I find myself at a loss for words big enough to describe what I am feeling as our departure from the life we have lived for the past nine months approaches. Despite my persistent attempts to be forward-minded (with some success), the nostalgia is stronger than me and I cannot help but live in "lasts". One last stroll along the port, the last night in our teeny yet cozy apartment, last day at the beach, closing my school's door for the last time, a last glimpse out our apartment window at the strange elderly lady leaning over her balcony threatening to spit on people. One last bottle of excellent French wine costing under two euros. Walking through the marché by my school and being recognized and "bonjour"-ed for the last time. Hearing the twang and bravado of the Marseille accent as I walk to school and thinking "I live on the Meditteranean Sea" for the last time.

Yet just as the "lasts" flood over me these past few days, oddly enough I find myself often remembering the "firsts". As it often is in life, our experience here is coming full circle. Piece by piece the furniture we accumulated through our own effort and sweat (and the occasional dumpster walk-by) is disappearing from our home. As the day of departure approaches we find ourselves back where we started---with a rug and a couple bottles of wine. On Sunday we leave here with what we came with---a whole lot of luggage, a long list of maybes and a world of possibilities waiting for us. The train that carries us out of Marseille will be the same one that brought us here nine months ago. I guess that’s the way things should go. There is something oddly comfortable about finding yourselves back where you started. It all seems familiar except one thing---you’re different.

Fighting off nostalgia and the bittersweet knowledge that in many ways the closing of our apartment door will be the symbolic end of an era, I am comforted by the fact that we have lived this experience to the fullest. We have not wasted time. We came here to live an adventure and we did just that. In just nine months we have explored nine countries and over twenty cities throughout all of Europe. Having arrived with nothing and knowing virtually no one, we carved our way through this city and created a niche for ourselves which has proven to be richer than we could have imagined. The sadness we feel as we prepare to leave this life here is a good sign. It is a reminder of good times. It is evidence that we have enjoyed our stay here. As we look back at what we have lived, what we have accomplished, how we have changed, it is with pride that I can say it is without regret.

I am determined to leave Marseille with a smile on my face. On a philisophical level I am aware that this experience is but one example of what is to be just the beginning of a lifetime of further adventures. Yet as is often the case, my heart refuses to listen to reason and aches nonetheless. This has been our world for the last nine months and in but two short days it will be a part of the past. A beautiful memory retired to the stack of family albums. I accept that fate in the name of future endeavors.

And so it is with these parting words that I leave you with Robert Frost who I think put it best. Jeremy and I have chosen a life on the road less traveled. I would like to think as I live these moments of "lasts" that our lives might lead us back to Marseille some day. "Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubt if I should ever come back."

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.