Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I all I want to do right now is go home. My friends are arriving from various parts of the country to spend Thanksgiving with their families, students and teachers are off school Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to celebrate, people get together to laugh, play football, and eat delicious fall foods. It’s my favorite time of year and it’s really hard to be away from home right now.

Not much has improved at school since I wrote about the teachers who left. A week later, another cowoker left the country and went home, which was absolutely devastating because I worked very closely with him and his students. It also fell to me to tell his students (and our boss, for that matter), which made for the worst day I have ever spent in a classroom. We all cried, and I have never cried in front of students. And I don’t mean I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue; I watched the students mourn their loss, and it was terrible.

A new teacher for one of the classes showed up from Australia on Thursday, which was really exciting. She was with the students for part of the day on Friday, called in sick Monday, went home sick Tuesday, and called in sick again today, Wednesday. When I got home from the gym tonight there was a note under my door from her telling our boss that her “heart isn’t in it here.”

That was quick. (Guess it’s my job to break the news again.)

That should also give you a good idea of how things are.

Intellectually, I know why I came and I know why I’m here. I came to teach and to learn and I’m here to teach and to learn. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, I’ve got nothing. Mitch and I gave up a lot to move to Malaysia so I could try out teaching at an international school. We were talking very seriously about The Question, talking about a buying a house, talking about what we wanted out of life.

I can’t regret coming to Malaysia because I believe it was the right idea at the time, but there are days when I yearn to go back in time and change it all.