One Week

So I leave the Sandbox exactly one week from today...who would have ever thought that I would actually make it 2 years, decide to stay longer and now be sad to leave. It's crazy.

As I expected, these past few days have been crazy busy, just seeing lots of friends for the last time and doing the random things I want to do before I leave. What I did not expect was how emotional it has been.

Anyways, today was amazing and ridiculously hard at the same time. My volleyball friend is an agricultural engineer and works at this farm out of town. She has asked me several times to come and visit her at work but I just haven't ever really had the opportunity.

Today I made time to go and, to give those of you from Irving a reference point, this place made Cottonwood and Hackberry look like poor people houses. I NEVER imagined that a place so amazingly nice and beautiful and secluded existed in the Sandbox. We're talking a 10 house gated community (biggest houses I've seen in a long time) with a gym, tennis court, basketball court, full soccer field, horse track and stables, 2 pools, pool house, a mosque and a little river running through the entire compound. There are over 50 full-time employees just to keep the pools and the grounds nice, not to mention housekeepers, nannies, cooks, etc. Craziness.

After my short visit to 'America', accompanied by just a little culture shock, I went to work in the camp and was completely overwhelmed that a place so amazingly fancy could exist within 1,000 yards of what I personally consider one of the most desolate and desperate places on earth. Combine that with the fact that I was visiting Hailey for the last time and it was just a little much to handle.

I brought her some fancy coffee cups as a going away present and we cried when I gave them to her. Then she gave me some perfume and wooden incense which was a huge gesture, seeing as how I know they can't afford to just be giving away things that she would be able to sell otherwise and we cried again. We drank coffee, with milk (extra, extra special), from her new fancy cups and laughed and had lots of fun just talking. She is 8 months and 3 weeks pregnant and I am so disappointed I am going to miss her new baby by just a few days.

When I left we both cried. It's just so hard saying goodbye to the people that I have come to love. And to know that it's not a 'well, if I don't see you again I will still see you again' goodbye but a 'well, at this point we're not going to end up in the same place'. My heart just hurts to think about that.