Departure Week

So happy the Pinewood Derby had this banner
over the main drag in F'burg--perfect!

Well, here we are on the other side of Departure Day!  Ine left our home yesterday, having completed her year with us.  As of 7:30 this morning, she was trying to sleep on a floor in a conference room in NYC near the airport, and sounded fairly unhappy, which I would be as well.  In less than 12 hours, she'll be up in the air, winging her way home to her waiting family and her life back in Belgium.

We had quite a final week.  There was a sense that it was all coming to an end way too quickly, and we knew the final week would fly by.  I answered an SOS from work and wound up working 3 days instead of my usual 2, but one day I took Ine in with me, and it was nice even if she sat and read at a desk while I was running around that we had some time to be physically together.

With a flag truck outside my office :-)

 We spent a lot of time at the pool, time running errands, and then eventually, we had a party!!

Saturday we had invited everyone down for a "See You Next Time!" party.  The weather looked a bit rough in the afternoon, and as per usual, dire predictions on the radio kept a few people away, even though the rain eased off after about 10 minutes and it was fine.  I'd like to thank the meteorologists for their hysteria.  Anyway, most everyone else made it, and happily Ine had invited a few of her friends to come over as well, which was nice that she had people her age!  I was sad because I had wanted us all to be outside, but there weren't so many people that we couldn't be comfortable.  The party lasted for about 4 hours, and gave Ine a chance to see so many people who had an impact on her life and who she impacted.  It was definitely a two way street!

With Andy and his mom Sherry

With Jana and Dolce

With our liaison, Amy

The highlight for me of Departure Day parties is giving the students their scrapbook.  I had been working on this in the mornings before everyone was up for the day for two weeks.  It is a labor of love, but it is a great time for me to reflect on the year, what we've done, what I personally have accomplished, and so on.  Ine said she was scared to see it, so even though I had told her it was done, she refused to look at it till I gave it to her at the party.

Her friends immediately dived into it and said "We want to see your adventures!" and she proudly showed them off.  She later told me she loved the book!  Yay!

The party was a rousing success and we ended the night with lots of small children running through the yard, screaming, having fun, and making joyful noises.

Sunday, our last full day together, I decided we would skip church, drop off the recycling, and then head over to the mall for lunch and pedicures.  Ine had never had a pedicure done, and I knew we needed some R&R and pampering, so we sat in massage chairs, and got our feet worked over.  Ine let Leah pick her nail polish, and wound up with bright orange toes! :)  It was such fun.

I told the girls we would go to the pool when we got home, but Ine decided to finish packing, so Leah and I walked over and Ine met us there later.  We had leftovers from the party for dinner as a little picnic and swam and played in the pool for a couple of hours.  It was a lot of fun.  That night, Leah wanted to have Family Movie Night, and chose Star Wars, but Ine wasn't feeling it, she said it was too much work to pay attention to!  I put Leah to bed around 10 and then Ine asked me for some Barenaked Ladies music to take with her, so we sat around the computer swapping MP3's and fighting with iTunes and Amazon to get some extra songs.Then the two of us sat around listening to BNL songs till about 12:30 when I finally decided it was time for bed.  Ine said she didn't want to sleep alone in her room, so I blew up the air mattress and she slept on the floor in my room.  The cats had no idea what to make of that!  It was hilarious watching them come in, sniff, and run away.

Yesterday was officially Departure Day.  It took both forever and no time at all.  We had about 8 hours to kill before we had to be at the drop off location, but it just felt like we were killing time and not really doing anything. Just sitting around, too much to say, and not really wanting to say it.  Finally we decided to take a walk.  Leah took her scooter and kept losing one of the bolts that kept the wheel on, so what would normally be a 20 minute walk turned into an hour of lost bolt finding, every time of which Ine was the one to locate the bolt!  She has the best eyes :)

Oh my bags are packed, I'm (not) ready to go...

We got in the car around 1:00 and made it up to Lorton just on time.  I told the girls to smile for a picture before we started crying, and I'm glad, because this is a beautiful last picture to have of the three of us.  And then we started crying.  Leah was doing her best to make everyone feel better, but it was really, really hard, to say the least.  Jana and her family were there just ahead of us, and I gave Jana a big hug first, and that was when I really started crying, but hugging Ine and saying goodbye to her was absolutely heartwrenching.  We have been through so much together this year, and both of us have learned so much from each other, it was just impossible to say goodbye.  At one point, Ine walked down the street a ways, and we went and hugged her, and brought her back, and after about 20 minutes, the AFS person in charge told her it was time.  We immediately decided we didn't like that person any more, and our mutual anger over that spurred her to go on to the orientation, but she avoided anyone trying to offer her physical comfort.

We drove off, and I waved goodbye to her, and that was it.  We stopped in at my sister's so I could compose myself enough to drive home, and good job too because the drive home took over 2 hours due to all kinds of traffic.  SIGH SIGH SIGH.  I hate living in Virginia on 95.  Seriously.

I got many texts from Ine last night while waiting for the bus to NY and the airport and a few this morning.  She is trying to rest before her flight today, and she is excited to see her family and ready for the whole thing to be over with.  I'm excited for them all to be reunited and be back together again, even if I'm sad to have said goodbye.  I sent her parents a long email last night about the things I learned about Ine and the changes she's made and what kind of a person she is that I hope will help them prepare for her arrival.  They are nervous about how different she is, but I hope that her new self will be a positive.  We think she is an absolute delight.

And so, with that, our time has drawn to a close. I will post again in a few days about what I've learned about myself and about parenting from this experience, and I have some tips for single parents who are considering this kind of thing that I hope will be helpful.  Thank you for following our journey this year.  It has been an amazing ten months and I'm so, so grateful to AFS, to my family, to my friends, and to Ine and her family for this life changing experience. I will never be the same.

The End is Coming!

This is our last week with Ine, and it's already Friday... It's impossible to imagine that this time has arrived...  Back in August, when we were matched, I remember thinking, "Well, ok, if it doesn't work out, it's only 9 months."  I really wasn't sure how I'd be as a single parent of a teenager and a kindergartener, but it has worked out better than I could have ever imagined.  We have had an absolutely wonderful year.  There were some fits and starts in the beginning, but once we all settled in, it has worked out beautifully.

So, June...  Honestly, the wind went out of our sails in June.  We had a trip planned to Niagara Falls, but then Ine got a summer cold and didn't feel up to the trip.  I thought we would do a million other things, but mainly, we've just sort of bummed around the house and the pool.  And it's been nice to spend our last month just enjoying our time together, being instead of doing...

The one big thing that sticks out in my mind is that we went to see DC United play.  Ine had an AFS pre-departure orientation weekend, and I picked her and Jana up afterwards and we headed to see the game.  Soccer is a big deal in Europe, that's no surprise, and not such a big deal here in the US, also not a surprise.  Neither girl had seen a live professional game at home, so I thought it would be fun to take them to see United in action.  I know nothing about soccer, having been to exactly one game in my life, Charlton Athletic in London.  So I figured Leah and I would be kind of bored, but it was actually quite fun.  We drove over to the stadium, but it was much too early, and after thinking about tailgating, I decided against it, so we went back to the National Harbor to try and grab a quick dinner.  Unfortunately, it was packed, and we couldn't find parking or much in the way of a place to eat.  We wound up at the local outlets, but the girls had eaten burgers for lunch and the only restaurant was Johnny Rockets, and they weren't feeling that.  We grabbed pretzels and cold drinks and headed back to the stadium, where they were finally letting people in.  It was kind of frustrating and messy in terms of driving and walking in circles, but we eventually made it, got our tickets, and hid out in the air conditioned team store until they let us find our seats.  The stadium was very confusing and we wound up in the wrong seats anyway because the sections weren't well marked, so we watched half the game from one set of seats and half from the correct set of seats!!!  

After taking a quick picture of the girls at the field, we wandered out in search of dinner, and found that they were making pupusas!  YUM!  I have loved pupusas since we went to San Salvador two years ago.  Neither Ine nor Jana had ever had them, but it was that or hot dogs, so they decided to be bold, and we all thought they were just delicious.

As we were hanging out, the DC United Mascot, some sort of eagle, came running through the stands taking pictures, so happily I got to take pictures of everyone with him.

Ine protested, but as usual, I won that argument, and I think the picture is so cute!

The girls tell me it was a good game, I really couldn't tell.  DC lost 2-1 to Toronto, although at one point they had scored a goal but it was called back, for reasons I can't tell you.  So it was kind of disappointing not to see a win, but they were happy to have gone.  Hilariously, I had no idea how long the games lasted or how many periods of time there were, so they patiently had to explain to me that it was 2 halves, each 45 minutes long, but they then get to add time if they screw around and run down the clock too much, which apparently happened because we got 4 extra minutes, during which I don't think much happened.

I gave Ine my camera to take pictures

We did a lot of odds and ends this month.  We attended the UU end of the year picnic.  Last year was the first year that Leah and I attended and we had a great time, so this year we knew we would go again.  The picnic is a celebration of the previous year, so you go, eat, hang out with UU's, there are always guitar players and singers, there is a pool, a rope swing, tractor rides, fun and games.  This year was no different.  We spent most of our time at the pool, and I got this picture of Ine, which is one of my favorites:

One day we were bored, so we drove over to the local paint-your-own-pottery joint and decided to paint some pottery.  I found a cow dish that looked perfect for Ine, who loves cows, and she found two little bunnies, so she decided to do one for herself and one for me.  We had fun, although it took just about 3 hours to do all the painting!  We had plans that afternoon to attend kindergarten memory day at Leah's school, so it was kind of a rush at the end, but we made it.  We picked everything up this week, and it came out great!

One of the things I have tried to show Ine this year is the importance of doing the things you really want to do in life, and working on your bucket list.  One of the things it has taught me is that the bucket list is not about just doing fun stuff, but it's about pushing your boundaries and comfort zone.  So at the UU auction in April, I bought Ine piano lessons.  She said she wanted to learn an instrument and she loved the piano, so I got her the lessons.  She took 4 lessons in June with a local instructor who is also the pianist for the choir I sing with at the UU.  The first one, she was all freaked out, crying and anxious.  She didn't want anyone around to judge her or to listen to her playing, and she thought we would be sitting there paying attention to her every move.  Eventually I had to tell her to just get her butt in the car and I drove her over there, dropped her in the room with Kana, assured her it was private and no one else would be around, and to suck it up.  An hour later, when she was done, she emerged, beaming ear to ear, exclaiming how much fun it was, and that she had picked up the lessons very quickly and loved it.  Kana told her she was a natural.  I told her how proud I was of her, and I had no trouble getting her to the next 3 lessons!

We also had the chance one day to go up to Occoquan, a little historic town nearby and have lunch at a Belgian restaurant.  I told Ine to order for us, but eventually we collaborated on an order and got frites, shrimp croquettes, and a croque monsieur sandwich.  It was all delicious and Ine said pretty true to Belgian cooking!

They eat their fries with mayonnaise there, so we did that, and I have to say, not too shabby.  I prefer ketchup, but I won't die next summer if I have to eat them with mayonnaise. :)  haha

Two months ago, Ine told me there was no way in heck I would ever get her to put a pair of Crocs on her feet.  Her mom hates them and thinks they're ugly, and Ine was not going to incur her mom's wrath by wearing them herself.  I said, "Ine, just try them on.  You put them on once, I guarantee you'll want a pair."  So eventually I coaxed her into the Crocs store and she tried them on.  She hated to admit they were comfortable, but she did like them.  We didn't buy them that day, but the next day, I was talking with my sister and we decided to take the family up to the splash park in Springfield, and you need water shoes to get in.  Crocs are acceptable watershoes, however.  So I offered Ine that she could get a pair of Crocs and she agreed finally...  I also had to get Leah a new pair, although I have many, many pairs of them, so I didn't get myself one.  Then we posed with our feet together.  I mean really, what other kind of shoe can you get that your whole family can wear?  Well, now that pool season is in full swing, Ine loves having the crocs.  Her other sandals don't dry out well if they get wet, and she loves the ease of just slipping into them if we are running out quickly, and how quickly they dry if they get wet.  It's fun to all stomp around in them together.  And we had a blast at the splash park--Ine loved it!

I didn't take pictures, but Ine also got to experience a good bit of African American culture this month.  As you may or may not know, there were some horrible shootings in Charleston SC this month which has prompted the continuing discussion on race relations in the United States.  They are not good, despite how we may fool ourselves into believing that they are; we have a long, long way to go.  So on Friday, June 19th, I took the girls to a vigil in honor of the victims of the shooting at the local AME church.  I had in mind a quiet, 30 minute candlelit vigil, but it went on for 1 hour and 45 minutes before we finally left, and they were still going.  It was a markedly different experience than any other church I had ever been to, and very interesting.  The next day, on June 20th, we went to a local Juneteenth celebration.  Juneteenth is a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US.  We went and heard music, I sang with the UU choir a bit, we saw and heard "Harriet Tubman" speak, and enjoyed some food.  It was VERY hot, unfortunately, but it was a great time.

On the homefront, we got artsy this month and drew our interpretation of Van Gogh's Starry Night on the driveway.  We also made an AFS display on our kitchen sideboard to celebrate our year together.  Sadly, we've had some bad storms, so the chalk art is long gone, but I thought we did some awesome work on it!

And finally, Ine survived her first tornado warning.  A tornado roared through the county next to ours, and we all had to sit in the basement till the alert expired.  I told the girls to make scared faces.  This is what happened...  We've spent most of our evenings in the basement watching LOST anyway, so it was no hardship.  The storms HAVE been crazy this month, though!

So with that, I bid you farewell! I will write again next week about our last weekend, and our goodbyes, but this weekend, I intend to live every moment with Ine and enjoy it... It'll be a year before we see her again and I want to really cram in every last second! :)

May has come and gone

It's funny, when it was May 1, I thought, "Our last full month together, but at least it has 31 days and it always takes a long time."  Well, now I'm sitting here in June, wondering where the heck May went.  It literally flew by.  I really don't know where those 31 days went.  I'll hit the highlights here, but honestly, it's gone in a blur.  It makes me sad at night to turn out the light, knowing another day is behind us in this awesome experience.  And knowing that we're basically done, with only 3 weeks left of the 10 months we had.  I've read back over this blog in the past week and I can't believe how much I have forgotten of what we did.  It's amazing how much we crammed into a year and how much fun we had.  I'm really grateful I kept this blog, to say the least!

Ok, so on to a wrap up of May 2015!

When I left off, we had been to Virginia Beach.

Because of graduation and everyone traveling afterwards, we decided to have Ine's birthday party early on May 16th.  We held the party at the local bowling alley and four of Ine's friends came--Ann Tillery, Mary Grace, Spencer, and Wyatt.  We had planned for a few others to come, but it was a good crowd and Ine said she was happier that way as she doesn't like too many people being involved in things to the point she feels overwhelmed.  We had a cake made with her picture on it and the kids bowled a couple of games before giving up and just hanging out.

Then it was time for Ine's end-of-the-year school activities to kick in.  Because she attended school as a senior, she was invited to participate in all the graduation activities, and I'm pleased to say she did.  There was a senior overnight which she skipped, but she wound up attending the day time field trip the next day and had a blast.  The week of graduation, they had a senior lunch.  I signed up to help bring food as well as serve and clean up, and I really enjoyed being part of the parents team for the event.  One of the moms arranged a beautiful taco bar theme, and at first we wondered if there was going to be enough food, but ultimately there was enough not only for the seniors and all the faculty, but also the juniors and some sophomores who wandered by.

The weather was just gorgeous that day, so the kids were able to eat outside.  Afterwards, there was a lovely ceremony where the seniors read their senior wills to the younger students, and the 1st graders gave the seniors advice on how to get along in college ("Always brush your teeth" "remember your manners" and the like).  It was adorable.  Ine said she wished everyone would have the chance to have a 1st grade reading buddy like she did.

The night before graduation, there was an honors convocation where awards were handed out to students in different grades in the high school.  The school specifically recognized Ine and Jana for participating in the school as AFS students and they gave them some FA blankets.  It was really a lovely moment that made me feel so good that AFS and the two girls had such a positive impact on the school.

The next day was graduation.  I had to pull Leah out of school early and we headed over to drop Ine off before picking up my mom and her husband to go to the ceremony.  The dress code for graduating girls was that they had to wear a white dress.  Ine and I spent 2 days and went to 13 different stores before going back to the first store to get the dress she liked in the first place.  Haha... I am NOT a good shopper, so shopping with someone so indecisive was difficult!!  But she looked just beautiful on graduation day, and fit in very well with the class.

It was a typical graduation ceremony, although with such a small class, they were able to make it very personal.  When it was time for the diplomas to be awarded, they started with Ine and presented her with a certificate of attendance and talked about how she had come from Belgium and what she had added to the school.  Everyone else got their name read out and their paper, but they really made a fuss over Ine and I was so proud of her and very moved.  FA has been a wonderful school.

Ine receiving her certificate from Karen Moschetto, head of FA

Afterwards, there was punch and cookies, and I took lots of pictures of Ine and her various friends, as well as our family.

Ine and her friend Cami

Ine and Tony Durso, head of the upper school

Ine and Karen Moschetto, head of FA

Ine and her friend Elma

Ine and her friend Maya

Ine and her friend Spencer

Afterwards, Mom and Craig treated us to dinner at a local restaurant...  It was rough on Leah, who had been sitting around all day, and now was being asked to sit some more, but she made it through, and I got possibly the most adorable picture of them ever.

The following day (Saturday), we went to a graduation party that Ine had been invited to, which was really nice.  It was a busy weekend due to the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend, which is considered the kick off to summer here in the US.  We had a TON of invitations and events going on besides graduation, so it was a crazy weekend.  

Saturday night, we went to the Fredericksburg Luminara.  It was Leah's and my first time going, although I have lived here in town for 10 years now.  The Luminaria is put on at the local national battlefield where many of the Civil War dead for this area are buried.  The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts go and put out candles on all the tombstones, Taps is played every 30 minutes, and you can go walk along and see and remember the price of freedom.  It was really beautiful.

Ine was our chief photographer, and Leah just ran around the place.  As did most kids.  We also ran into my friend Nancy over there, so that was pretty nice as well.

The next day, Sunday, we had a barbeque to go to at my friend Allison's house, and we stayed there for a few hours in the afternoon.  Amber came over with That Baby and we had good food and just hung around for a couple of hours.  Afterwards, we drove up to Vienna, VA, about an hour north, to attend the summer kick off concert at Wolf Trap.  I love Wolf Trap, and we usually go to the free winter concert in December, but this year, we went to Amber's family's Christmas party instead.  So I was really excited to see there would be a free summer kick off.  The concert features The President's Own Marine Corps Band, which was started in 1798 by John Adams. John Phillips Sousa, a famous American composer well known for his very American marches was once the leader.  One of my chief complaints, indeed maybe my only complaint, with AFS is that they require the students to go back home before July 4th, which is the ultimate American holiday and in my view, the perfect way to finish off their American experience.  It is a time of cookouts, music, and fireworks.  Well, we had the cookouts underway, and now this concert would give us some really American music and fireworks to boot.

We met up with my sister and her family at the show and everyone contributed to a picnic.  We had sandwiches, fruit, cookies, drinks, all kinds of goodies, and we sat on the lawn and sang and listened to the wonderful music of the band until the fireworks started.  It was an incredible performance--the picolo player in Stars and Stripes Forever moved me to tears.  I have heard that song a million times, but never like that.  The 1812 Overture was incredible, it was just a great show.

The following day, we had been invited to another cook out in Stafford at a local garden center/nursery and to hear a member of the UU sing and do some entertaining there.  It was fun and I was really impressed at the generosity of the nursery to provide food for the community at no cost.  Bruce was fun to listen to singing as well.

Afterwards, we went down to my mom's house and had another cookout, making our total on the weekend three plus a picnic and a pool party.  Pretty crazy!!!  After that cookout, we were headed home, but Leah asked if we could go to the park, so we took the opportunity to teach Ine the popular activity of Geocaching. Geocaching is an electronic scavenger hunt where you get coordinates online and use a GPS to go and find the location out wherever you happen to be. There are bunch of caches at Pratt Park near our house, so we turned on my geocaching app and went hunting.  We found 4 caches before calling it quits and created an account for Ine so if she ever wants to go again, she has her first 4 finds logged already.  Afterwards, the girls played on the playground for a while before we returned home.  It was a really lovely weekend.

Our second find of the day!

My little roos

This past weekend, we found ourselves with an unscheduled Saturday, which just would not do, so I decided we would go out to Natural Bridge, VA where I had been really interested to go but had never made it.  They have a drive through safari in addition to the bridge itself.  I was very excited about it, and we wound up having a great time.  It's an almost 3 hour ride out there through the mountains and horse country, and we had easy traffic, a beautiful experience getting out there, great scenery, just heavenly.  The safari was SO fun--we did the drive through part twice, and we had buckets of feed to give to the animals, who know what is in those buckets and are quite aggressive about it.  There was also a walk through village, where Ine and Leah bravely touched a HUGE boa constrictor, we fed budgies and carried them around on sticks, Ine got near (but not too near) a peacock, which she does not like, and we saw all kinds of cute goats and pigs.  It was a really fun day, although unfortunately very hot and we had trouble with the heat!  We were very thankful for the ability to drive around in air conditioned comfort and I treated everyone to ice cream and cold water.

After the zoo, there was still time to go to Natural Bridge itself.  The Natural Bridge is considered one of the top natural attractions in Virginia, and was once owned by Thomas Jefferson.  I had seen pictures of it, but wasn't totally sure what the big deal was.  Still, I thought it was worth a try, so we went.

After getting tickets, we headed down the 139 steps to the bridge, which are followed by a lovely little waterfall and stream.  The girls were much faster at it than I was, but it was a beautiful little walk.  Once we came around the corner to the bridge itself, I almost literally lost my breath.  It was absolutely spectacular.  I couldn't stop taking pictures of it.  First of all, it's huge, far bigger than anything you imagine when you look at pictures of it.  In this picture to the left, the little specks in the middle of the picture are Leah and Ine standing under the bridge.  They are just totally dwarfed by the thing.  It reminded me of a place Leah and I went in Colombia in 2013 when visiting my former AFS brother, where you walk down this massive hill and suddenly there is an amazing cathedral and waterfalls and all kinds of things.  This was a very similar feel.  There were guides if you had questions and there was a lovely walking trail. We decided to follow the walking trail to the end, as it was only about a mile.  Because we were there a bit late, the Monacan Indian Village was closed, but everything else would remain open till dusk, and we got to see the Lost River (so named because no one has yet found the source), the Saltpeter Cave, and the Lace Falls.

If I'm being honest, I was a little underwhelmed by the waterfall, as I was expecting something huge and glorious, and it was nice enough in its way, but quite far back from the path and quite small.

On the way back, the girls climbed some rocks and looked around in the river.  Leah found tadpoles and crawfish and it was cool down there, far cooler than up above.  It was just a beautiful spot.  I can see it becoming a fun place to take future exchange students!

Once we walked back, we waited for the shuttle to take us back up to the top of the parking area, as Ine's knees were hurting and we were all hot, sweaty, and exhausted.  A friend recommended a nearby restaurant, the Pink Cadillac Diner, where we had dinner, but after it arrived, Ine and I discovered we were too tired to eat.  We could have split a plate as neither of us ate even half what we had.  But the diner was a fun place to go and as it was pink, Leah was in heaven!

We drove home and got back around 9:30.  We had to keep each other awake on the drive, so we took turns talking about random things, and one of the things we talked about was name meanings.  I asked Ine what the name "Ine" meant, and she didn't know.  It came around to us talking about "The Meaning of Ine" and her finding herself this year, and we decided it would be a good name for the blog, so you will see an updated blog title here! :-D  I was too tired to shower, so I bid Ine good night and went to bed, knowing when I woke up, we would have a 19 year old in the house!!!!!!!!!

For Ine's actual birthday on May 31, she spent some time Skyping with her parents and sister and then we went over to the UU for the children's service, which was fun.  Then we had a party at our house where we invited my family and a few friends over.  Jana was able to come, as she had been out of town for Ine's other party, as well as Amber and Andy and Judy and her family.  Ine says when she is back in Belgium on her birthday, she always picks Chinese food for dinner, so we ordered a pile of Chinese food and everyone ate like crazy.  it was so good!!!  She got a nice assortment of presents--Judy and family gave her a bunch of American snacks to try, she got a few gift cards, and Leah and I gave her a charm bracelet with charms to remember her year by. Amber also gave her some charms to put on the bracelet--a cow and an American flag.  Ine left the room for a moment to compose herself, she was really moved by it and says she won't wear it because it's too nice and she's afraid to break it. Haha!

And thus is May over and done.  Ine has started consolidating her belongings for the inevitable packing to go home and I have started trying to prepare myself for the idea that she is leaving.  We have smaller adventures now, every time we leave the house seems pregnant with meaning, and most evenings when we were just sitting around there is an added air of urgency surrounding our togetherness.  Leah, Ine, and I have all shed tears about Ine's impending departure, and my mom and sister have both expressed their sorrow over her departure.  I feel very fortunate that I am matched with a student for next year which will offer some distraction, and that I am still in touch with Penny from 5 years ago (WOW!), and I know that this is just the closing of this chapter, not of the book.  Still, it is really hard knowing that our daily lives will be very, very separate from here on out, until Ine marries one of the boys from FA and moves back to the US permanently.  (Sorry, Hilde and Johan, I have plans for this girl!)

See you soon with the news from June!