"Never wake a child who dreams"

I'm a crier...anyone that knows me knows I have, at times, an overly sentimental heart.  I've lost track of the number of blurry-eyed walks home from school as I fought back tears.  Naturally, I thought that I'd be in tears as I said goodbye to students and colleagues...I wasn't.   It's not that I won't miss them dearly...I certainly will!  But like so many parts of my Peace Corps journey...what I expected to happen turns out differently.

I got through it all until a final moment with a second grade teacher, Luci, caught me off-guard.  She is the sweetest woman, and I love that she's gained the courage over the past two years to converse with me in English.  She's quite poetic, and as a parting gift she gave me a book of her 2nd graders poetry with a lovely personal message, from her, inscribed on the first page.

For Tara

Because she looks at the Earth with the child's eyes.
Because she is my new friend and I can talk with her in English much more than I can talk with my old friends in Romanian.
Because she would never wake a child who dreams.

I will miss you!

That's when I lost it.