100 Ways to Say Thank You

Madrid is left behind for now, and my body lifts, moves, transfers stuff from here to there, arranges in the closet, pushes to the laundry, walks, returns, fills out forms, prints out printouts. A very functional body. Lucky me.

The soul speaks in its own language, occasionally taking a heavy breath. It's heavy for me. This transition is hard. This transition back, seemingly easy and familiar, no foreign language, brings a different kind of difficulty than the previous transition. I can't yet put it into words.

It's escapism time for me.

From a distance, I think I can see better how the seemingly separate pages of my life are part of one story. For example, the story about an inspiring lecturer in my B.A in Communication Disorders at the University of Haifa. Prof. Rachel Yifat. She, in turn, was inspired by another great educator, Loris Malaguzzi, who lived in Reggio Emilia and brought something different to the education of post-World War II Italy.

Prof. Yifat dedicated many lessons to Malaguzzi's idea of "The Hundred Languages of Children." The idea is to explore with children what interests them utilizing all the languages they use. The language of art, the language of music, the language of theater, body language, and he surely would have accepted a foreign language as well. All are valid. I remember the description of the workshops in the schools of Reggio Emilia was so vivid to me that it made me really want to be in one. I imagined different art materials on a large, not too clean table, with children around, enjoying all this goodness.

And so, when we were looking for a school from afar, almost by chance, someone mentioned Colegio Reggio in Madrid, and my heart was already there. When I first met the school principal, an inspiring and wonderful woman herself, Eva Martín I told her that I was really excited that this was somehow happening. That a seed planted almost 20 years ago was suddenly sprouting in our lives, in this case, in Madrid.

Just a moment ago, after a year, during a farewell meeting with Eva, both she and I shed tears, holding hands, and we both expressed a wish that this would not be the end of the story.

Eva is a woman who dreams and turns those dreams into reality; everyone says this about her, and she believes it too. So now, in my difficult moments, I find comfort in her dream and take another chance to express how thankful I am—for her, for this school, and for everything that brought us there