Moving On

P.S. (at the beginning) I wrote this the week after leaving Laxmi, so although it's taken me 6 weeks to get it up here, it reads like it was written then, not now.
My three months of teaching have flown by, and now it's time to pack up our house and move on. Having been in Lumbini and Bandipur for a week, I had 3 days in which to pack up my life and prepare to leave.
The most prominent feature of the 3 days was laundry. Boo. With no washing machine I've done everything by hand the past three months, and this mega wash was no exception. This was the last chance for a completely clean wardrobe without paying for it, so I took full advantage. It took two days, but I got it all done. Between the 4 of us the roof is covered with drying clothes. We went through 500L of water in 3 days!
After laundry was organizing and packing. I loathe both these things, so it was a trial. It took constant encouragement/brow-beating from Caitlin for me to finish.
Packing has been quite sobering. We had full, settled lives in this house, and called it home. These three months haven't felt like travelling. We had a home routine, the same as I have in Canada. When Caitlin and I came back from Kathmandu, it was really like coming home, not more travelling. Seeing everything from a full like go into two small-looking bags was weird. I didn't honestly think it would all fit! (it did)
The house was brand new when we moved in in January, so we're the first people to live here. We decorated, and really made the 6 (the roof counts, I called it upstairs) rooms our own. Durga even commented how she was happy that we had decorated her house so much. She is going to add a second story this summer, so future AVs will live upstairs, while her family is on our floor. It's nice to think we're the only AVs to live in these rooms - it makes them more ours.
Leaving Laxmi is difficult. I love this village, and don't like thinking that I will no longer have a home in Nepal. I'll miss the roof the most, but also the feeling of having a proper home to return to every night.
Quick forays down to Nice Lady's Shop for last minute dinner ingredients, being recognized on the bus, afternoon trips up to Gorkha and a hundred other little aspects of life here are ending. There are some things I won't miss, like clothing disapearing off the washing line (I lost my lulus ! :( ), but overall I'm not ready for it to end. My and Caitlin's room looks so bare.
The house has been scrubbed as clean as we can make it, and all the bags are packed. Without our belongings strewn about it no longer looks like our house, so now it's time to shut the door and say goodbye.