A sure sign of how much of a good time you've had in a place and how many meaningful friends you've made there is how sad you are to leave. If this is true then I can say with some confidence that I in fact did have a very good time in Loja with some most excellent friends.
The goodbyes began on Friday 31st Jan with the last day of three of my kiddie classes. The difference in goodbyes was marked - with my cutie 7-9 year olds we sang Yellow Submarine complete with actions for their 'graduation', then my favourite's mum went out and bought us all fried chicken, which we ate and reminisced about the class, then left with a big group hug. I have to say I had a little tear in my eye. For contrast, my 10-12 age group came in, begrudgingly sat through Wallace and Gromit with me, begged to go home early and only said goodbye after I shouted down the corridor after them. From the final 13-15 group only 2 from 7 turned up which I was happy with as it meant we could watch the final hour of The Inbetweeners Movie in peace. So that was all fine. I had hoped for a big teachers party but everyone was so exhausted that we all just wanted to go home. Or in my case to Rene's (our boss, personal assistant, and friend) mum's house due to a slight 'dickhead problem' with my landlord, where she attempted to destroy my stomach lining with even more chicken and rice and soup (I had to refuse most of it and that which I didn't eat was served up for breakfast). Delightful woman though and very generous with what she had, which was fairly limited to start with.
So that was one goodbye. The biggest goodbye came then on the following Wednesday, with the last class with all my adults there. One was due for a test so he kept me occupied whilst the rest of them mysteriously didn't turn up. Eventually I was told to go upstairs, where the others waited for me with a great goodbye party, and I was greeted by cake, presents, beer smuggled into the school, and even a mini-me out of foam stuck to the board. Due to being rendered speechless by what they'd done for me I spent most of the time grinning at it all, but I stopped that for long enough to give a little speech about how much I'd enjoyed teaching them, to which they told me how much they'd enjoyed being taught by me. The presents were amazing too, a little sombrero, a box of goodies from Loja and the surroundings and a bag full of personal messages from each of them. Still looking for the perfect time to read them. Afterwards we had an afterparty consisting of getting some drinks and driving between various city lookouts and getting back in the car to drive off when the police came. Living on the edge, but also kind of boring. Well I had fun regardless.
As if that wasn't enough, in the final half of my last lesson with just 3 from 6 of them I offered them the chance to play any game. The game they decided upon was 'guess what Dennis has in his bag'. After 5 minutes I gave up, and he pulled out a big gift box of Swiss products - an army knife, watch, pen and keychain. Not any old Toblerone for them! Add to that a very cute card with 'don't forget us because we won't forget you. Thank you for forming part of our lives' on the envelope. As you can imagine I was rendered a bit speechless again. I left them all a little personal letter of thanks (it was the least I could do) and one big hug in place of the words that I couldn't really find to thank them.
My final weekend in the area saw us head to Vilcabamba (gringo-hippie-centenarian commune) for a weekend that was far more eventful than it should have been. The general plan was to hike to a waterfall and have a little dip there then go partying after. Well despite a very high water level we went for the trek, crossing the fast-flowing knee-deep river, getting changed on the other side, and then crossing it again to take a dip in the rather deep pool at the bottom of the very powerful waterfall. If this sounds slightly stupid then that's because it was. I was the unlucky victim who got sucked towards the waterfall and under the water by a rogue current, and luckily one of us was close by and only in up to his waist and so was able to drag me out. Needless to say I was shaken up by that for a good couple of hours afterwards. Even scarier was when Antonia, a new teacher who'd arrived with her boyfriend, was unceremoniously dumped 2 metres into the water by a tree branch that decided it had finally had enough of being climbed over all these years. You could say that the deep water saved both of us, as it wasn't quite enough to suck me under and just deep enough to prevent her hitting anything hard on landing. When I think back I'm glad that the only casualty was my hat bought by my students, cruelly knocked off my head by a stray branch into the raging torrent.
After those lucky misses we partied that night like it was really our lucky weekend, with an outdoor live band, dancing, drinking around a fire, and then a pool party at my friend's girlfriend's dad's country house. I honestly have only ever seen such a nice house with such perfectly clean white furniture on adult films. It was slightly surreal.
On the Sunday we jumped into another river, gave Rene his birthday Bailey's, jumped into another river and headed home. It was then only left for me to pack up ready for a midnight bus on Monday night with a final michelada (spicy beer that I also had on my first night in SA) with my good friends here. As a final emotional farewell James (Colombian friend) gave me a necklace his mother had given him to watch over him, and which now should watch over me. Truly the sweetest gesture - it had better not fall in any fast-flowing rivers!
I'm now in Guayaquil providing a little jetlag recovery bootcamp for my girlfriend before we fly to Galapagos tomorrow, and that is of course crazy and slightly surreal, but even while there I'll miss little old Loja and the very good friends there that I made in such a very short space of time.
