I went to a retirement party today for my 6th grade teacher (yes, 6th grade!) and drank a Heineken with her (I don't think I'll ever acquire a taste for beer ~ but I drank it because I was told it was Polish tradition to drink at celebrations and the last thing I wanted to do was to offend the person being honored!). In all honesty, I didn't really think I'd ever see any of my elementary school teachers once I "graduated" but one day during high school, I ran into my 6th grade teacher at a district writing awards ceremony (I have no idea how I, an enginerd, managed to win a writing award!).

Ever since that day, we would meet up every so often for lunch or dinner just to catch up with what's going on in each others lives. As we continued to do this throughout the years, our teacher-student relationship developed into a friends relationship. She would tell me about her kids and I would share with her my joys and struggles of being in college. She showed me pictures of her daughter's wedding and I showed her pictures of my family trip to Shanghai. She would tell me about her son's latest love interest and then she would ask me if I had a boyfriend yet. A couple times, I did some volunteer work at an elementary school that was close to the middle school she eventually moved to and I would stop by to say hi. She even asked me talk to her class about what its like to be a working professional.

Kind of random when I think about it, but I feel very fortunate to still have contact with someone that has had such a positive influence on my life, even though I may not have realized it back when she was my 6th grade teacher. Its interesting to see who God decides to bring into our lives and how He uses them to help shape our lives.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm now using gmail. My address is the same as my yahoo one minus the numbers but @gmail.com. I didn't want to post it on blogger to prevent any unwanted emails...if you don't know my yahoo address, then I'm guessing you don't really need to know my new gmail one either. =P