Sad Goodbyes

In a few hours I'm leaving Ubud to go to the beach. We had our final performance on Friday night and music/dance party afterward. It was a good time, though I think we played the male dance piece the worst it has ever sounded, so that was a bit of a trainwreck. But the dancers didn't seem to have a problem so it was ok. We started the night off with Ujung Mas, the new one we've been learning since Wednesday which was a mistake. Its pretty difficult and fast, so we actually played it again at the end to redeem ourselves. There was a fabulous dinner of course, and some people from the community came as well. We ended the night pretty late hanging out with the boys again, they are so funny. The next morning we had our closing discussion and ceremony, which made a lot of us cry because of the nice things that were said. I wish we'd ended with the dance party instead of that, but what can you do. Last night a few of us managed to finally talk some of the Cudamani guys into letting us treat them for dinner. They don't do that here so it makes them uncomfortable, but we did our best of convincing them that that type of thing was normal for us and that we wanted to. This morning said more goodbyes to people, some are going back home today and some are moving to other place. I hate saying goodbye to people. Its been a long time since I've spent this much time with a group of people, its been pretty intense. I'm looking forward to some days of relaxation at the beach and getting in a dive trip too. Then its back home on Friday- seems weird.