Too many goodbyes

This past week has been very bittersweet, with far too many goodbyes for our taste. It started on Friday the 13th (ominous!) with a trip to the office with cheesecake. As is the Indonesian tradition, when you have anything special happen in your life, you bring the treats. The office was VERY excited about the arrival of the cheesecakes. So excited in fact, they devoured them in mere minutes and Howie and I did not even get a taste.

Following the cheesecake excitement, I headed to a new wine bar in town for my last "Ladies Night." I passed the torch and this one was organized by another lady and it was a huge success. There were 25 ladies and many, many bottles of wine consumed, much to everyone's delight. But it is not all about the wine, we also had the first book auction, where, for a minimal price, I auctioned off books that are not making the trip back to the US. Books are really hard to come by here so this was a big hit and all the proceeds went the final (very large) bill from the evening. Everyone wins!

Sunday night we invited the reporters from HighEnd and HighEnd teen over for dinner. While we may have some choice words to say about some of the management, etc. at HighEnd, we love the reporters. They are a really sweet group and while I think the reports on the Mexican meal we made might be mixed, we had a great time. It was hard to say goodbye - especially since they performed a little song for us and presented us with a really nice book of letters and pictures from them. It was incredibly heartwarming and we will miss those guys a lot.

Finally, today we also had to say goodbye to our favorite slimy friend, Norman. The farm has moved to some new swanky digs and they were not opposed to taking Norman back again. It was very hard to part with the little guy, but he is definitely in good hands. And the new farm is looking great. They have partnered with some good people and seem to be steady on their feet, which is wonderful as it is a project we really like.