The realities of leaving

It's 6:15 PM, and I'm taking a break. I've been sick all week. It started with just a runny-nose sinus party, but now they've all hunkered down in my lungs, and I have this sultry smoky bassoon voice. When I have a voice, that is.
I've only cried a few times today. My best friend, Kumiko, dropped off a letter for me. We usually speak Chinese together, but today as she was leaving, she told me, "I hope I see you again." And then we both cried. Again. It's been a long week. I dropped off a present for her son on Monday, a quilt I'd made and decided to give him for his birthday. She thanked me but said, "This is really a present for me, so I can remember you." I didn't mean to cry then, since I knew I had all week to say goodbye, but there I was. She cried, too, and amidst our blubbering scene, she told me that we'd be sure to see each other again. I haven't been as sad to leave my American friends, because even though we'll all be at the far reaches of the globe, I feel like we'll run into each other again, either in Washington DC or here in China. Once you speak Chinese, you see the same people over and over again. But since Kumiko is Japanese, I felt like I'd probably never see her again. But you know what? Her husband is a diplomat, too. He'll get sent somewhere else for his next tour, too. And maybe it will be Brazil. Maybe it will be America! Or maybe it will be some exotic vacation destination and we'll just HAVE to make a trip over to see them. Whatever happens, we'll keep in touch, and even though we're just two tiny families in a huge world of people, the world's really not as big as it seems.
Which reminds me, I have about 24 hours of travelling to do tomorrow in this "not so big" world of ours. I've been putting off doing my packing all week, since I've been sick. Ostensibly, I've been saying to myself that I'd probably feel better by Thursday and get everything done once I'm well. But the reality of it is that I feel worse today than I have all week, I sound like a frog, and I have to sort through everything I own to send it to the right corner of the globe.
And I'm almost done, I guess.