WASHINGTON: The moving trucks have been plying in and out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a couple of weeks now, carting everything from art works to golf clubs. Tearful goodbyes are being exchanged inside the Obama White House even as fervid excitement courses through the Trump transition team and its principals waiting to move in.Shortly before noon on Friday, the Obamas will host the Trumps for tea at the White House before the two men ride out for the inauguration in the Presidential limousine. When they return, the Obamas will leave for Andrews Air Force Base on a chopper with a last goodbye at the place that was their home and office for eight years. Over and out.It is a decades-old ritual that has seen many presidents and first ladies come and go, but this feels very different. Trump himself has said repeatedly that this WILL be different.For one, his wife Melania won't move immediately to the White House, staying on in New York to allow to their son Barron to complete his school year. The Obamas are flying out for a short vacation before they return to Washington DC to take up residence in a new home they have rented in Kalorama, only a couple of miles from the White House.Trump himself is not expected to spend a whole lot of time in the White House, preferring his gilded apartment in Trump Tower in New York.It will be a very different arrangement, one that Secretary of State John Kerry has cheekily suggested will last only a year or two.But for many of the 472 White House political appointees who spent a substantial part of their lives over the past eight years at 1600, some pulling in 16 and 18-hour work days, Thursday night will be the final goodbye for now after they hand over their blackberries and the coveted badges that gave them security access to the most famous executive mansion in the world.They include scores of first- and second-generation immigrants, counting a dozen Indian-Americans -- from Gaurab Bansal, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Cabinet Secretary, to Ruchi Jain, Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel, to Rohan Patel, Special Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs, to Presidential Staff Assistant Vidur Sharma. They were all part of what was arguably the most diverse and plural White House ever, worthy of being called a Rainbow mansion.Many of them have known no other life, having joined the Obama dispensation as fresh-faced pols and policy wonks straight out of an epic campaign in 2007-2008. ''I'm going to miss it,''White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who was a communications director in the Obama campaign in Iowa in 2007 before he joined the president in 2009, said in his final (and 354th) briefing amid quiet sniffles. ''It will take some getting used to seeing somebody else standing up here doing it.''That somebody will be Sean Spicer, the newly-appointed White House spokesman, although it is not clear if he will use the same lectern. The Trump transition team has indicated they would like to move the media gaggle to a larger space outside the White House, and amid a furor in the media, Trump on Wednesday indicated he would not press the matter but warned that his administration will be more picky on who gets access.''We have so many people that want to go in so we'll have to just have to pick the people to go into the room -- I'm sure other people will be thrilled about that,'' Trump told Fox News, describing how the press ''went crazy'' at the prospect of being moved out the White House. ''They’ll be begging for a much larger room very soon. You watch,'' he added.On its part, the press -- or at least the liberal media -- has thrown down the gauntlet. An open letter to the President-elect in the Columbia Journal Review cautioned Trump that his bullying of the press would only strengthen their resolve to hold him accountable. ''Access is preferable, but not critical. We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates,'' the letter said, outlining an adversarial position.Trump supporters, many of whom feel the liberal media has ganged up against their idol and was too cozy with the Obama dispensation, can’t wait to see the press and the Obama principals ousted from the White House.''Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,'' read one message posted on social media.