saying goodbye

So my roommate Erin finished her contract on Friday and she leaves to go back home tomorrow morning. It's weird really. It feels like I've been a part of this well-running machine for the past year and now all of the sudden an integral part is being taken away and we are left to try and cope without her. Granted her leaving doesn't affect me as much as the teachers in the elemetary levels (I'm in kindy), but it's going to be weird not having her around the apartment anymore. It's especially weird to think that I probably won't ever see her again. It's really unnerving to think that I could live with someone for almost a year and that they could then disappear as if they had never been a part of my life to begin with. How is that people come and go like this? How does that happen?

In any case, she will be missed...by me, by her co-teachers, by her students. And now it won't be long before I'll be going through the same thing. I just can't even imagine ending the life I've made here, and I'm surprised by how calm Erin has remained throughout all this...although I think that it might just be because it hasn't all quite sunk in yet, the fact that she'll be home in a matter of hours. It must be quite a feeling when your airplane lands on that runway back home and all those familiar faces are there to greet you at the gate; it has to be overwhelming to say the least.

As for me I'll be starting my own packing shortly. I've been kinda putting it off because I am so hopelessly unorganized and I'm dreading the process of sorting through what I'm going to throw away and what I want to take home with me. God only knows how I acquired so much stuff just over the course of a year. Neverless, it has to be done, and it will be...hopefully before it's time to go home.

:)

Erin's going-away dinner