How does a memory come to be? How does a certain person, place, experience, find it's way into your heart, not to be removed ever by the persistent flow of time? When I came to Chi Phat three months ago it seemed so strange and foreign, and I thanked god I had this group of Israelis around me to make it feel a bit less alien. Now I look at the view of the village from our front porch and wonder how I could ever make it feel a bit less like home. This community, these people, have entered my heart in a way few things can, and they have left a mark forever.
And I am sad in a way I never imagined I would be. Everything I have done this last week has been tinged with sadness. I am leaving and I don't know if I will ever return, but I feel as though there are many things still left undone. I want to see this place grow and change, I want to see what it will become. I want to travel again to the "bald mountain", the "pineapple rock", the pools, the waterfall. I want to know what happens to these people. I want to be a part of their happiness and sorrows. I want to know how their lives turn out. I want to know what kind of adults my students will become.
And I wish them well. I wish they will live out their dreams and realize their potential. I hope they understand all they can become, and I hope they take actions to become it. I hope they are not kept from achieving their dreams by their poverty, and if that does happen, then I hope they don't spend their lives in frustration, anger and despair. I hope they are happy and healthy and satisfied.
This place and these people have entered my heart so deeply and wholly that I now feel as though it’s breaking. I have become a part of it, and it has become a part of me, in a way that could never be undone. And still I wonder at how it actually happened – how did this extraordinary, unrepeatable, incomparable memory come to be. I will never forget, and I will never be the same. I hope they won’t either.
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