The softness of change.
Friday morning, the sun is bright. I walk to school and am greeted by a cool and pleasant breeze as I pass beneath the trees. The bricks are a comfortable, burnt red color, a molded path that has settled into its place long before my feet met this ground. The hazy heat of summer, grey and heavy, silently took leave and in its place are cool whispers of autumn, quiet auras, hushed like secrets, a few lone brown leaves that scuttle across the street.
In the courtyard of my school, students are huddled in large, teeming clusters of matching costumes: bright red shorts held with suspenders over bright yellow shirts, soccer jerseys with names printed on the back, forty purple polo’s topped with ridiculous headband bows, the striped bow ties sticking straight into the air off of forty giggling faces, forty sets of Pikachu ears perched on forty pig-tailed heads. The deep pounding of drums resonates across the courtyard and in order of class, the students perform choreographed dances to start off the day. Their synchronized moves are met with wild screams from their fellow students in the stands. I wander with my camera, snapping pictures, smiling at the excited, “Amanda teacher!” greetings. The teachers sit under an awning on a raised platform that overlooks the courtyard: there are tables heaped high with clusters of grapes, boxes of rice cakes, perfectly sliced watermelons. Here, the air is cool and the sun cannot reach them.
I love the twang of the Korean musical instruments, girls’ voices screaming with the beat, the traditional drums booming through the air. My students are happy, today they are freed from their studies, they dance and scream as they compete with each other: three-legged races, tug of war, dodge ball, relay races. Nobody gives me instruction, but it no longer seems necessary. The sky is blue with fat, white clouds, and I am so immersed, this life has normalized for me.
“One year ago,” Mickey says as she sits beside me on the cement steps. “I remember one year ago, your first day. You seemed so kind, and beautiful, and… something like that.” I smile at the air between us, warm with her encouragement, before raising my eyes to meet hers. We’re both preparing to leave, standing in the anxious few days of familiarity before we step off the ground into our next plane, actively changing the world as we know it.
My stomach knows it, knotting in excitement, in nervousness, begging my brain to make lists to assuage the anxiety, to maintain control over the details. My last class has finished. My heart feels the weight of the temporary, relishing the slowness in the moments. The twang of the drum brings me back, feeling distant but calm, my last few days in Korea. The whistles scream, the sun is hot, we practice warm ups with my relay team, the students’ screams fill the courtyard and I am selected to run first. The frantic beat of the drums fill the air, we stand in a row and the students fill the space around the track, dancing and cheering wildly, a photographer stands with his camera at the ready, the microphone screeches from the podium as we wait for the shot from the gun.
