Echoes

One thing I have noticed about my school and teaching English there is there are some people who you never knew who used to teach there, who have left these sort of weird echoes of themselves with other people.

K. told me about the other two 22 year olds who were here last year, N and D. So I know that N was half white, half Asian, K. called him Amerasian, is that term valid anymore? Anyway, and D was South Asian, but had lived in America. Both of them are now in grad school.

I also know that D took the GRE while he was here, which I also hope to do. It's funny though because everyone here, from the teachers to the landlords upstairs loved D and talk about him all the time and how nice he was, whereas N has left very little of an echo at all. I also know that D and Feilin talked about racism in America and how D had encountered it in America and that he went to India to visit his "motherland" and came back thinking it was pretty dirty. Feilin said that he "thought too much" about things, which I suspect that I might as well in comparison. But living in America when you're Asian, maybe you do "think too much" about "those things." W is another guy who left an echo, he's the teacher Rodger took over from, who skipped out on rent from those upstairs and also used to smoke, drink, and visit those Cages which I have mentioned before.

Anyway, it made me wonder what sort of echo I might leave when I leave, or if I would leave one at all. I suspect mine would be more like N's. I tend not to talk in the office and I don't really socialize with the other teachers really. Whereas D seems to have been a fairly social and funny person. Of course the echoes from the school are rather different than the echoes from upstairs, although they generally correspond. But I'm guessing my echo from upstairs is rather different than that from the school. It's funny though since I almost feel like I know more about the people who are gone than the people who are here.