Sunday, July 8, 2012

Bittersweet

As most of you regular readers (yes, all 12 of you) know, I have just completed my contract and my time in Turkey and have chosen not to renew with Bilkent Laboratory and International School, but to seek a new adventure instead.  While it's exciting to have a new adventure, it's sad to leave the old one behind. 

Turkey has been a wonderful experience for me on so many personal levels.  I've met some of the best people that I will ever know, I've taught some of the loveliest students (who will forever have a piece of my heart), and seen places most of us just read of in our school history books.  I can't begin to count the ways in which I've grown as a person during the last two years and how bitter it is for me to walk away from all of that.  However, it's also sweet because there is a real opportunity for a little more balance in my life in my new adventure in Singapore.

One of the things that I am always in search of in the places that I look to live is a place that offers me balance.  I want to live and work somewhere where I LOVE the school life (which I've been lucky to do in almost all my different situations), I LOVE the social life, and I LOVE the professional and personal opportunities for growth above and beyond what just the school can offer me.  While Turkey has given me some measure of that, it simply wasn't enough to keep me put.  Well, that and all the crazy changes currently taking place in the educational system there.

So cheers to the wonderful experiences I've been fortunate enough to have in Turkey and to the INCREDIBLE people I've been fortunate enough to know during my two year stint there... and cheers to the wide open adventure of Singapore that lays before me!!!

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