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                                    Language is wine upon the lips  

                                                          ---再见2018   你好2019    

    语言是唇边的美酒， 是最动人的乐曲。Language is wine upon the lips and certainly the most powerful tune that humans are gifted to play. 虽然已与2018秋道了别离，心中的感谢依旧沉甸甸。感谢有2018的陪伴，感谢亲爱的学员! We met–worked–played–ate–struggled–laughed–shared–and celebrated together。26个字母的魅力组合，让世界近在咫尺。从此，我们与英语真正结缘，爱上英语，爱上多元文化之美。每学期末，我们亲爱的Robin老师都会和大家一起分享她的访学教学情缘。2019伊始， 让我们再次一起回味这段美文：

I asked my web browser to give me something about leaving home to inspire my remarks for this morning...

Of course, I was thinking about how you came to us in order to prepare to leave home, but I was also thinking about how perhaps SISU might have become at least a temporary home for some of you... How it was for each of you arriving just a few short months ago – blinking in the steam of early September, unsure but determined to try, settling in... making fast friends with the strangers seated around you in those first few days of lessons...

I found something written by Azar Nafisi, a Persian professor and writer, another traveler who, in the pursuit of her education and academic work has moved herself from Iran to the UK, Switzerland, Oklahoma, back to Tehran, and finally once more to the US as a visiting fellow, lecturer, and citizen.  In her book, “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books” she wrote –

“You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.”

After nearly 8 years living in China, I know that feeling very well. It fills me up every time I start packing my case to head home to Canada ... It comes back to me some weeks later when I start packing my case to head home to Chongqing.  I wonder if you know this feeling too...?

The road you travel on changes you.  The places you linger in change you – and when you leave them, you must also leave that version of yourself, because whether you return to them again or not, somewhere else will get under your old skin.  Like a snake you’ll slip out of that old skin dressed in a new one.Somewhere else will transform your picture of the world and yourself in the world...

In my experience, each of these transitions adds something to the world and my place in it - - I become more grounded in the places where I linger, more at home in the world - - not less.

Another line from Nafisi’s book caught my attention – she wrote, "I left Iran, but Iran did not leave me.”  I understand that feeling very well too.  The places I linger in each become part of me according to their own magic and that is at the heart of how I am changed by them... after I have left them, they come back to me...

So, this is the road we are all on.  Who you were when you arrived some months ago is not quite the same person sitting in this room this morning.    How you are changed and how you will be changed is another matter - - something only for you to give shape to, and it may be that everything depends on how you arrive, how you linger, and how you leave again...

Go easy, go lightly, and go knowing that though you will leave something behind, you will also take something with you.

wo ai ninmen! Zou haole, ha...?