Farewell to Arizona

So my final days in Arizona for at least the next 8 months to year and a half were filled by the aforementioned computer drama, but also by lots of seeing friends and meeting with family for goodbye dinners.

Thursday night I went to my Dad's house after a very long day and a half (I didn't really get more than 2 hours of sleep that night since I spent a lot of it working on the computer). I showed up for a farewell carne asada (like barbecue, but more delicious) dinner at his place and got to see my little sisters one more time, tell them I'll miss them, chat with my dad and stepmom, eat good food and finally show my dad how to use Skype so he doesn't spend a small fortune in cell phone charges calling West Africa. It was a really great night all around.

Rushed packing kept me up until 4am, and frustrated me enough that I gave up on keeping an organized list of everything I brought because either I would type up the list, or it would get packed, but not both - I think I chose wisely. Short version is: one 40 lb carboard box reinforced with tons of duct and packing tape filled with 16 books, and lots of food mostly from Trader Joe's and of course Cheez-its. One big traveling backpack (weighing 32 lbs) full or a lot of "stuff" - mainly things like markers, pens, notecards, and generally lots of the stuff that was on my Guinea packlist (early post in fedinguinea.blogspot.com) that was useful. My clothes are in my carry on small brown duffel, and my electronics are in my small backpack that attaches via zipper to my big backpack.

The next evening I met my mom at a Spanish restaurant in downtown Tucson for an early dinner of tapas, paella, wine, crema catalana and coffee - it was delicious and there was way more food than we could eat (the paella is actually meant for 4, but she took home a little less than half of it). Again it was a nice way to say goodbye to her since I'd be spending my last hours in AZ with my friends (it WAS Friday night after all...).

So as soon as dinner with my mom was over I dashed across town BJ's (a Chicago style pizza brewery restaurant) where I was supposed to meet my friends at 8. I showed up just past 8 to discover I was the first one there. I requested a table for ten and in the 45 minutes it took for one to open up everyone showed up (except Ana, who was understandably running late as she had to drive 2 hours from Phoenix to make it - I love you Ana!). I got a pint of the porter (I picked this place because I wanted somewhere with good beer for my last night out) and after careful consideration decided to get an individual pizza as well even though my belt was still working hard from dinner number one with my mom. Everything was delicious and Ana showed up right as we were finishing up, so we stuck around for another round of drinks.

We left and the group splintered a bit (Andy and Lucas had to take off), but Maricarol, Ana, Mark, Matthew and I stuck together and went to Maricarol's to play Super Mario Bros on her Wii - stopping at a grocery store for some more beer (I got a 6 pack of one of my Portland favorites - Drop Top Amber Ale). The ensuing game of Mario Bros was the most fun I think I've had in a long long time. My voice is hoarse today from all the screaming and laughing we did while playing (it's similar to the old NES game, only it's multiplayer so you need to work as a team and not leave people behind, etc - making it incredibly more prone to cause arguments when someone accidentally kills you off or steals your Yoshi).

The funny (and for me, really sweet) thing was that everybody playing had to work the next morning, some as early as 7, others after driving back 1 or 2 hours to Nogales or Phoenix. But between how much fun it was and the fact that it was my last night, people stuck it out until pretty late. Eventually around 3:30am when everyone was clearly done (the level 6 castle really took it out of us), I got Ana to give me a ride to the airport as to not wake Maricarol, planning on doing my necessary internet stuff off the airport wireless while my friends caught some sleep before work.

So yeah, back to back dinners with my parents followed by good deep dish pizza, dark beer, and a Nintendo marathon with friends - the best possible end to my time stateside before heading back to West Africa. Liberia here I come.