final concert, awards ceremony, and the end of the year party are completed. We are now sitting in meetings, debriefing, planning for next year, doing inventory, decorating the house, cleaning the house, and saying see you later to many great friends we have made here. It has been a crazy few weeks, and the next five days are going to go quickly, but I will cherish every little bit of time I have left here in Guyana.

We held our final concert for the year this past Thursday. We had a great turn out and the audience was really receptive to all of the different groups we had. At this concert we had many collaborative pieces between classes which was neat to see. My brass classes stepped up to the challenge with the piece I arranged for them titled “Cheers for Guyana.” This piece was arranged in honor of Guyana’s 50^th anniversary of independence. It was a tough piece, but they did very well. All of the classes did a great job!

On Friday we held our awards ceremony. We were able to celebrate all of the hard work our students have done throughout the year. We spent a little under an hour presenting completion certificates and a few special awards such as band karate and perfect attendance. The next two hours or so were spent with special presentations from our students. Many of our students wanted to say something to the teachers, perform a song for us, or present us with a small token. This was the year of jewelry, which is great! That is so much easier to pack then some of the things that we received last year. The choir had special GLMA pin. This pin was made even more special to me yesterday when I found out that my New Amsterdam branch president was the jeweler who hand made these pins! The items students gave me are all very special and are a great way to bring back memories down the road. I have already decided some of these gifts will come with me to Kuwait next year!

Saturday brought our end of the year party. This was just a fun was to wrap up the year. Everyone brought something to share, we had music and board games, and we even had karaoke! (Karaoke wasn’t my idea by the way. J ) Towards the end of the night there was an intense game of musical chairs played by students of all ages. It was great to see our students interacting and a fun was for us to see our students one last time.

Now we are getting into all of our meetings and wrapping up the year. We have to occasionally stop because students will stop by to bring back instruments, bring gifts/food, or to just say goodbye one last time. It is kind of like a week-long Lair goodbye. It is insane! We never know if it is actually the last time we will see them or not. This year is almost harder for me saying goodbye then last year was. Both years I will have left not knowing when for sure I was going to return. I left last year determined that I would return for the 2016-2017 if I could not find myself back there for this semester. This year I leave knowing I won’t be able to come back until 2018 at the earliest, and it is making it hard to say goodbye. Guyana feels like home to me. This is the first place I have lived out on my own after college. I’m sure I will be able to make Kuwait feel like home as well, but relationships will be different. In a way I guess it feels a little like I am closing another chapter of my life yet again and to me it feels like it has been a short chapter.

I am excited to see and hear about what happens at the school next school year. The students are ready for new challenges and the new teachers are eager to start something new as well. This will be my last blog from Guyana, however, it will not be my last blog. Sometime over the summer I will be changing the URL for this blog to continue blogging my adventures of being a music teacher abroad. I hope you will all continue to check out my journey every once in a while.