2020.03.08
Jesse's blog 86-Goodbye
Hello!
イーオン日立校ブログをご覧下さりありがとうございます!
今日はJesse先生の最後のブログです!!
3/11(水)までは日立校におりますので、
ぜひブログの感想を聞かせてくださいね(^^)
Well, I guess this is it! This will be my final blog for AEON, so I want to take a moment to say goodbye, and thank you!
Hitachi school has been my home for about four and a half years now. For me, that's a really long time! I've moved around a lot. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I moved six times (and changed jobs each time) to different parts of the city. Why? Because the thing I'm always looking for is a little difficult to find.
I'm not a very ambitious person. I don't have dreams of being a rich and powerful man, or a CEO, or a politician. I'm not really interested in living in a big house or having a nice car. I don't care if my name ends up in history books, or if I leave a mark on the world. My priorities in life are different. Like many people in this world, I have always had trouble finding a place where I felt like I belonged. Some people can continue like that, but not me. That's why more than anything, I've always been looking for a community where I felt at home.
After 6 years of moving around Los Angeles, I found a piece of it for the first time. When I moved downtown, I worked at a sushi restaurant with a really strange and unique group of people. I got to know the bartenders and staff of all the other bars in the area too, and we celebrated holidays together. After one trip to see my family in Maine, when I returned to Los Angeles, I remember having the feeling "I'm home" for the first time since I was a child. It was a special feeling that I'll never forget.
But, Los Angeles isn't a permanent kind of place. The people there are always moving. A lot of my friends slowly moved away to other cities over time, and my community got smaller and smaller. I started to get older too, and bartending made me more and more tired. As I got older, it was harder and harder for me to connect with the new young staff. That's why after 4 years of living downtown, I decided to move to Japan.
That was kind of a long story! And it was all about Los Angeles. Why did I tell a long story about Los Angeles in my goodbye blog? Because I've been here for four and a HALF years. That's longer than I've been in any one place since I lived with my parents. Also, the reason I'm leaving AEON is because I want to study Japanese, so that I can stay here even longer, maybe even forever. You also now understand that my reason for staying here for so long isn't because of money or my career. It is because of the people. But I'm also lazy, so I don't actually know very many people outside of AEON. That means the "people" are you: my students and co-workers at AEON.
So thank you! You are all part of my community, the home I've been looking for all my life. I told a long story to try and show you how important that is to me, and how important all of you are to me. Some of you I see often, and some of you I only see once in a while, but you're all part of my Japanese family. You are the reason I want to live in Japan for the rest of my life.
Thank you!