Don't Cry For Me, Wroclawskie

This is officially, officially my last post from Poland. After a week of goodbye parties and reflection, I think I'm ready to blow this popcicle stand. My flight leaves in four hours.

Tuesday night was my official goodbye party, held at Strefa 0 (where else?) followed by dancing at Manana. At Strefa 0, I was presented with scarves and gifts and a Polish flag that all of the interns had signed. As they handed me the Polish flag, Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under the Bridge Downtown" started playing. It was incredibly perfect, I actually thought they had orchestrated it. This song has been our theme song of the summer and it's been coincidentally playing at every important juncture of my journey - on my first night at Strefa 0, in one of the cars we hitchhiked to Krakow in, constantly in the dormitory, and finally, at my goodbye party. It was pretty much perfect.

Wednesday night, my last night with Jackie and Aydan (they left for a two-week trip to Scandenavia yesterday), we stayed awake until dawn packing and listening to music and giving each other Henna tattoos. Again, a perfect way to end this adventure.

As Marcin and Aydan and Jackie left the dormitory yesterday morning, I kept a stiff upper lip and we said goodbye in the best way possible. We all knew at the beginning that this wouldn't last forever, and it's necessary (in many ways) for it to end now. I might come back to Wroclaw someday, but I'll never be able to relive this summer. Of course, I'll miss my friends here and I'll miss this city, but more than anything, saying goodbye to this is a reminder that . . . you know, life goes on, we go through lots of things with lots of people, and if we stayed in one place forever, we'd miss out on a lot of other good things.

And now I'm on to other good things. From this point on, consider the title of this blog "The Falafel Diaries." See you in the holy land.