It's official I'm a multitasker! Wednesday night I took a bus to Barracks to buy farewell flowers, went back to Gwathmey to pick up my books, delivered the roses to MoHo and Hereford after sneaking around asking where the rooms were and waiting looking suspicious for residents to swipe me in, then went to the library and reread fifteen plays for my Modern Drama exam, which is the last one, and I'm flying home tomorrow.
I threw chicken and button mushrooms into the pot for dinner because they were the last of the supplies, have done my laundry so I'll spend the last few sun hours packing. Am reminded that I am young and cosseted because this is the first time I've had to say goodbye for good, as my dear exchange student friends Susan and Caren are leaving. The great part is that they're going back to Australia and Malaysia respectively, meaning they'll be even closer to home than UVA. In college, people come and go like ships every semester. At least with the goodbyes there's Christmas lights and waffle-making and Caren's schoolboy-faced NZ cousin Chase (he's actually 21), who I've met exactly twice and will miss already, because this all reminds me of the last time I talked to Caren on the phone when she was on the Greyhound on the way to DC to kick off her last US holiday for a while. In her voice I could already hear California and Greenwich Village and I remembered that chilly sweetness of discovering somewhere new.