Lying goodbyes

Of course, I can't tell my students that I'm quitting because of the school's mishandling of a situation with a budding sexual deviant... So instead, I have to lie to them. I am looking my students in the eyes and telling them that I have a family emergency and that I have to go home. If they ask--which some of them do--I'm telling them that my grandfather is in the hospital, that we don't know what's wrong, and that I have to go home. Only one person wanted more details, at which point I started talking faster and using words like, "Lymphoma," and, "chemotherapy." Lucky for me, I know a little bit about both.

I find that it's pretty easy to lie to these people. The only time that I have difficulty is when there's a student in the class who knows the real story. It's harder to lie to a group of people when one of them knows you're lying.

So I've been lying for four days now, and I only got choked up twice. Some of these people I'm really going to miss. It's not all jack off kids and hellish children... Part of me feels like I am making a mistake. [the same part that likes to point out that I'm going to be officially homeless in a foreign country for three weeks.] On the other hand, I've thrown down a rather sizable amount of cash on a multiple destination plane ticket, and I'm really looking forward to driving around Australia and laying on a beach in Thailand. [If you can believe what you read in the Japan Times, the beaches in Thailand are the cleanest they've been in 20 years, all thanks to the tsunami!]

I've only got two more days of this job... And five more days of a home. This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever done.