Emotional Bloodbath

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008
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Trip End Dec 09, 2008


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Flag of Greece  , Attica,
Friday, December 5, 2008

Tonight's farewell dinner was an "emotional bloodbath," as Class Clown put it. The closure ceremony began with Yiannis, the owner of the program, making a speech about how you think this is the end of a journey but really you're just beginning; just as he had opened the semester with a speech about how you think this is Greece but really Greece doesn't exist (it's Hellas or Ellada, you know). He handed certificates out to each student, and then presented me with a beautiful little watercolor painting of the local monastery with Byzantine domes and a white marble column from his mother's private collection.

Then we all had dinner, and after dinner the students hooted and applauded during the slide show of goofy, embarrassing pictures from the term that Groom and Fingers had assembled and put to music. I was expecting at some point that the music would turn from upbeat to nostalgic and the crying would start, but they kept it light and funny throughout.

Sunshine composes her own music, and she sang five of her original songs for the group. Then the students initiated storytelling time, each recounting their favorite moments with each other in Greece. Again, they stuck to funny stories to dam the pressing flood of mass tears.

Finally it was time to leave, and the doorways became clogged with students hugging and taking pictures of each other, the program staff, and the professors (Indy and Gina showed up too). Bellingham invited everyone, including me bless her, back up to the Penthouse to hang out in our last hours together. Some of the students went out, promising they would be at the bar for just an hour or two and would come back (but they hadn't returned by the time I left at 12:30). Some stayed in, sitting in the Penthouse living room with the group or breaking off in the dyads of romances or special friendships to say private goodbyes.

The first of the students left for the airport at 2 and 3am. They took a part of my heart with them.
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