The End is Nigh

Random Palau Statistics:

Babies Saved: 0+
Consecutive Nights Without AC: 4 (a personal best)
iPods Broken: 1
Cab-drivers Who Have Suggested I Have a One-Night Stand With a Filipina Prostitute: 2

The end of my tenure here in the Republic of Palau is drawing inexorably nearer. This was, of course, technically true from the day of my first arrival, but the finish line is very clearly in sight now. I habitually measure time by a series of consecutive rounding’s, with weeks being the unit of measure. For instance, during a quarter, week 2 is halfway to week 4, which is halfway to week 8, which is typically right before finals week – therefore, by week 2, I can, in good mathematical conscience, round to week 4. Week 4 rounds to week 8 and I’m practically done. This does not, of course, change the actual length of time which passes – but it helps make it seem manageable to my fevered imagination. The reasoning “well, if I get through the same amount of time which I have already survived, then I’ll only have to get through THAT amount of time once more” makes sense only in my own mind, and I realize that, but it works.

Another favorite trick of mine is fractions/percentages. By the end of week 1, I’m already thinking “hey, I’m 10% there!” Then two days into week 2, I round up to 2 and a half weeks and tell myself I’m ¼ of the way there… this keeps the time which passes safely in perspective, and makes it go faster – without actually forcing you to confront the fact that, eventually, you really WILL reach the end and will feel sorry to leave.

As the numerator of this fraction gets larger, however (for instance, I am about 8.3 weeks into my stay, which rounds to 8.5, which rounds to 9… 9/10 of the way through), I no longer find myself devising mental tricks to avoid intimidation by the amount of time I will be away; I try to rationalize how much time I have left so that I don’t feel like I’m leaving so soon.

After all, I still have 11 more days – that’s 264 hours! Plenty of time to do everything I want! I still have at LEAST one more of each day of the week! I’m in great shape!

No mathematical manipulation erases the fact, however, that I am leaving very soon. I am constantly reminded of it:

People here ask me (with heated anticipation, I must imagine) when my flight is (often glancing immediately afterwards at their calendar, then sighing heavily and gritting their teeth).

Jodie has left – this marked the 2.5 week mark (3/4 of the way, which rounds easily to 100% through my IHOP experience). I haven’t yet been forced to confront the stifling silence that her absence would have brought, as our friends Steve and Marla were with me from Sunday (she left Friday night) through this Friday, so I’ve skipped a week of potential boredom in that manner. The same storm which kept me off of Peleliu last week screwed up the state ferry to Angaur, so they wound up stranded here far longer than they intended (apparently a common occurrence for them, and for the state ferries in general), but I’m not complaining. Still, I can’t help but see her departure as a harbinger of my own, in the same manner that her arrival started me glancing at the calendar through the end of microbiology, thinking of what it must be like in Palau. On the one hand, the departure of my wife allows me to lead the swinging bachelor’s life I’ve always dreamed of; on the other hand, it actually takes effort to find someone to hang out with. It’s a difficult tradeoff. Not so difficult for others – I’m fairly certain James has asked God more than once why she left and I stayed.

I have stopped receiving messages signed “I miss you,” or “you’re going to be gone for SO LONG,” or “10 weeks is too long!” Instead, I get “see you soon!” and “I can hardly wait!” and “I hate you and everything you stand for” (special thanks to Julia for that one).

Last, and most poignantly, I have been forced to actually start buying gifts. This is always a difficult process, as I can’t help but compare the monetary value of the gifts I select and attempt to compare them directly to how much I actually like someone. Such a money-to-emotion conversion is tricky, particularly when you find great gifts for two people who deserve equal consideration, but there is a substantial price difference – I end up feeling obligated to buy what I call “filler gifts” to fill in the price gap and even things out. The one exception to this rule is gifts which are particularly unique to the person receiving them, and show outstanding consideration on my part – if a cheaper gift has more meaning than an expensive gift to the recipient, it evens out. It’s all very scientific.

Anyhow, this was a process which I was able to safely ignore for about 7 weeks – I kept an eye out as I went through Koror for gifts, but I never worried about buying anything or making final decisions because, hey, I had all the time in the world! Now, finally, that’s not true – and with each purchase, a little bit of the carefully-woven illusion that I have “plenty of time” in Palau dissolves right along with my bank account.

Then there’s the uncomfortable process of deciding who to buy gifts for – typically, close female friends are more likely to receive a gift from a man than a close male friend. The value of these gifts is always directly proportional to the chances that they might one day get into that particular girl’s pants (needless to say, this is why I spend way too much on gifts), so obviously I have to be extremely careful in my selections, so as not to give the wrong impression to certain parties… or the ‘right’ impression to others.

Then there are some friends with whom you feel close, but are just not in the habit of giving gifts to – maybe you haven’t spoken for some time, or maybe there’s no chance in hell you’ll ever sleep with them. This can be for a variety of reasons, the most common of which being that the friend is male (see above point) or the dreaded ‘friend zone.’ Without getting into the specifics of this phenomenon, it is fortunate that God has provided men with an easy solution. There is a cheap, extremely easy-to-find, and useful gift which any purely-platonic friend (particularly men) will appreciate: shotglass. $3 and BAM! Problem solved. Of course, some of these friends are beating you in fantasy baseball, and so they don’t get squat. You know who you are.

But I digress.

I, myself, am ambivalent on my return. There’s no doubting that I want to go home. I miss home for a variety of nouns, which can generally be classified into four groups: 

People

Places

Things

Ideas

Grammatical lessons notwithstanding, I miss my friends. I miss my home (and am looking forward to seeing the new one that my room-mates, with the help of my father as my liaison have picked out), I miss reliable, fast internet (I know, I know, it’s so very childish of me, but damnit I need it), and I miss… uh… antidisestablishmentarianism. You just can’t get that shit down here.

Shouldn’t the prefixes ‘anti’ and ‘dis’ cancel each other out, just leaving establishmentarianism anyhow?

On the other hand, I don’t want to go home because I dislike Palau. I love Palau. Aside from the internet, the heat, the rain (I’m from Seattle, and I can’t believe I just wrote that), the outrageous electricity bills, and the lack of people giving me $50 (a shortage shared by Seattle), the place is great. People are laid-back, friendly, everything I’ve written about previously. The diving is amazing. Even the heat isn’t that bad once you’ve gotten used to it – I’ve finally stopped using the air conditioning, just in time for my departure so that I don’t save any money from my acclimation (and will undoubtedly be freezing in Seattle). I’m going to miss Palau. I know that the second it’s too late to do anything about it, I’m going to remember something I wanted to buy, or see, or do, or what have you and it’ll haunt me the entire 25 ½ hour trip home.

And it’s not like I’m in SoCal – I can’t just come back next summer. It’ll be at least 3 years, until graduation, before I ever have an opportunity to return, and I’m willing to bet it won’t happen until I’m done with residency. So, 7 years. By then, everyone I know will be gone from Palau, so there’s a definite feeling like I’ll probably never see the majority of the people I’ve met and made friends with down here once I leave. Sure, sure, there’s the Facebooks and the Myspaces and the “electronic mails” but, with one (notable) exception, I may well never actually see these people in person again. That’s not a new feeling – it happened at high school and college graduation, when I moved away from University Place, etc, but at least I had met those people in Washington, and they had family there that they might come back to visit, thus leaving the possibility for some sort of chance reunion. Not so in Palau – with people going to the Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, England, the Philippines, Canada, Florida, and God only knows where else, who knows?

At least I can honestly say I enjoyed myself down here – as evidenced by the fact that I’ve outlived my stipend and am $1000 in the red in that regard. I’ve gotten almost all the diving in I could’ve wanted, and outside of seeing the various sights of Babeldaob, diving Ulong Channel, and playing with the dolphins (which I’m supposed to be lined up to do for free, but I’m doubting it will happen and I’m not paying $150 for it), I’ve basically done everything I wanted. Now it’s just trying to enjoy the rest of my time here.

I just think it’s odd how you can feel sad about something which excites you.