Student Gifts Over the Years

Since I need to box my crap up and ship it down south (“to where Becky?” I hear you ask. I’ll announce my new China home soon I just want to wait till I have a contract in hand till I consider it official.) I’ve been cleaning up and throwing out a lot of crap.
I came to china with only a backpack and a rolling bag and somehow I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff since then. I like cleaning house, downsizing and getting rid of “stuff” and in my extreme cleaning, I’ve come across a lot of gifts from students over the years.
There are very few of these I’m actually going to keep, so I wanted to immortalize them on my blog so in the future I can remember them even if I no longer own them.

That wire, guitar-playing man on the left has a pen bucket next to him. I used to keep pens in him, but its a bit…unwieldy, so it’s staying behind. The teddy bear on the right is actually a plush book cover on a journal. Really cute, but, not so practical (I favor a simple black notebook for writing). You can’t see in the back, but there is a picture frame in a bicycle. I have another crazy picture frame like it (the glass is precariously set on a rocking chair) but I don’t actually have any pictures to put in it, so out it goes. The Starbucks frappucino jar has blue sand and glow in the dark dots on the outside. Inside a student wrote a really sweet note. I took the note out, but the jar wasn’t fully cleaned out and the bottom of the lid is totally molded. So out it goes. And the fish bowl has dozens of homemade stars and origami cranes and other paper folding. I’ve been keeping it for years, adding new origami when students gave it to me, but it is so dusty these days out it goes.

Okay, these are my “fancy” gifts. None of these are being thrown away, but some of them will go back to america for me where I’ll store them for the future. Like the big, beautiful wooden box which has an amazing calligraphy set inside. It’s quite big and heavy for shipping, and my calligraphy isn’t quite good enough to use it right now. So I’ll save it for the future. Also, the opera figurine I love, but don’t really have the place to showcase these kinds of tchotchke. So I’ll save it for the future. The snow globe, a meaningful gift for reasons best left unsaid, will go in the trash, but the teapot, a recent gift from Color, and the hand, a gift from my friend from Israel, will come with me. As will the bead bracelet that a monk gave me when I stayed in a monastery. I wear it quite often.

There’s nothing I like better than a homemade gift, which my students learned about me. The little foam creatures and giraffe will come with me. I have a hard time getting rid of homemade gifts. As will the box of 105 wishes from class 105. The little piano though, a music box with my name and a wish engraved on it, will be going into the circular file. It’s very sweet and I like it, but it’s just kinda more “stuff” to clutter up my room.

I’m not throwing this away! One of my babies, who I always caught drawing during class time (which I then encouraged him to continue) just gave this to me. I’m gonna find a nice frame and hang it on my new wall.

This was also a recent gift from one of my favorite students.  It’s the character for ‘dragon’ (my chinese name) and she said that if I “ever had financial troubles I could sell it for money” so I’m going to guess that it was expensive? Anyway, it is beautiful and she had it commissioned for me in honor of graduation. This will also take a proud spot on my new wall of my new apartment.
As I’m cleaning up the place I’m finding things that I kinda stopped noticing years ago, like a faded picture a student gave me four years ago that was on a shelf, or little trinkets from my japanese friend that left three years ago.