Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields

ALTs throughout Japan this morning were giving their farewell speeches at their school’s closing ceremonies. I just did mine. In Japanese I might add.

I was practicing reading it in my apartment this morning and not once did I manage to read it through without crying, it didn’t bode well.

In the staff room I was feeling pretty nervous but Toshiki came and sat with me, we went through my speech together. When he first read the speech through he looked up at me and said ‘Helen. Maybe you’ll cry’ I told him Nigel reckoned I’d definitely end up blubbering away on the stage, he told me that he agreed with Nige. It meant such a lot to me though that someone was so concerned and had made the effort to come and sit with me (or maybe he was just skiving cleaning duties). He wished me luck outside the hall too and was the first person to congratulate me afterwards. So Toshiki definitely made my morning – thanks Nige for teaching him English!

I had to wait until the end of the ceremony to give my speech, admittedly I was nervous about speaking Japanese in front of 700 people but I was more apprehensive at the thought of breaking down in tears half way into my speech. I told myself to think about the Queen going to the toilet or all the times I’ve been irritated at school -like the days when nobody has said a word to me. I guess it worked a little. I made it through my speech without crying but having said that I was mainly just concentrating on my Japanese at that point (and definitely wasn’t thinking about the Queen). I just cried a little when the students made a speech in English and gave me my flowers. I actually ended up laughing a lot when Akemi was running around trying to get the students to split down the middle of the hall so I could walk through, it was like the parting of the red sea but instead of Moses and the red sea – my best J friend and 700 bored, sleepy students instead!

Think that’s it for now.