Leaving Speeches

With three schools, 28 classes and countless teacher and students, I have a lot of goodbyes to say. My first leaving speech was on Monday to my Junior High School. I was really nervous about it as I'd be doing it in Japanese in front of a lot of people. I had a speech for my teachers, but it was more the one in front of the whole school that concerned me. But, once I had poorly navigated the various procedures of bowing, sitting, standing and where to move to, the speech seemed to flow well; even though I had about 400 faces fully focused on me. As a surprise, one of the students gave a speech in English to me, thanking me for my time here and how he had enjoyed my easy to understand lessons and interesting twists on the lessons. He was amazing! And I found out later he wrote it on his own over the weekend! I was also presented with a bouquet of flowers by one of the girls I worked on the speech contest with. I then had to walk through the centre of the students to a round of applause. It was such a bizarre feeling as I won't leave just yet and I find it hard to accept I will be leaving as these things don't normally sink in until they happen.