Coming full circle

Last night was the farewell dinner. Can you believe it? I felt like I just had the welcome dinner a a month ago, but 4 and a half months have whizzed by....

Something exciting that I've had to keep secret since 3 weeks ago is that I and my good friend Victor have been asked to be the Toastmasters for the dinner =D It was a little nerve-wrecking, but we did well I think. Well at least everyone was really really encouraging and sweet. My close friends here were especially surprised and they were like "no wonder you were always running away to do some project even though you already finished all your work!". It was hardest to keep it from them becuase I couldn't talk to anyone if I was feeling scared about it. But Victor and I were a good team. He's a wonderful brother in Christ too, so we also prayed before going up onto stage.

The farewell dinner was great. There was a real 'party atmosphere' and I had so much fun, which made it bittersweet. After the farewell dinner, we remained behind the school nightclub - STUK and partied it up till 3 in the morning. There was an awesome live band that did covers of bands I love like ' The Kooks', 'The Sounds', 'The Killers' etc. And the DJs were awesome too, great stream of music, can you believed they played 'London Calling' by The Clash! I really wanted Rett to be there at that moment.

There were also some encounters with assorted European boys which made the night even more um....interesting. And then I found out someone had been in love with me the entire exchange period but had been too 'big-boy, macho-man' (according to his best friend who spoke to me) to tell me. I felt really bad that I had to find this out 3 days before I leave :( And he's hot too ;) But yes ok, that's besides the point :p

At 3 we all gathered at Vishnu's place with the Brazlian guys (Marco, Retti, Lauro), Juan, Marcel, Bryan (who lives at Vishnu's place), Katalin and a few Swedish friends. We danced, talked and giggled the night away. But I couldn't shake the depressing feelings I'm carrying around as a result of my impending departure. At least I'll be meeting the Brazilian guys again in Amsterdam...

At 10am after throwing my laundry into the dryer I went to bed...got up at 4pm, wrote this post and now I will begin to pack up my room and live out of a suitcase. Wow. I never thought leaving here would be harder than leaving home. I'm right where I started but I'm different all the same.