I’ve been enrolled in many schools and lived in various towns, but if I had to choose my favorites, the ones with palm trees would top the list. I attended third grade at Thomas Jefferson elementary school in Honolulu and went to a high school of the same name in Sonsonate, El Salvador. At both schools, the classrooms were connected by breezeways where students could escape the monsoon rains or the burning sun. Tropical fruit was available in abundance, and the people and cultures around me seemed exotic and fascinating.
In Honolulu, I walked with my brother past a golf course and small shops and watched cartoons after school. In Sonsonate, I walked from the town square with my friends past three Catholic churches. After school, I watched Sesame Street, the only show I could understand.
Years later, after a breakfast of tropical fruit, under the palm trees of Santa Marta Colombia, I would take a taxi with my husband and daughter to another school, where we would watch her dance. Today, in Tempe, we wait under the university breezeways below the waving palms, and she is still dancing.
I leave hometowns
like half-tasted bonbons,
scattered like fall leaves.
Via #livingpoetry, #dailypost, and #dverse

Growing up in a suburb of Buffalo, NY with indoor schools, I’m still fascinated by the outdoor hallways of schools in AZ. They’re sunnier and feel freer.
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I remember being really impressed that my third grade teacher allowed us to go the restroom by ourselves and trusted us to come back!
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Well now the school property is enclosed by fences. Students have the open feel of being outside, but it isn’t as easy to leave. Though my oldest daughter was caught sneaking between the fence posts, trying to ditch school.
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Ahaha! Love the Haiku. Perfect.
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Thank you!
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Palm trees seem foreign to me, almost as if they aren’t trees at all, but I have enjoyed visiting those warm places where they love to grow.
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Seeing the palm trees outside my door makes me feel like I’m always on vacation.
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i like the connection between the places you lived in and the one you are in now, the same breezeways, first time I am reading it called this, you have such a way with words making each one as tasty as the bon bons in the photo. I really enjoyed visiting your hometown through your haibun.
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Thank you!
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This is a wonderful tale of many places… I have never gone to school at places like this… but I do remember the outdoors and how hot it was in Mesa when I lived there…
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I’m just a few minutes from Mesa and am learning my way around.
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I know… when I lived there I just to go to Tempe for coffee… there used to be a place called Coffee Plantation there.
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I’ll check it out. My favorite place is actually Jarrod’s Coffee Tea and Gallery in Mesa!
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Focusing on the similarities, instead of the differences……I like that a lot. I’d like to think that breezeways and tropical fruit would make school a little more tolerable. Thanks for joining us at dVerse.
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Thanks! It was a nice to have a school snack of guava juice and graham crackers instead of milk and a stomach ache.
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[…] My favorite snacks after a day in third grade were dried octopus and dried salted plums from a corner store in Honolulu. […]
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