Leaving Minnesota this summer after three weeks of being with family and friends was harder than it has ever been before. I see my grandparents getting older my nephews getting older and the thought of being away from them and missing time with them is really hitting me. I was able to have a whole week with Shane and Will and I couldn’t have had a more perfect time with them. Breaking the heat in the pool, checking out Sparkey the seal and the buffalo at Como Zoo, visiting with grandparents, discovering the Minnesota History Museum and checking out the big city with them allowed me to be a real aunt for the first time. We got to know each other at a time when they are changing so quickly. I think I cried spontaneously the entire 20 hours I traveled from Minneapolis to Hungary thinking about them.
When I arrived at the Teaching Tolerance Through English Camp in Balatonllele, Hungary on Lake Balaton I was worn out from 20+ hours of travel, dirty and would have liked to have been back in my comfortable bed with the people that I know best in Minnesota. Then I heard, “Molly Teacher,” turned around and the bright smiling face of Vjosa and Vlora came running toward me. They are two of the ten Kosovar Albanian students that I selected back in May to come to this camp where teachers and students from Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Hungary, Kosovo and Croatia were meeting for two weeks of English and camp fun together. They had only been at the camp for two days and already they were having a fabulous time. As soon as I got unpacked, cleaned up and had some food, I looked around at the kids playing volleyball, ping-pong and listening to music together and I knew exactly why I came back here.
Taking this trip is a really big deal for the kids from Kosovo. For most of them it’s their first time on an airplane and even their first time to a McDonald’s. One class activity students were asked to draw a picture of one of their best days ever. Arber’s picture had Kosovo, an airplane and Hungary with a camp-site on it. He explained how on the day before they got on their airplane they didn’t even know if they were going to have the visa required for them to go. But finding out that everything worked out and that he would be able to make this trip was the happiest day of his life. In Kosovo these kids, being Albanian, are the majority. Here among students form the EU, they are a sort of sheltered minority experiencing for the first time many things all of the other students have access to daily. Being here they are experiencing a global perspective . . . something outside of the Kosovo they have been confined to their entire lives. Heck, that is the first Big Mac Vlora and Vjosa have ever seen . . . seriously!!!
I am a traveling English teacher. Every time I leave my family my heart breaks and I wonder if it’s the right thing for me to do. Then I get to where I’m going with the students I work with and the tears dry out for a while. It’s a tug of war that I’m not sure will ever end. Until it does, these museum and McDonald’s moments will continue to be the exact places I belong at the time.
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