Through Hell and Back: Wuxi-- A Year Later

You know those traveling experiences where EVERYTHING possible goes wrong? Yeah. I just had that. I went to Wuxi to visit my kids. I met up with Elizabeth and it was so bad that it's not even comical to me yet. BUT, it was worth it. DEFINITELY worth it. I saw some people in Crazy-Town. And I saw my kids! My Zack! It was about a half hour of bliss out of 48 hours of chaos and frustration, but it was so worth it. So worth it. Lloyd was a sweetheart. He asked about my parents and about my friend Chris because he met them last time I was there. He said that my parents were "hen hao" which means "very good". He sat with us when he wasn't working. He even ATE with us, which I've never seen him do. And, we got to meet his daughter who is now working at the noodle shack. We ate some great food and had a great time with Lloyd. Then, we went and saw our kids. Elizabeth was welcomed into her classrooms right off the bat and I could only look through the back window... which I was used to from last year having the same thing happen to me all the time. (For some reason my students have a Nazi for a teacher). There were only about 10 kids in my classroom and I was wondering where all my other kids were. Then, they all came from down the hall and when they saw me they started running and hugging me and fighting to get close to me. It was great. They had to go into class and I was sad and wanted to go in with them but a woman outside told me that they had to have English class... I told her, "But I SPEAK English." She thought about it for a second and realized she was a moron and then talked to the teacher and I got to go in and spend a half hour with them. It was so neat. I would say that a good 4/5 of my students were still there. And after a couple minutes of shock, they ALL had warmed up to me, including Zack who pushed people away from me when they started smothering me. It was so amazing. I can't describe it. It felt so good to be back with them, even for such a short time. They kept asking if I was here to teach them again permanently. Ooh, it was hard to have to tell them I wasn't. But, it was still a happy reunion. I had tried to keep my hopes as low as possible in case they didn't remember me or if a lot of the students were gone, but even if my hopes had been high, they still would have been met. It was great. One of my larger kids, Josh, even started crying when I left again. Haha. Oh, man. I'm so thankful that I was able to go back and do that with Elizabeth. SO THANKFUL!

They only let me post 5 pictures at a time... so this might take a while...