Saying goodbye to Ellington was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. Thursday my girls in Female Ensemble threw a party for me with this ridiculous cake and lots of pineapple. I can't remember if I already wrote about my video I taped of "a day in the life" but it's gonna be worth publishing someday, I'm sure of it. The kids all sang and danced and taught me to walk the walk. I got a letter and a poem that day that gave me chills as I read them on the metro coming home. It’s what being a teacher is all about, hearing that when you take interest in a student they actually notice and respond to you too. This girl wrote about the glimmer she saw in my eye, which is ironic cuz I see the same in hers. It’s something I’ll treasure.
And then, some of the best entertainment of my life happened. Thursday and Friday night the kids put on a show. Half of it was an opera called "Amahl and the Night Visitors" about the three wise men coming to the house of this poor woman and her son while they search for the wise men. The boy is a cripple and after all the shepherds sing and dance for these kings, the boy offers to give up his crutch, his only possession to give to the baby king when they find him. When he does he is miraculously healed. It was amazing. Not only message but the singing was more than I’ve ever heard them do before. And then intermission. And THEN…
Motown Christmas! It was incredible, each one of them came on as a different artist from way back when with back-up singers and costumes and the whole works. I will carry memories of that for a long time. I went with different people from the ward each night and all of them kept telling me they couldn’t believe they were high school kids. That’s what I’ll miss. Pure, raw, natural talent in students who want to do something with it. And they really did make me feel a part of them. I got to hand out some little cards with quotes about character, mostly from General Conference talks, and the kids loved them. Now they’ll all have President Hinckley’s quotes hanging on their mirrors.

Saturday I spent longer than expected at school doing one last Christmas present for the kids. I cleaned Dr. A’s room from top to bottom. I started at 10:00a when the school opened and first organized the mess that is the piano in that room. Melissa helped me clean the modules in the hour she was there… she got through ONE of them. We sanitized everything, cleaned, dusted, filed, rearranged, alphabetized, Melanie came in and helped for a bit, I scrubbed and threw away TONS of stuff and even duct taped the floor back together. The windows were helpless, they will never be clean. But all that needed to happen by 4pm was just the vacuuming. I thought the vaccum in the room would work, but alas, I was very wrong. Nothing in that school really works. So I went to plan B and asked a student if there was one. She proceeded to tell me about her mom and how she had a heart attack the night before so she didn’t have a ride home from the final performance that night. So I offered to come back around 11 and give her a lift. And she said she’d try to find a vacuum. An hour later, no vacuum. Shocka. I fidgeted with the broken one awhile till I discovered that the little hose on the side worked just fine, it just wouldn’t pick up anything from the main part. So I duct taped a little 3 inch nozzle on the end of it and went to work, scrupulously picking up every bit of dirt and crumb left on that dang carpet for the past 27 years I’m pretty sure. My knees were torn, my hamstring (or some other muscle in there) is aching still, but man, it looked good. Even I must admit. I put a poinsettia on the piano and took some pictures of before and after and called it a night at 7pm. I had more dust in my hair and in my fingernails than I have in a long time. But I think it paid off, Dr. A called on Monday morning, just shocked at the place. It’s funny cuz I’m really the only person who could clean that room at this point, I know where things go and I know which things she wouln’t be able to find if I REALLY cleaned it. I know which things I need to label for her and which things she’ll know where to find.
As I cleaned I just kept thinking how I’ll never be back there teaching. It’s home to me. And I know things have to change, cuz that’s the way life goes. I know that learning to be flexible and leave what you’re comfortable with is a fine quality but it still really blows.

Sunday my girls came to church with me and sang for our Christmas Program at Sacrament Meeting. I think the congregation really loved it, they had a lot of compliments afterward. Some of them couldn’t come cuz the red line metro got screwed up that morning but those that did come really liked the service. I got one of them going to the ward close by her house on Sunday J

Sunday night Odie and I went to Dr. A’s Christmas party and met some very interesting people… a guy who wrote one of Kanye West’s songs, a lady who wrote a book about 63 of her life stories, and just tons of people who have done some really amazing things with their lives. And it made me wonder what, if anything, I’ll ever be able to brag about at a party like that. For these people it’s not the money they make or the things they buy, the artistic types don’t have a ton of money to bounce around. But it is the accomplishments they have in what they’ve created themselves and how they influence people and effect lives that way. I’m off to a good start, while everyone in the house talked about sophisticated things, Odie and I snuck to the garage and played ping pong. I’m off to a good start all right.

Yesterday I went back to school for a PARTY! I received the best gifts, the most beautiful flowers, the largest card I’ve ever seen, and a song request. The opera workshop class walked over to Lido’s Pizza for lunch and we just had a good time. It was hilarious, the waiter had red hair and Milton kept on commenting how he’d never seen anyone with red hair before, only in the movies! How crazy is that?! And one of the girls ordered lamb and her friend kept saying, “This is straight out of fear factor, girl!” And then they’d both wiggle down a piece. I had them sing my favorite “We will make a difference” song and we ate pizza and chocolate till we wanted to puke. It was a blast. The card has some of the most hilarious messages on it, I’ll have to put the pictures up tomorrow. Some like,

“Y R U leaving”
and
“Don’t let anyone get on your nerves,”
“Come back when you’re ready,”“Since you’re not my teacher anymore I’m going to call you Mikale,”
“Make the most of life, you’re still young,”
and my favorite,
“Teachers come out @ night, What… what… what”

The best part of all is on the back, though. They had recopied the quotes I gave them about character and integrity, the things I really tried to nail home, and they wrote them from their perspective, at the end saying that I’d helped mold them into better students with stronger character and a greater capacity to love.
I feel like it’s all a fairytale, like it didn’t really happen. Trying to describe my experience at Ellington is like trying to take a picture of the most beautiful sunset you see… it just doesn’t do justice to the background noise and the tone of voice and the pure music and movement and the hugs and the laughter and the wise cracks that you hear when you go and see. My roommate walked in there on Saturday and just said it feels special when you go there. It’s very true.

Things in my life that happened a year and longer ago are really starting to make sense to me as I think about them. It’s becoming clear why I stayed here and why I came to DC in the first place. Why I had to fail certain things last year that made me feel like… a failure… why I had to let certain people go, why I chose what I did, and why I had to learn these things to “give me experience.” It really was awful at times, not knowing, but the more I’ve read back over journals and think about how pieces fit together, the more I see how I’ve been guided so carefully the past little while in terms of the people I meet and the places I go and the friends I make. It’s not like it’s all roses and sunshine... it’s certainly not over. But it was a tender mercy.
Funny, I had one of my little break-down sessions tonight as I just feel completely overwhelmed with the tasks now at hand. But it’s okay, because there are those silver-lining months when things go spectacularly. And then you have a year of complete chaos and exhaustion, and then it’s made up for. It’s this crazy cycle where I always want to see the end of it when I start it but I never get to. I went to see my new choir today and I truly do have my work cut out for me. I now really understand why teachers stay so long at Ellington, cuz they can’t bring themselves to go back to a regular high school. I was spoiled and now I have to learn to get back into reality. I have to house hunt before next week and pack up my life in the penthouse and be alone here for a few days and try to plan curriculum and a Relief Society lesson for Sunday, not to mention EFY calling and making life just a bit more complicated than before. When it rains it pours. But I get to go home and my mom just told me she planed a massage for me. I can’t even tell you how much I love that woman.

I am grateful for new beginnings. Even though they’re hard when nothing is certain and you feel lonely in your new setting, that’s when you remember why we all are called to be humble. There’s defiantly someone who understands it all and makes enough of us to go around. A friend and I had a “toast to uncertainty” on Monday. Rather appropriate I must say. I’ve encountered this before and I will at least 49 more times in my life. So I just have to start somewhere and keep going.

I made the final “Word of the Week” at Ellington ENDURE. For them, it’s getting through these last days till break. For me, it’s

I dunno how to finish that last sentence. Just endure. Well.