"When are you leaving?"

Final week at school
I gave my goodbye speech at my base school on July 28th. It was all in Japanese. I had been preparing the speech for over a month, but nothing prepared to the way I felt that day, saying goodbye to 800 students and 50 teachers, but I managed to save my tears until the end.
I received a bunch of flowers, presented by 2 student council members. It was all quite touching really. Rich actually came on this day. It was great having him there. Plus the students thought he was cute.
Later on I received letters and cards from students. A class photo that they all had signed. Some messages were; I love you Rita teacher: I will never forget you: I looked forward to your classes; You're classes were interesting;I love your cute smile.
A 3rd grade class had signed a book. Inside, one student, Rei, wrote me a little poem and part of his message was: I will try not to forget you. No, I will never never forget you.

That night was my leaving party, almost all the teachers attended, I had to give another speech. I kept it short. After other speeches, we finally ate. Or not in my case. I had person after person coming up to me to say goodbye, filled my glass with wine. Making it difficut to measure how much I actually drank. It's custom, what can you do.
Before leaving, I decided I would walk around the room saying goodbye to teachers that I hadn't spoken to yet. We had 2 hours in the hotel restaurant. 30 mins went towards speeches, and the rest flew by.
My next stop was a second party, at an Italian restaurant, with the English teachers.

Goodbyes
During my last 3 weeks in Japan, I met up with someone everyday to say goodbye. One day I met up with 3 friends. Breakfast was with Karen, and we spent some quality time talking til about 1 o'clock. Then I met up with Nobuko for sushi, we spent time together until 5pm, and then I met up with Mayumi for dinner. Mayumi says "Is there anything you would like to eat before you leave Japan?" without hesitation I said "unagi" (eel). So we had eel and rice. Delicious.
Goodbye was all getting too much. I figured I would see all the people I want to see over with and have my last week to myself.
And that just what I did.