looking back {saying good-bye}

There is great emphasis (in almost all the literature we've read about leaving and international post) about the importance of saying good-bye.

It helps form closure ... for kids and adults.

It helps validate and justify the experience.

We did our good-byes corporately and privately, as a family and as individuals.

Bei Bei and I took one last trip to Polar Ocean World where we said goodbye to all the polar creatures (and I grimaced, for the last time, at animals performing to Micheal Jackson tunes).

We said goodbye to favorite restaurants, haunts, neighbors and friends.

We had last coffees and last dinners. Last conversations. One such evening was so hard to end that we ended up walking home together just to prolong the last moments. Our private sayings of good bye were more intimate, but the corporate ones ended up being equally emotional.

We held a party for (as my friend Dr Julie described) "75 of our closest friends" (She, amused that it could reach that number, teased me for being a social butterfly.) But I reminded her: we've been here five years, and we have three kids with sweet friends ...

It was a special afternoon with a simple meal of pizza and Greek salads, a keg of Tsingtao and made replete with a misspelled cake. We had friends from Russia, The Netherlands, France, England, Korea, Australia, Denmark, China, Taiwan, Italy and the US. We took pictures of each family who came (except, unfortunately, our own) to insert in the album they all signed.

Dr Julie hosted a luncheon for ladies I've known and loved in Qingdao, and her neighbor, and our friend Q, a stay-at-home dad, fearlessly joined the estrogen energy.

Mr Johnson's co-workers held a going away party at work with cheese cakes and speeches and very few dry eyes.

At school MGJ brought in Taiwanese bubble teas to share with her Jr High classmates at their break, and the left over misspelled cake for after lunch.

True to her original request, EHJ opted for an early birthday party instead of a going away shin dig. She used the Shrek party plates she picked last summer and brought in sugar cookies for her class to decorate as a sort of craft cum snack.

On the same day in Bei Bei's classroom I brought in our giant mitten, read and re-read Jan Brett's The Mitten whilst her classmates took turns being the various animals that climbed into the mitten like the creatures in the story. She gave a pair of tiny mittens to each friend. Her friend from the Czech Republic had earlier told me that he loved to kiss Bei Bei on the playground (and her guilty grin assured me it was true.) At her going away party her little Italian friend showed his amore as well.

Each of the The Three passed out their own photo with their US mailing address, our family's Skype handle and their email addresses. It wasn't just saying good-bye, after all, but also the promise of continued communication. This the bitter sweet part of the expat experience. Saying good bye, but always with the promise to stay in touch. And there is great satisfaction in knowing that we now have friends scattered all over the globe, from the bottom of Australia to the Western coast of Canada ... postcards and emails and phone calls still come.