An ending, part 2

On June 7, I said goodbye to my host city of Blagoveshchensk for the last time. Most of the day I spent finishing up my packing, taking occasional breaks to go outside and walk around the streets and along the river, taking in the sights one last time. Finally, by 9 PM, I was ready, and at 9:30, we got in a taxi and went to the train station. I was leaving Blagoveshchensk to go to Vladivostok for a Rotary conference, so there were some Rotarians traveling with me. But when we got to the train station, many more Rotarians were there, and also a group of Rotaracters, my friends, were there. In all, there had to have been around thirty people who came to say goodbye to me. My friends and previous host families were there. We took a lot of photos, they gave me some last minute gifts, and we said our goodbyes. While we were saying goodbye, I didn't cry, although I had wanted to. My second host family, the Murzakovs, whom I really liked and got attached to, was there.

One of the Rotarians, who had always helped me out during the year, gave me a small souvenir, with an engraving on the back. When I showed one of the other Rotarians this gift, he was surprised, because he said that the other Rotarian is usually kind of reserved and doesn't connect a lot with people, but that I must have really connected with him and been seen as almost like a son to him. When I boarded the train, I stood by the window and looked out at all of them. I sang them a verse out of the Russian song "Katusha".

As the train finally started moving, my friends started running after me, alongside the train, shouting their goodbyes, with the Rotarians and host families watching from a distance.

I didn't realize what all these people meant to me until the train had rolled out of the station, and the clickety-clack of the train moving into the darkness replaced the departing shouts and goodbyes of the friends with whom I had spent the last 9 and a half months of my life.

Standing in the corridor of the train, staring out of the now dark window, the full heavy reality of my departure suddenly crashed down upon me, as if falling from a great height. It hit me so unexpectedly, and I let out a loud sigh. It was a sigh of sadness, of relief, of pain -- the kind of sigh that you let out when you are tired after having just put down a heavy burden that you have carried a long way. It was a sigh that one may use to break the silence, when he doesn't know exactly what to say, even though he wants to say it to somebody, to anybody, to share what he is feeling. It is a sigh that sums up all his emotions, in a single expulsion of breath.

I looked over at Larisa, my first host mother, who was also standing in the corridor of the train with me. She also looked back at me, and just smiled.