Finishing touches

It’s over, I’m done. With work anyway. Today at 3:05 pm CST I officially finished my summer employment, teaching my last class and saying goodbye to all those kids. Some were genuinely sad, and enough of them wished me well that it was a genuinely nice parting. I gave them all my email address (all 200 of the fifth graders that is) and said they could email with any questions any time. I fully expect to get an email 10 years from now asking for help with college admissions. In fact, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get one.

We had a cold stretch last week, and over the weekend especially, but the weather’s back to above freezing. Pretty balmy actually. Still, today it was 71 and sunny in Hanoi, and that’s pretty hard to complain about.

Now it’s the weekend, and time for all those last’s people talk about, last dinners, last concerts, last waltz’s. Lasts. Many of them (the dinner and concert specifically) will be tomorrow, just hours before I head south. The concert should be good. A bunch of my favorite punk bands (punk in Beijing?) are playing, and the crowd is fun and friendly. Should be a good way to say a temporary goodbye to the city.

Thing is, I’ll be back in less than a month (though for about 40 hours it looks like) to get my stuff in order, pack my bags and officially head back stateside. After that…who knows. I’ll be back, sure, though when and for how long I don’t know. I certainly find that I am much less enamored of Beijing than I was last summer. That happens, I guess, described best by a friend of a friend as Getting Over it. I’m so over Beijing, he said, and while I may not be there quite yet, perhaps I’ll end up there one day.

It’s a fun town, dynamic and historic at the same time, interesting to live in, full of events and people of interest, but there are a lot of other cities in the world, and I don’t think I’d mind giving another one or two a run for their money. Why not?

And so, I’ll leave off here, heading out to Hanukah services on the east side of town, looking at all the lights go by, and thinking of red dirt roads lined by trees greener than green. That’s where I’m heading in 35 hours or so, and I’ve got the keys to the highway.

Happy Holidays.
Martin.