It's my last week in Sunderland...

So, I'm leaving Sunderland for good in a mere three days. Rising to the top of my mixture of emotions is the panic of not having packed — or even having enough suitcases, in all likelihood — at all, not even sorting my stuff.
Of course, this has been a week of more "lasts" than I can remember having since my high school graduation. I was in denial about graduation for three months before it until two days before it, when I finally read through my speech and got the panics.
I had my last day with my british biochem lab partner Freya, who's been featured on this blog before.
I turned in my last assignments.
I've been busily not buying more food, since I'll just be leaving in a few days (I use jessi's milk instead).
I returned all my library books. I really will not miss that place. I spent too much of my time cooped up trying to write lab reports on the top floor.
I keep realising that each day is my last "day of the week" in Sunderland, probably ever. I probably won't see Conor, Josie, James, Adam, Flo, Jessi, or Freya ever again after I go home.
Of course, I won't have to deal with that impossible little frenchman ever again (except for when I have to take that exam in friggin' June, not that I'm bitter). I won't have to feel like I'm wasting my time by going to lectures (I hope. I've never felt like I didn't need to go to a Whitworth lecture).
It's just as well that I'm done with my papers, though, since I had my last packet of alpine cider this morning.
A couple of funny stories about words with different meanings:
1. Cider. Cider in the UK means the alcoholic kind. It's like beer with apples, I believe. Comes in cans. Cider in the states, unless preceded by "hard", means "cloudy apple juice, I guess" or "hot, spiced apple beverage that is mostly sugar". I got some funny looks when I said that I write my best papers while drinking cider.
2. Fanny. In the states, it's sort of like saying "bum" in reference to someone's hindquarters: a fairly polite word for a culturally amusing body part. We even have fanny packs, which sit either on the bum or on the stomach.
In the UK, fanny means, ah, "ladybits", as Adam so delicately put it when we pried the definition out of him.
I probably wouldn't think this was such a funny word if I hadn't grown up with it as a quaint, funny way of saying butt.
Snrk. Yes, I am five years old.
3. The Garage. Here pronounced GARE-uhj, which still seems foreign. Although, I use and hear this one enough that it's making guh-RAHJ sound weird and foreign. In the states, a gah-RAHJ is the thing that holds your cars when you're not driving them. I think it's normally that way for GARE-uhjes here in the UK, as well.
However, there's a petrol station that I think of as "behind Clanny", although it's really more to the side. Anyway, it's the place to go for late-night food hunts that don't include hot pizza or any other kind of takeaway. Do we call it "the petrol station"? No, we do not. Someone in Clanny House, past or present, started calling it "the GARE-uhj", and the name stuck. If you say "I'm going to the GARE-uhj, does anyone need anything?" then everyone in the room will either reply that they'll come with you or thrust fivers at you with orders. I think that if I tried to call it "the petrol station", no one would know what I was talking about.
The thing that makes this really funny for me is that I still don't think of a GARE-uhj as a place to put a car, but rather as the petrol station behind clanny. Guh-RAHJes are where you keep cars.
I'd like to think that I'll be too busy packing and eating the rest of my food to post again before London or Leicester, but who am I kidding? I'll put it off until late Sunday night, and we all know it.