A Very Long Weekend

This past weekend was pretty much a series of goodbyes to Carleton friends - and unless I get to meet up with Carisa in the city before I leave, probably the last Carleton goodbyes I say before I leave in a week. Did I mention I depart in 7 days? yup. One week.

But all this being said, all the time spent since this past Friday was pretty uniformly wonderful. It started out by meeting up with Max and Rachel and Nik in my house up in Massachusetts and seeing the modern cinematic classic that is "Snakes on a Plane." Now aside from this being an absolutely awful movie with a lot of totally gratuitously cringe-inducing moments (especially the first few snake attacks, though I think Rachel and I both appreciated the concept of the "trouser snake"), we had a marvelous time. It also had the unexpected side effect of making me actually look forward (a little bit) to my rapidly-approaching thirty hours of snake-free transit time. Compared to "Snakes," the flight to China is going to be awesome.

Saturday and Sunday were spent hiking and swimming and boating and watching movies, as well as making some sublime guacamole and an obscene amount of weirdly sticky pasta. We said goodbye to Rachel and Max on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday had lunch with my parents and then headed off to Sterling for a very relaxing evening at Nik's house.

Tuesday was kind of an adventure. We were supposed to go out to Russell's house in Hingham, a suburb of Boston, and from there take the T into the city to meet Laura on her lunch break. First of all, Hingham is a very confusing town, we got madly lost and Russell had to talk us through a mess of back roads to get to his house. We arrived a bit late, so we headed straight out to catch the train. On the way, we encounter the world's slowest opening bridge (what's the name for those bridges?) and had to wait twenty minutes while a boat passed underneath. Then, just around the corner from the T stop, Russell's car stalls out. So that was the end of that adventure. We did have a very interesting tow truck ride with a guy who could not wait to get out of Massachusetts (he just bought a 4-bedroom house for less than $50,000 in upstate NY). And since Hingham, aside from being confusing, is also really lame, we hung out at Russell's all afternoon and played Life and cards. Which was an excellent time anyway, aside from it being a bummer not to be able to see Laura before I left.

Last night was spent in Sterling, which brings us to this morning, when Nik and I got breakfast and I dropped him off at work on my way back home. Somehow, even though all the goodbyes were really tough, I can't help feeling like they were a lot better this time around (compared to the ones I said in June, thinking I wouldn't be seeing any of these people for at least 6 months). I don't think it's just that now it's only four months of separation. Saying goodbye after all the stress and anxiety of finals weekend was rushed and busy and full of regrets for time not-well-spent. The past few days were more or less stress-free and relaxed. So while it's never easy to leave people, at least all the partings were on a good note.

And now I have the whole week to stare at the mess in my room and think about how to organize it into something that resembles a packed backpack. Oh joy!