Four more days

It is the last week of the semester. My throat burns. My fridge is empty. My house goes from boiling sticky heat to chilled in minutes and amongst it all I cannot wait to get onto that flight on Friday and fly away.

Even the weather is impatient; It snows one minute and then basks us in sunshine the next.

My father was made redundant yesterday and my Great Uncle died two days before that. Another friend has dengue fever, while someone else has a new baby called Lilly and another smiles across a bowl of soup to tell me she is engaged.

Christmas is a time for transitions and changes and California looks dull and surreal these days as my mind drifts to London and plans trips to Myanmar or thinks about how to write a eulogy.

We sit in our North Gate hall and finish final projects, final articles, final cups of coffee and final wrap-ups. Four more days, we tell ourselves, four more days.