The Final Days

The last days are here. I'm leaving in less than a week. Yesterday I did the last load of laundry and today I started packing. Looks like I'm going to manage to get home in the same luggage - standard size suitcase, school size backpack, and briefcase - as I came in with, although I am planning to send a small package to Lea in Austria of things for Germany - medicines I bought here, (which may be illegal to ship in and out of the E.U. and I don't want to look it up), a few cute summery things I can wait a while on, etc. Not a ton, just enough to take off the strain and hopefully save my zippers. :)

I've got one more day of volunteering at Askatasuna, probably one more English lesson with Javier. All of my lectures are over and I have two more finals coming up. I haven't really said any real goodbyes yet, but I have them marked on the calendar and they're rushing up to meet me. My main friend group had a Christmas party that was also our last quiet event - we're going out on Friday which should be fun, but it's not really the same. Ainhoa's birthday party was on Saturday, and unfortunately I had to pick between that and the last official Erasmus event. :( But I made the right choice, I needed to go to Ainhoa's party after all she's done for me, and as a bonus we ran into a funny procession of men with giant bells on their backs, and I went inside a 'normal' Spanish house for the first time. :)

At all these events I'm careful to get some good photos. I don't want to regret anything like that that's so easy fixed now, so hard to fix later. Of course there are still a few loose ends - I realized the other day that I never contacted the other Couchsurfing person who told me to send a message once I arrived in Pamplona, and I never did grab lunch with Esther. But it's okay, really, and I plan to send a message to both of them to let them know that they made me feel really welcome, which is true. I had some semi-friends in Club de Montaña who I haven´t seen in a while because the November event was cancelled. So no real goodbye, but I´ll survive that. :) There are still so many things I haven´t seen, but they´re now just more reasons to come back. By and large, no regrets, I´ve done well by myself.

Jaime and I went downtown to take a few pictures tonight - of the Christmas decorations and just to have a few hours together outside of the house. The town was strangely deserted although it wasn´t even that late - do Spaniards adapt a different schedule in wintertime? But it wasn´t quite dodgy, more sort of peaceful, and we took some really lovely photos. It´s such a stupid thing, but I´m glad. We´ve been through so much together and I´m glad we have a nice photo or two to remember each other with. She has an exam at 8:30 tomorrow, but it was coming down to this - it was tonight or never. We really are in the final days. Where have the months gone?