And straight on till morning

We had the first of our farewells late last week, kicking off yet another long weekend and marking the official beginning of the end. Not a moment too soon, either - we've got two weeks left and still have an almost absurd number of things to think about. With most of the major stuff organised though, we're now down to the "using up stuff in the fridge" level of detail which is slightly more terrifying than it should be.

Peace sign or scissors for the ribbon?

After a very productive three days at work, I knocked off on Friday evening, picked up Lisa and headed over to a little Japanese enkai restaurant to meet up with all my colleagues. The Superintendent of Education had made the trip out, as had everyone I'd worked with over the past two years which was very flattering. The former made a shamelessly nice speech about all the things I had achieved and handed me a big bouquet of flowers, then I stood up and gave the first of what will no doubt be dozens of farewell spiels in Japanese.

Goodbye, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu

The food came out, which was sashimi, yakitori and a whole lot of other typically Japanese things that we'll no doubt miss when we're gone. At some point I was force fed some face-melting yam whiskey (or something) which probably explains my worryingly happy expression in the photos. We got some more pictures, settled up and then braved the cold to head out for an obligatory karaoke session with all the usual suspects. It was a nice night all up but I think there's more to come next Friday so it was hard to get too sentimental about it all. I'm sure the finality will sink in before long.

I won't bore you too much with the details of the rest of the weekend, suffice to say that we can spend a surprising number of hours talking about suitcases, cleaning under things and what we're going to have for breakfast when we get home. It's the same erratic, repetitive chatter that we seem to lapse into whenever we start thinking too much about the next few weeks - perhaps early signs of reverse culture shock or some kind of brain tumour. We went out shopping yesterday which I think helped to relieve the symptoms somewhat, but if my next post is just "ALL PACK AND NO PLAY MAKES MIKE A DULL BOY" over and over again, you'll know why.