Thursday, December 4, 2008

Finding Miss Gostelow

Throughout my life as a student, there have been many teachers, lecturers, trainers and tutors but only a few stand out and are fondly etched in my memory and top of the list is Miss Gostelow, my primary school teacher. I never forget her even years on when I was in secondary school and in the MRT train, I saw her with her husband and as I was hesitating to go up to her, she saw me and instantly spoke in my direction,"Meiling right?!" I could only smile sheepishly after that :p That was the last time I saw her.

My little cousin who's like 20 years my junior happened to study at my alma mater Raffles Girls' Primary School and I asked her, during a Chinese New Year visit many years back, if Miss Gostelow was still teaching there, she scratched her head. Then I remembered that Miss Gostelow married a Mr Tan so I asked my cousin about a Mrs Maria Tan and she said yes yes still there! I made a mental note to search for her email address and drop her a hello but never did.

Then this week a Bloom client Nicole mentioned to me that she was also from RGPS and we started to talk about the teachers we remembered and of course Miss Gostelow was brought up :) So I did a google on her name and after a few different configurations with her maiden name and married name, I found a mention of her in the search results, she was one of the National Day Award recipients in 2002! Through that link, I learned that she's now teaching in Methodist Girls' Primary School. I quickly hopped on over to the school's website and started searching for her in the staff section but couldn't find her under TEACHERS. Disappointed, I tried a search of her name within the site and finally found her to be the teacher in charge of the Library there! Her email is also listed and I am going to write her an email this weekend :)

I am 99% sure she will remember me - Xu Meiling the clumsy "oopsy daisy" girl :p Will update here with a comment. This is so exciting for me, it's like finding a long lost pal. Speaking of which, I am also looking for my best friend in primary school, Irene Ng Wai San whom I lost touch after she moved out of her Ghim Moh flat. Can't find her on Facebook or Google. This will have to be another blog post. Miss Gostelow, I am writing to you soon!

2 comments:

J.H said...

happy belated birthday!

maryann koh said...

thanks :D

btw just to follow up, Miss Gostelow did reply my email and i think she can't be sure who i was but she did asked if i used to live in AMK and if i had malteses (a breed of dog). i said YES! that's me! you see, one time my dad brought my dogs (they were actually not malteses but Bichon Frises, however both breeds look alike, white and fluffy) to school and she saw them.