I just cleaned out all my teaching stuff. I threw out most of it--the old lesson plans, the discussion questions on little squares of paper, cut-out pictures of people from magazines (adjective order...grey Italian wool scarf, not wool grey Italian scarf), the handout for the last day of class when I made apple pie and they had to put the verbs in the recipe (mix, chop, stir, bake...), my abstract-noun cards (guy on a ladder peering into the distance, ballerina in a parking lot, Boris Yeltsin's funeral, woman with baby, heightwise lineup of all the James Bonds, campsite...which one of these is courage? leadership? risk? responsibility? choice? violence? time? why?).

I saved a couple lesson plans. Soon I'll be amused at how well I once understood modal verbs of deduction or the difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses. I also saved my jotted notes for when I told a story about my Tibet trip to introduce phrases of mixed-baggedness (although, however, in spite, on the other hand, even though, despite...), and the plan for one of my first lessons, with everyone's name at the top in the order they were sitting...ANDREY VERA VADIM ELENA ARTUR MIKHAIL ELEONORA KOSTYA.

It's kind of sad to throw out all that work from the past year (paper recycling? ha), not that I regret for a second leaving the job.