Songs, skirts and scones

Last week was ‘last time’ week. Last school day, last french lesson from Madame Bernard, and probably the last time of having lunch in Armagh with our friends Petya and Stanko and their girls Yoana, Zornica and Anna. About four years ago I met Petya at one of the local toddler groups. She moved to Armagh around the same time as we did, in the same group of people as her husband Stanko (whom she didn’t know at the time, ah, romance). Their eldest two girls have been the best of friends with our girls ever since they started playing together at the toddler group. Great was the excitement when they found out they were going to go to the same school and class! We have grown very fond of the whole family, and we were happy, as well as sad to hear that Stanko gained a place at a hospital in Edinburgh for his doctor training. Sometime during the summer they will be leaving for at least six years…

As we got a sneaking suspicion they didn’t want to have big farewells, we invited them home for a lunch last Sunday  before the girls would leave for their summer with their grandparents in Bulgaria. We had a lovely time, a bit quiet every now and then. I was able to contain my emotions really well until Petya called the girls to leave. Yoana came downstairs in tears saying that she would never see Hendrikje and Kathrijn again… I fled into the kitchen: one child upset was bad enough and I didn’t want to set anyone else off. Unfortunately I still had to hand over a gift I had made them: a family heart, or rather, a friends’ heart that I made (again from Amanda Soule) with a little pocket containing an A4 sheet with drawings and messages from everyone to wish them well. Well, eventually, all adults and Yoana were crying and the others were looking sheepishly….

I so hope their new life in Edinburgh and the new little life they are expecting in August will make them happy and content. Of course we will now have a prefect excuse to finally travel to Edinburgh together, but it would have been nicer not to have one.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Sewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.