Location: Author: Bobby T.

Today was one of the hardest days that we as Lifeworks students faced. I think I speak for the whole group when I say that being at the Duang Prateep Foundation has made a huge impact on our lives and has altered the way we think. My fellow friends have made many connections at this Foundation, and I think that all of us should be proud of what we accomplished and achieved.

However, this is one of the good things that come to an end. Many of us woke up and went to do morning exercises with the kids since it was our last day with them. As we had breakfast and watched the kids get ready for school, I had no idea how I would feel when I said goodbye. I looked around, wondering if my fellow peers would be anxious about leaving such an amazing place. After breakfast, we were allowed to ride the school bus with the kids to drop them off at school.

When we got to the school where the little kids were getting dropped off I started feeling weird in my stomach; it was the feeling I had when I left Thailand to go to the States, it was the feeling I got when I graduated middle school. It was a feeling I didn’t want to feel, but I knew that since I felt this feeling it is because of the impact of the what the kids have made and I saw in the eyes of my fellow peers that they were also saddened of us departing.

Once we started hugging the kids and saying goodbye, I didn’t even notice that I had started crying. I looked over to Balthazar to see that he was also tearing up. All of us has made strong connections with different kids. For me Cow fan was a girl I had been with the most, being only 5 and having lost many things in her life, she has made a huge impact on my stay there. When she started crying I couldn’t hold myself from the tears and it kept rolling, as I hugged her I felt I didn’t want to let her go, Balthazar was crying from dropping the kids off.

In this short period of 5 days, we were able to make such a connection that saying goodbye to them was a really hard thing, seeing them wave to us as we left on the bus I realized that this wasn’t goodbye at all. It’s never goodbye unless you want it to be, today it was a ‘see you later.’