same same but different

I don't know what to say.  I don't know how I can possibly be expected to wrap up four months of laughing and learning and loving Linley.  And WHOA that was some awesome alliteration right there.  These past few days have just been great--I mean, apart from the fact that I had to pretend to study for finals.  (Just kidding, I really did study...)  Yesterday we had a great night with everyone in the program we had always wanted to be friends with, but never made the trek to see.  I have to say, we should have done that so much more often.  But anyways, then tonight, we spent a significant amount of time packing (Martha and I always pack/clean while watching one of the Harry Potters--we watched six out of seven, so...) We also had high tea at a hotel, in which one of the boys in our program debuted his ASE promotional video that he worked on all semester (it was very amusing and I will post the youtube link as soon as it is available) and we saw a slideshow that Martha and I seemed to be starring in.  As in, there were pictures of Martha in a jail cell, me on a zebra, and then Martha and Elizabeth and I looking shady in some hats... rough.  But also, very amusing.  Then, we did some more packing before heading out to Sam Wellers, which, if you recall, was the first restaurant we stumbled into in Bath.  There, we wrote the Linley letter to the future girls (it nearly made me cry) and had a cider and black, for old times' sake.  And by old times, I mean yesterday.

Lovely Linley, enjoying a last drink at Sam Weller's

Then, for dinner, we headed to a restaurant called Same Same but Different.  I kid you not.  I could not imagine a more symbolic place to go for dinner on our last night together.  Because, in many ways, I am the same same, but in others, I am completely different.  Bath has helped me to become so much more independent and organized.  It has taught me how to deal with many different types of people, how to be more open minded towards events and everybody around me, and, of course, all about Jane Austen, children's literature, and Shakespeare.  It has, without a doubt, changed me.

BUT.

I still am having a love affair with Harry Potter, and I just downloaded the series finale of Smallville for my ipod.  Same same.

So now I am starting the second half of my adventure, the half that involved Logan, and an endless search for a bed and new sights and warm weather (something I'm sure we won't be seeing for the next two weeks...).  I can't wait for her to get here so we can get started, but at the same time, I'm terrified.  But it's that good kind of scared that keeps me on my toes, not the kind that makes me want to run home forever.  Though, I wouldn't mind running home for just one day...

There are sometimes words or phrases I see that I immediately know will make it in my blog.  Same Same but Different was one of these things--here is another.  I will just have to pretend I have just spent the night in the wonderful place called River Forest (though Bath has also become my home). 

"The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment.  But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour.  He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked about to bring in him.  He saw clearly how plain and simple--how narrow even--it all was; but clearly too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence.  He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun an air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage.  But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

-The Wind in the Willows

However, I don't think that my home is so much plain and narrow.  Simple, maybe, but also beautiful and lovely and warm.  But never plain. 

Last Love from Linley,
LPRO