I've entered my last week of working at ACS--I'm grading exams and packing up my classroom. My apartment is half-packed, half-hurricane and one-million degrees hot. I've been saying goodbye to my friends and to my city.

I don't actually fly home to the States until August 31st but I'm going to spend a large part of my summer traveling in Europe. First with my dAd and sister in Bulgaria and Turkey and then onto the Baltics, Berlin and Barcelona.

I've known since January that this was my last year in Sofia after five wonderful years but in January I didn't know how sad I was going to be to be leaving.

I teach this Elizabeth Bishop poem <a title="One Art" href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212">"One Art"</a> in English 10 as a part of my poetry unit. Now I can't get it out of my head.
<blockquote>
<pre>The art of losing isn't hard to master;</pre>
<pre>so many things seem filled with the intent</pre>
<pre>to be lost that their loss is no disaster.</pre>
<pre></pre>
<pre>Lose something every day. Accept the fluster</pre>
<pre>of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.</pre>
<pre>The art of losing isn't hard to master.</pre>
<pre></pre>
<pre>Then practice losing farther, losing faster:</pre>
<pre>places, and names, and where it was you meant</pre>
<pre>to travel. None of these will bring disaster.</pre>
<pre></pre>
<pre>I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or</pre>
<pre>next-to-last, of three loved houses went.</pre>
<pre>The art of losing isn't hard to master.</pre>
<pre></pre>
<pre>I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,</pre>
<pre>some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.</pre>
<pre>I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.</pre>
<pre></pre>
<pre>—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture</pre>
<pre>I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident</pre>
<pre>the art of losing's not too hard to master</pre>
<pre>though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.</pre>
</blockquote>