Where have all the teachers gone?

Saying good-bye to people is always difficult. This past week has made me realize that if I chose to continue teaching internationally it is going to become a regular part of my life. I've chosen to surround myself by people who are interested in travel, and in challenging their boundaries. For many of us that means moving on to new locations almost as soon as we become familiar with where we are. I started thinking this morning about where all people will be next year. The short list:
Canada
China
Turkey
Azerbaijan
Taiwan
Bangladesh
United States
England
Pakistan
Mexico
That's quite a few new places for me. One definite benefit is that I'm building up a great list of places to visit with the excuse of visiting people. Of course we're also getting new teachers in next year, and the three coming into our department are from almost as varied of locations: Scotland, Brazil and the Netherlands. I have a feeling sometimes that if you colored in a map of everywhere I had been, that people I knew had been and that their acquaintances had been we would be able to color in almost the entire world. That's a pretty cool realization.