That's all folks - well except for a January postscript!

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So, here we are, the 20th December 2008, which has arrived impossibly quickly, and tomorrow I'm flying home for Christmas. To all intents and purposes, my time in Perpignan is done. All that remains is to return for two weeks in January to sit my exams. It's kind of strange. I can't wait to go home, I'm so excited about seeing my family and friends again, but for all its irritations, I will miss Perpignan, especially all the wonderful people I've met here.

This week feels like it's gone quickly, but yet Monday seems like a long time ago. It's just been a blur of clearing out, packing, socialising and sitting the odd exam, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. So until Thursday, none of us were properly excited about Christmas because we had the exams to worry about, but as soon as we finished the exam on Thursday, we were like children on E-numbers! To celebrate, we had dinner out on Thursday night, followed by a couple of drinks and Majid's bar, but we left pretty quickly when a couple of strippers came out! We sat shocked for a while and luckily they didn't start stripping then, just breaking glasses as they threw promotional freebies across the tables, but apparently we left at a good time, as after we left the little they were wearing came off completely!

Yesterday, Friday, there was just time for a last drink at our lovely teashop and last-minute gift buying before we got on with packing suitcases. It is a precise art when you are flying with Ryanair, as you are only allowed 15kg of checked baggage and only 1 item of hand-luggage. Luckily Fiona's mum sent a luggage weighing scale, which has been brilliant. After putting things in, taking others out, putting things in hand luggage and leaving things behind, my suitcase is now just under 15kg and my hand-luggage just under the 10kg allowed. The budget airline thing is brilliant price-wise, but not quite so great when you are trying to transport as much of four months'-worth of stuff as you can.

But it's possible, and now everything's packed, I've just got a bt of tidying up to do and then I'm done. Rosy and Katie are coming over in a little while for our last evening together before Christmas, and then it'll be an early night before travelling home tomorrow. I'm going home. Until you've lived abroad, I don't think you can really appreciate the sweetness of those words.

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Photos

Rosy and Me
last night out