Headed Out: Saying Goodbye to My School

Last Friday, I had my last day of work at my lyceum. Its crazy how time flies, I feel like I just arrived to my site not too long ago and now I've already left. Saying goodbye is always difficult, especially when you have to part ways with people that you've lived with and worked with daily for the last two years. I had a small goodbye dinner with a few of my English teacher colleagues and friends on Thursday evening.

the German Chocolate goodbye cake that I baked for dinner. 

Lina, Larisa, me, Nadia, Sveta, Anna and Liliya.

At school, my last lesson was with my beloved 5A class. These kids are great - they are always enthusiastic and excited to have English lessons... some of them even do their homework in their workbooks ahead of time. We've had lessons together for the last two years, and its been wonderful watching them grow from little 3rd graders into (slightly bigger) 5th graders. They had to present their own renditions of the "3 Little Pigs" story, with extra credit if they made themselves pig ears or noses.

"Little pig, little pig, open the door and let me in..."

Larisa and a few of the students. 

"...or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!"

In the afternoon, my school had a goodbye concert with kids singing and dancing American-style dances for me. The 11-B class and 6-B class presented me with gifts - an embroidered picture, a photo album, and a traditional flower wreath for the house. They were very sweet and I am sad to leave them behind.

11-B performs a small skit while singing traditional Ukrainian songs. 

9th form girls singing in Ukrainan. 

the "Fantasy Girls" group of 7th graders. 

a group of 8 graders dancing the waltz. 

with the 6-B class and their presents!

We ended the concert by showing a slideshow that I created... highlighting all the projects, camps and trainings that I did at our school or with students from our school. It is very fast since they asked me to cut it down to 5 minutes (and only in Russian because I didn't have time to make an English version as well), but here is the video if you're interested : D