First was Keigo's Christmas party. Keigo certainly likes to throw parties with large quantities of food: there was steak, sushi, an enormous sandwich, and several other things I don't remember. After much eating and chatting, we played a game rather like celebrity heads, but based on iphones. It can be amusing to observe gaps in cultural knowledge among people who grew up in non-English speaking countries, and how they make guesses to fill the gaps. For instance, one player had established that he was a bird from Sesame Street, whose first name is a synonym of large. "I know: Huge Bird!"
Next was Giorgio's New Year's Eve party. This party combined Giorgio's Italian friends with Sarita's Catholic friends (we're Giorgio's friends as well, but Sarita was the one who initially planned to host before realising we'd be a pretty small group). There was plenty of delicious food, especially pasta. We played Love Letter and Mamma Mia (the pizza-themed card game,not the song), and generally enjoyed the night. Around a quarter to midnight, we turned on the TV to watch the ball drop... and realised we were 45 minutes late because we live in the central time zone!
Keigo had also had a NYE party, and the next day after Mass, five of us gathered to finish the food. We ate and watched Dragon Blade followed by Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Two very realistic films!
I spent much of the weekend working with Arvind on the last stages of my contribution to our rigid origami project. And the beginning of the next week on that, on the granular material work I was actually being paid to work on in Chicago (although not any more, as my fellowship finished on 1 January), as well as packing.
On Wednesday, I had a farewell party with many of my friends, mostly from church. Keigo and Kohei very generously prepared quite a bit of food, and others brought contributions as well. It was a weeknight, but it was early enough in the quarter that it didn't feel so much like one. In many ways it felt like yet another enjoyable gathering with my friends. It's just sad that it will be so long until another with people, and I don't expect to see everyone together at all again!
On Thursday, Tom and Arvind took me out to lunch to celebrate the end of a very successful year working together. We discussed such things as how scary Google has become with face recognition and the like (I write, on a Google platform to which I freely upload photos of all the interesting events and people of my life!).
In the afternoon, they hosted a farewell party from the James Franck Institute where I worked. They brewed up some apple cider (without rum), and had some cookies as well. It was a wonderful place to work and I'm sorry to be leaving.
Next up on the blog, a long trip back home. Don't hold your breath: I'll be away for a couple of weeks.
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