It feels like the end of an era. We had our official farewell at the Embassy today, and everyone said very sweet things about us. Apparently after 7 years of working at the Embassy they still don't know us very well. Afterward we had a lamb roast and red wine at lunch - people were telling us that we should

leave more often. It was very nice, and Franklin made everyone cry by tearing up as he spoke about how much he was going to miss his office-mates.

I'm in full NaNoWriMo swing again this year. Every year at this time I realize that I'll never be much of a fiction writer, but I'm too stubborn to stop (besides, I already ordered a t-shirt, and I can't very well wear around a t-shirt for an event that I failed at, can I?). So I'm now 35,000 words into a novel that is EVEN WORSE than the one that I wrote last year (seriously. It's about a pig who works in a candle factory, complete with murder, espionage, and ninjas). In addition to that I'm helping with an upcoming production of The Diary of Anne Frank by the Jerusalem English Speaking Theatre - so I'm staying pretty busy.

Franklin, as usual, is in the basement making guitars. Even though our farewell was today, he still has a month of work at the office left, which is good because we need the stipend, and bad because every second spent in the office is a second that he isn't in the basement. And it will be weird for him to go back to his office-mates on Monday after crying about how much he was going to miss them on Friday. Perhaps we should have insisted that they wait until we were actually leaving to throw us a farewell party.