goodbye to me

today is my last day of work & my staff threw an amazing party for me.

This is Annette (left), who will be interim Department Head while I am away (there was a grass skirt which is difficult to get the full effect of here), and Ewa (right), whose daughter -- Kamila -- has promised to send me Girl Scout Cookies at sea!



This is the most amazing cake ever -- the MV Explorer!



Other staff & party photos:







And this is the first & very last photo of me that will be on this blog!



Annette also provided a great selection of travel quotes:

There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.
-- Charles Dudley Warner

They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.
--Horace

If you look like your passport picture you're too ill to travel.
--Will Kommen

Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.
--Regina Nadelson

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
--Mark Twain

Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
--Miriam Beard

Being in a ship is like being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
-- Samuel Johnson

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.
-- Susan Heller

Thanx to my staff for being so incredibly supportive & for throwing me the greatest party ever.