Claudia and Dani

This past week I said goodbye to Claudia and Dani, two lovely people. They've been interning in Toronto these last six months, but the time finally came for them to settle their accounts and head home to Germany.

A few of us got together at a pub their last night in town, and it was a great, if not a little bittersweet, time. Discussion items included: Ontario's greatest hits, job thoughts, celebrity sightings at the recent film festival. It was one of those evenings where you say goodbye, start chatting a little more, drift towards the door, say goodbye again, etc.

And now they're gone. Dani and Claudia aren't the first friends I've said goodbye to, and I know they won't be the last. This is a sad prospect of course, but in a strange way I think it's exciting. My friends are all such incredible people! They travel far and wide; they dream about places they want to live and then get up and move to those places. They go to graduate school, they take up new hobbies, they read interesting books. They're always searching for something, and end up living such interesting lives as a result.

Sure, there's a part of me that wishes I'd been living in the same place for the last 20 years - think of the support network you build up in all that time! This is the life I want though, and the people who come and go from my immediate vicinity are one of its best parts.