It’s hard to believe how quickly these past six weeks together have flown by, and even harder to believe I’ve already been living in Cyprus for over five months now! By spending the holiday season in Cyprus and celebrating both American and Cypriot traditions with my students, I’ve had lots of opportunities for reflection on our amazing journey together so far.
On Thanksgiving, I led my students in creating a turkey decoration made out of our traced handprints. On each handprint, we wrote, “I am thankful for” on the palm and then added what we were thankful for on the fingers. The colorful result was a heartwarming reminder of all that we have in common: family, friends, life, health, nature, food, home, pets, PlayStations. Okay, maybe we don’t have PlayStations in common… I’m not quite that cool! Or maybe I am? Because some of my students even wrote that they were thankful for me! I couldn’t help but smile.
My November birthday brought me even bigger smiles! Can you guess how old I turned? One year old! At least, that’s what I told my students when they asked me for the thousandth time. Why one? Because this is my very first birthday abroad! And indeed, it’s been a year of many firsts, especially in the past five months.
