The Great Goodbye(s)

My service is over and I am officially an RPCV. Well, not quite because to be an RPCV you must be a 'Returned Peace Corps Volunteer' and I don't plan on returning to the States for another month. Instead I'm zipping around Cambodia - as a sort of goodbye tour -with some of my very best friends from home. They arrive on Friday and I couldn't be more excited.

This last week was hard. Although not as hard as I imagined it to be. I had goodbye soup with my co-teachers one night, followed by goodbye soup with my students the next, and then goodbye soup the last night with my counterpart Soksara from the health center. The hardest goodbye was to her because she has helped me so much this past year with projects like Camp GLOW and CCPCR, as well as being a good friend and always being there when I needed help. It's people like her that make being a Peace Corps Volunteer a hundred times easier, and tolerable when dealing with so much adversity and intolerance that can come when being the only foreigner in a town of thousands.

My goodbyes are far from over though. Staggering throughout these next two weeks, as I travel around the country, I will eventually say goodbye to most of all my fellow K3s. It's nice to know that the majority of us will go back to the same country and I'm optimistic that I will see people again. I think that is the only way I can make these goodbyes tolerable.

I don't have much else to write. Saying goodbye is exhausting. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow.