Wake up with a bit of a headache and some pain in the ankle, but nothing major: I'm fine walking to the train station and an Ibuprofen kills the headache. Right when I get to work, I tell my boss that my last day will be this Friday, which is a week earlier than the last date we'd agreed on and 2 weeks before my original date of departure. He wasn't happy, but didn't argue: just told me to put the earlier date on a new resignation letter. I feel bad leaving him high and dry for a week, but the pile of work from having nobody in my position for a few days shouldn't be exactly mountainous. I make some last-minute present purchases after work. There's something inherently cool about buying beer for your dad. I try to get him a pintglass too, but find nowhere selling them. My mom gets hand-painted wine glasses, but because she's been calling me an alcoholic regularly they won't come with wine: I'll tell her I drank it all:)
Meet up with friends at the one of the very few cheap bars in London for good-bye drinks, as several of them leave soon and Mike leaves tomorrow. Even among fellow temporary expatriates, I think I've had one of the more adventurous summers; if nothing else, I'm the only one I know of who had no trouble running with the bulls but got screwed up biking with the cars. It's a good evening, and I'll miss some of these guys even though I've known them little more than 2 months. One friend tries to convince Mike and I that we should come back to the U.K. next summer, living in Edinburgh with him. I tell him I'll seriously think about it, and i just may end up here again next year. It's time to go home and take a break, but I definitely need to come back sooner or later.