46 weeks.

On December 12, 2012, I returned to the US after a solid 6 months away, and after 16 months of considering myself an American non-resident.  My last week in Scotland was simultaneously one of the happiest and one of the most harrowing weeks of my life.

First, there was the stress of finding someone to move into my room.  I finally did post my want-ad, and got a text response within an hour or so.  I arranged for Rhiannon, the girl who was interested, to come by the next evening for a viewing.  This should have been good news all around, but when I told my flatmate Ieuan about this, it transpired that no one but me was going to be in the flat at the time arranged, which was no good, because the others wanted to meet her before settling anything.  I felt like I had bent over backward to make this happen, with no help from anybody else, so I was quite miffed at Ieuan's reaction.  And we had an ugly snarling match which led to me storming out of the flat for several hours.  As it happened, Sam was home when Rhiannon came, and she decided pretty much on the spot to take the flat.  Sam and I arranged for her to come back the next day to meet Ieuan and Danielle, and firmly commit if all went well.

But the next day, December 7, I was leaving for a weekend in Stromeferry.  That bus ride from Edinburgh to Inverness was one of the most anxious of my entire life, as I spent most of it texting back and forth with Rhiannon and Sam, ironing out last-minute meeting details, and sending up several heartfelt prayers.  "Please let them like her.  Please let her like them!"  Because if this fell through, I was going to have precious little time to find anyone else.  Whilst I was on the train from Inverness to Stromeferry, the time appointed for the meet-up came and went.  When I didn't receive any texts saying "We hate her, find someone else!" or "I hate them, the deal's off!" I was able to relax a bit.

I had a very enjoyable weekend with Ewan and Kath in Stromeferry.  We played pool, drank beer, listened to loud music (AC/DC and The Who, mostly), and watched movies.  A couple of the neighbors came over on the first night, and Gordon came over on the second night.  I did a book cull before I left Edinburgh and brought about a dozen books with me, and left them in one of the nightstands, which has now been christened "Lauren's Library."  I have so many memories associated with that house, and walking into it almost feels like coming home.  When it was time for me to get the train back to Inverness on the 9th, it finally hit me like a ton of bricks that I was about to leave for good.  That was when the tears started, a bit.

When I got back to Edinburgh, it was to the news that Rhiannon had committed to moving in.  Thank the Lord, I landed on my feet!

I began packing on the 10th.  On the evening of the 10th, Charley and her boyfriend Thomas came over.  I cooked them jambalaya and gifted Charley with my two last boxes of mix.  We sat around the kitchen table for several hours, just nattering.  We discovered that Glenlivet whisky goes surprisingly well with raspberry Crystal Lite.  I was in actually in very good spirits for most of this day, and was really happy that I was able to hold it together when Charley and Thomas left.  Charley is one of the people I've been missing the most.

On the 11th, I took a couple of bags of clothes to Oxfam and donated them, and then had a final meal at one of my favorite places to eat, before going back to my flat and resuming packing.  I was about 85% packed by 7:30 that evening, when I went to the pub to meet Danny.  I won't go into particulars about that night, except to say that I stayed out with him and his friends until about 3:00 the following morning, before staggering back to my flat and finally going completely and totally to pieces.  I don't think I've cried that hard since the last day of Governor's School, a summer program I attended in 2004.  And it was for essentially the same reason - I was on the threshold of leaving people and a place that I loved, and where I felt loved, like none other.  But while I spent six weeks at Governor's School, I had spent a good deal longer in Scotland.

I spent fully 46 weeks of this year outside the US.  Coming back from that isn't simple, and it certainly isn't easy.  Emotionally or logistically.  I finally pulled myself together enough to finish packing, and collapsed into bed around 5am for a 90-minute nap.  Then I heaved my 6 pieces of luggage down 3 flights of stairs, caught a cab, and was away.  I didn't say goodbye to my flatmates.  I didn't even strip my linens off the bed, for which I hoped Rhiannon would forgive me.

The cab ride to the airport was tense, both because of where I was going and why, and because the hangover was beginning to set in.  And they only got more tense.  I had 4 bags to check, one of them overweight.  For any of you who have not traveled by airplane recently, this ain't cheap.  Luckily, the agent checking me in was an absolute star.  She made a call, and was able to get one of my extra bags onboard for free, and she also didn't charge me extra for the overweight bag.  So I only ended up paying half of what I really should have to check those bags.  Landed on my feet again!

By the time I got through security, it was just about time for my flight to board.  I was also desperately thirsty by this time, from the effects of the previous night's drinking, and because I was wearing three coats.  Sweating Jagermeister from every pore.  Lovely.  I detoured just long enough to buy a bottle of water, and then I got on the plane.

I cried on takeoff, as I knew I would, and as I had warned the gentleman beside me.  But not as much as I thought I would.  As we climbed toward our cruising altitude, I could see that it was a beautiful, sunny day in western Scotland.  I fancied that the Arrochar Alps, covered in snow, were waving at me as we passed them by, saying "Haste ye back."  And I felt some measure of comfort.

The flight to Newark was uneventful, as was the flight to RDU.  Settling back into American life has been more difficult, not least because of recent events in Connecticut and the ugly debates that have followed.  I've been back for 19 days and I still feel out of place.  I resolved to take the Christmas holidays to simply enjoy being with family and get ready to reintegrate my life, and now I'm hoping that I'll be able to find some kind of niche for myself in the new year.  I miss Scotland and everyone I left behind terribly, but I have to believe that this move back has happened for a reason that I just can't see yet.  Here's to finding that reason in 2013.

Cheers, y'all.

Moar flat woes.

Clearly I am just not meant to get my deposit back on this flat. 

I tried contacting somebody on Gumtree earlier, and my message just sat there and sat there and would not send.  I was getting tired of sifting through the want-ads anyway, so I decided that rather than reaching out to people, I'd post an ad and let them come to me instead.  So I created a lovely ad...which is now refusing to post.  So I'm giving up and going to bed at this point.

Cheers, y'all.

Nottingham, graduation, and such.

The weekend of November 23-25, I went down to Stapleford, Nottinghamshire to visit the Woods family, who are my second and third cousins.  My horridly infected sinuses made the train journey via York and Derby extremely unpleasant, but I had cough syrup poured down my throat promptly on arrival, and felt very much like myself again by the end of the weekend.  We went on a muddy tromp through an estate in Leicestershire (narrowly avoiding a pheasant-shooting expedition) and to a very crowded Christmas Market being held at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire.  I met Craig and Kathryn's partners (very handsome, both of them) and generally had a very nice time.  It was nice to be taken care of by family, for the first time in a very long time.

On November 29, I graduated.

Left to right: Andrea, George, me, Anna, Kelli, Kelley, Tony, and Tae.  Paulina, Brad, and Susan had all wandered off, and Jeffrey was absent because he had to return to Singapore.

Graduation was very nice, although the Vice-Chancellor's speech at the end dragged on longer than necessary.  Especially since it was a very quick business overall.  After a short introductory speech, the walking started.  This ceremony was for Moray House, and also the School of Divinity, and each course walked across the stage and had their names called out in turn.  You'll notice we're not wearing caps.  Not only are caps not generally worn at graduations in Britain, they'd also impede a very important and unique part of graduations at the University of Edinburgh: as graduates walk across the stage, they're touched on the head with the John Knox Hat.  I learned at the ceremony that this touching on the head is actually an act of manumission - freeing us from the "slavery" of academia.  Also, the lining of the hat has been taken up in the space shuttle.  Huzzah!

Preparations for my return to the States have become more earnest in the last few days.  My classmates and I all went out for drinks on the night of graduation, and I bade farewell to a few there.  Kelley, Sue, and I went to a party at George's on December 1, and my farewells to them might have been final too.  I officially began packing tonight.  I'm still mostly trying to take things a day at a time, but these next eight days are going to go by FAST, and good lord, I'm not ready.

Cheers, y'all.

A second Thanksgiving away from home.

My visit to Leeds last weekend was lovely.  Leeds has a very American feel to it.  It's very spread out, the way many cities in the US are.  Kat tells me that this is because Leeds was once several separate villages, which gradually got larger and eventually morphed into one city.  It's got a very industrial feel to it as well, but also has a lot of green areas.  It actually reminded me a lot of my own hometown of Durham, NC in this way - the juxtaposition of brick-laid urbanity with nature.

I have not been able to shake this cough I caught on Iona, and Chaz had something similar, so we spent the evenings in Kat's living room drinking tea and watching Disney movies.  We also visited the Christmas market, the university, took a long-ish walk along the Liverpool & Leeds Canal, and visited the armory, wherein I fired a crossbow and finally hit the target on my eighth and final try.  The highlight of the weekend was undoubtedly Wendy House, which I gather is a dance night that happens at the University of Leeds once a month.  Instead of the usual techno and house drivel that gets played in the average nightclub around here, the music consisted of alternative rock, heavy metal, and 80s music, and everyone dressed up.  There were many corsets, zippers, belts, buckles, jackets, phantom masks, and flowing tresses.  I wore a very steampunk jacket and top hat combo, borrowed from Chaz.  We left at 2am, when I could no longer stand.  The second highlight of the weekend was the American-style candy store they took me to, which contained sugary goodness the likes of which I have not seen since my last visit to the US.  I bought peanut butter M&Ms, lemonheads, pop rocks, and whoppers.  It was glorious.

This week has been a pretty quiet one.  I've been trying to take it easy and not aggravate my cough.  However, now that I have less than 3 weeks to go, I've made the decision that I'm not going to skulk around my flat anymore.  From here on out, I'm doing something fun and interesting every day, dad-gummit!  Tomorrow I'm off to Nottinghamshire to visit distant cousins.

All in all, I'd say this second Thanksgiving away from home was much less hellacious than my first one.  I am thankful for rodent-free living quarters, thank you God, amen.

Cheers, y'all.

Cleaning house.

I've begun going through my things, earmarking what I'm going to donate or sell when my departure date gets a bit closer.  All my linens except two small blankets are going to be left, as are all of my office supplies.  I'll probably let my flatmates have the pick of those.  I've set aside six or seven books which I know I'm not going to read again, which I'm going to see if I can sell cheap at a secondhand bookstore.  The next step is going through the contents of my desk, and throwing most of it away.

This is a project I really meant to begin last week, but I've been in intense denial about my impending move back to the States.  Now I'm viewing it with a bit more equanimity - enough to start this particularly undertaking, anyway.

Tomorrow I'm off to Leeds!

Cheers, y'all.

Music and rugby.

This was a grand weekend all around.  The RSNO concert on Friday night was great, even though I was violently suppressing a coughing fit for most of one of the quiet bits of Carmina Burana.  The Tallis Fantasia was AMAZING.  So exquisitely beautiful.  I will never get tired of that piece.

On Saturday night I went to a small get-together at my classmate Audrey's house in West Lothian, and yesterday I went to a pub in Stockbridge with Charley and some of her friends to watch the Scotland vs. New Zealand rugby game.  New Zealand won, quelle surprise.  Afterward, we stayed at the pub for a while and eventually Charley, her boyfriend Thomas, and I wound up at Thomas's flat in Newhaven.  We ate pizza and watched Disney's Fantasia.

I solemnly swear that I will start getting things organized to pack this week.

Cheers, y'all.

Music!...and coughing.

Good news: I'm going to Usher Hall to see a concert by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra tonight.  They're playing Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, which are two of my favorite pieces of music. 

Bad news: I have a cough.  An obnoxious, chesty one.  I just went out and bought two rolls of cough drops, and I'm foreseeing myself sucking on them nonstop from now until the concert's over.  This is shaping up to be an interesting battle of wills, because I refuse to be That Person - the one who coughs all the way through the concert.

Cheers, y'all.

A moment of celebration.

We got 99 problems, but Mitt ain't one!  Thanks for not being idiots, my fellow Americans.

*Ahem*  This blog shall now cease to be political and go back to our regularly scheduled programming.  :)

Cheers, y'all.

Thoughts on the election.

I bought a plane ticket a few days ago.  I will officially be a United States resident again as of 12 December, 2012.

The kind of country that I'm going to be returning to will be decided tonight.  I sincerely hope it's one in which Obama is still in charge.  Things have not been a bed of roses for the last four years.  But what most Americans don't seem to understand is that this recession going on is a worldwide one.  The stuff that's going on in some European countries right now is mind-boggling.  Spain's entire 18-24 age bracket is leaving the country en masse, because NONE of them can get jobs.  Greece's economy has been in the shitter for years.  Ireland is talking about reverting back to the pound.  And I'm wondering how long Germany can keep bailing everyone out before they run into trouble, too.

It's a ludicrous situation, and it's ludicrous to expect one man to fix it, especially when he's a Democrat president saddled with a majority-Republican Congress which has actively done everything within its power to block all the measures he's tried to enact.  I'm frankly astonished (and also very grateful) that the healthcare reforms got through, and that DADT was repealed.

If Mittens gets elected, I can say goodbye to my healthcare and reproductive rights inside of a year.  I would bet money on that.  And that alone was enough for him to lose my vote.  But aside from that, if he gets elected, all his friends are going to get elected too, because Mittens has proven himself to be a wishy-washy waffler who does his utmost to pander to the people whose votes he wants, and tailors and adjusts his political positions accordingly.  He's a puppet.  And the guys who are pulling the strings are the ones who are really going to be in charge.  And the US will be run by rich, middle-aged, out-of-touch, conservative white men for at least the next four years.  And that prospect makes my stomach clench.

I've done what it's in my power to do: I cast my absentee ballot and voted for Obama.  Now I just have to sit back and see what happens tonight.

Cheers, y'all.

Mull and Iona.

On 30 October, I took the train to Oban, a small town on Scotland's west-central coast and a major gateway to the western isles.  The train ride from Glasgow to Oban is probably my favorite, out of all the train rides I've ever been on.  I think it's even more picturesque than the one from Glasgow to Fort William. 

The next day (Halloween, incidentally) I caught the 8am ferry to Craignure, on the island of Mull.  Mull is one of the larger Scottish islands, and is shaped somewhat like a W on its left side.  It's very mountainous, and is the location of the only Munro not on the Scottish mainland.  After arriving in Craignure after the 45-minute ride from Oban, I boarded a bus to Tobermory.

Tobermory is a town on the northernmost stroke of the sideways W that is Mull, and is known for its colorful waterfront buildings:

I spent a pleasant day there, looking around in the shops, buying some local whisky from the distillery, and going for a walk in the woods.  I also got some fried scallops from the local fish-and-chips cart at lunchtime, and they were AMAZING, with the roe still on.  At about 3:30pm, I got the bus back to Craignure for the 5pm ferry back to Oban.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that my roommate in the twin room I was assigned at my hostel had left, so I effectively had a hotel room for the next three nights, for the price of a hostel!  Can't beat that!

On 1 November, I caught the same ferry back to Craignure, and got on the bus to Fionnphort, at the tip of the southernmost of Mull's westward peninsulas.  This drive was incredibly picturesque.  Mull is very orange and red, or at least it looked that way as the sun rose on this autumn day.  We went by Ben More, and saw a doe by a stream.  If I ever manage to get back to Mull, I'll have to rent a car, because there were some areas I saw on this bus ride that I definitely want to explore further.

In Fionnphort, I caught the ferry to Iona, a 10-minute ride.  The weather got iffy at this point, but basically held off to the north for the time being.  As I disembarked from the ferry, a rainbow appeared over Iona Abbey.

There has been a religious building on this site since AD 563, starting with a monastery founded by St. Columba.  This was Christianity's first main foothold in Scotland, and several ancient Scottish kings are meant to be buried here.  Plus, it's featured in Tori Amos's song "Twinkle" ("Last time I knew, she worked at an abbey, in Iona...").

Before I checked out the abbey, I decided to scamper up Dun I, which at 331 feet is Iona's highest point.  It is apparently a hill fort dating from the Iron Age, and in spite of not being very high, it is freaking steep, with a disturbing mixture of rocks and bogs.  There's only one safe path up, and it's not terribly well-marked, and I had to step very, very gingerly because I hadn't had the foresight to wear waterproofs and didn't fancy wearing muddy jeans all the way back to Oban if I slipped and fell, but I did eventually make it to the top.

I ate a sausage roll (procured at the local Spar), huddled in the wind-shadow of the summit cairn, and watched the weather front off to the north get slowly closer.  Then I very carefully descended the hill.  I had to butt-surf on some wet rocks near the bottom, but ultimately made it down, having only gotten a little muddy.  Then it was off to the abbey.

I had Iona Abbey mostly to myself, which was partly my design in climbing Dun I first.  The abbey wasn't what I was expecting.  The present building is only a little over 100 years old, older buildings having been destroyed by at least two Viking raids, and later by the Reformation.  It's something new, trying to masquerade as something old, and I'm not quite sure it works.  Nevertheless, there's a certain atmosphere to it, especially in the older parts of the grounds.  It's quiet and pastoral, not ornate and ostentatiously impressive like other religious buildings I've seen.  Think a shepherd herding his flock, rather than a Pentecostal preacher overawing his congregation.

The bad weather finally hit while I was exploring the abbey, and my fellow day-trippers and I were obliged to stand shivering on the quay in the wind and sleet, waiting for the ferry.  Luckily it came on time, and after an exciting ride back to Fionnphort, we warmed up a bit in the waiting room before the bus ride back to Craignure in the driving rain.  After arriving back in Oban, I got chips with curry from the chippy and watched South Park.

I was undecided about what to do on my last day.  I had thought I might hang out in the area immediately around Craignure, but I was a but disenchanted with the 8am ferry departures every day.  I seriously considered going to Lismore, which had a slightly shorter and cheaper ferry ride, which left an hour later.  But upon researching it, there didn't seem to be much to do there.  In the end, I ended up just staying in Oban for the day on 2 November.  The slight hint of a sore throat which had been following me around for a week finally blossomed into a full-blown cough (thanks no doubt to the horrendous weather on Iona the previous afternoon), so I had a nice lie-in and took it easy on this day.  The very kind lady at the gift shop on Iona had given me a bunch of paracetamol the previous day, when I'd mentioned to her that my throat was hurting, and it definitely helped.

The next day, I returned to Edinburgh, extremely satisfied to have finally gone on this trip, which I've been trying to go on for the past year!  Victory is mine!

One last parting shot: moonset over Kerrera and Mull, just before dawn on Halloween:

Cheers, y'all.

Culture, climbing, and migraines.

*Visit the National Museum of Scotland* - accomplished 17 October, 2012

The National Museum of Scotland reminded me of the British Museum, in miniature.  Not to say it's a small museum, because it's not.  There are three floors' worth of exhibits about various cultures, artifacts, etc from around the world, and about the earth itself.  I especially liked the rooms dealing with Pacific Island culture, and the earth's shifting geology.  All in all, a rainy afternoon made enjoyable, and for free!

Yesterday I climbed Arthur's Seat, for the first time since March.  It was a gorgeous day, and being a Sunday afternoon, there were about a million people with the same idea.  I could clearly the Forth Bridges looking west, and all the way to the Lomond Hills in Fife looking north.

Then yesterday evening, what I thought was a low-level heat headache brought on by exertion on the hill, blossomed into a full-blown migraine.  Not fun.  Not fun at all.  Luckily my flatmate Sam, bless him, gave me some paracetamol and turned out all the lights in the flat remotely near my room when he found out.  Once again, I'm so grateful to be living where I am now, and not where I was before.

The graduation gifts are beginning to trickle in, and I've got some last trips around the UK on deck for the coming weeks.  Stay tuned...

Cheers, y'all.

Master of Science!

My dissertation passed!  I am now officially an MSc.  Furthermore, I got a 65 on it, which means I met my goal of getting all 60s or better.

Life is good.  :)

Cheers, y'all.

Autumn!

The weather in Edinburgh has been beautiful for the last several days - sunny and in the low 50s.  The blue sky and the crisp air remind me of autumn in North Carolina.  It's definitely a vast improvement over October last year, when it rained and rained and rained.

I'm biding my time, waiting for my dissertation mark.  A couple days ago, I went to the grassy area between the Scottish Parliament and Arthur's Seat and read a book, and nearly had my bag of crisps stolen by a cheeky 3-year-old.  Kids these days.  Today, I had a job interview - fingers crossed!

Cheers, y'all.

American food cravings.

I have the worst craving for tacos right now.  And there aren't that many decent Mexican places in Edinburgh, and none at all that are cheap.  Nevertheless, I think a visit to one of them is in order for the very near future.

I also miss sweet tea and biscuits from Bojangles, and milkshakes from Cook-Out.  And my mother's cooking in general.

I'm so hungry.

Cheers, y'all.

Civic duty.

I ordered my absentee ballot today.  Fairly quick and easy.  The North American Society printed off a bunch of the forms and will be taking them to the consulate for those of us who filled them out, free of charge.  I should be getting my ballot in the mail sometime in the next few weeks, if nothing goes awry.

If I can do my civic duty from across the Atlantic, everyone at home can do theirs.  This election season, get out there and VOTE, people!

Cheers, y'all.

Great Glen Way, Fort William to Drumnadrochit.

So, I ended up only doing the first 55 miles of the Great Glen Way, instead of the full 73.  My feet simply hurt too much to carry on by the time I got to Lewiston on the fifth day.  Still, for my first ever multi-day walk, I don't think that's too shabby!

I took the train to Fort William on 13 September.  This is one of the most scenic train rides on earth, and I'm sure it would have been lovely if the weather had been better.  As it was, there was a lot of rain and low cloud for most of the way.  The train tracks occasionally passed close to the West Highland Way, another of Scotland's long-distance paths, and I saw some walkers.  When I got to Fort William, I bought a map of the route and several days' worth of trail food and some stuff I could cook easily, like soup and a package of spaghetti (on which more anon).  Then I hung out at my hostel and looked out the window in despair as the wind and rain picked up.  The area around Fort William enjoys the heaviest rainfall in Europe, so this really should not have been surprising.  Anyway, on to the narrative!

A link to Walkhighlands's description of the walk: http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/great-glen-way.shtml

14 September 2012
Fort William to Gairlochy
Start: 10:10am
Finish: 3:10pm
Distance: 10.5 miles
Weather: Windy with periods sun and rain, clearing at 1pm

I checked out of my hostel in Fort William this morning, had a big breakfast in town, and then made my way to the old fort and the beginning of the GGW.

The first part of today's walk took me through the outer reaches of Fort William along Loch Linnhe and the River Lochy. Fort William reminds me to Waimanalo, Hawaii for some reason, possibly the proximity of the high mountains to the shore, with the town nestled between. It was mostly cloudy, with patches of blue sky visible. Ben Nevis was hidden by low cloud, quelle surprise.

After walking through Caol and skirting around Banavie (where I took a short water break), I joined the Caledonian Canal towpath at Neptune's Staircase. From here on out it was simply a matter of following the east bank of the canal all the way to Gairlochy. Two other walking parties (a couple and a group of three) kept crossing my path, and the group of three will probably continue to do so over the coming days, since they have an itinerary similar to mine. I stopped for lunch with them about midway between the Sheangain and Loy Aqueducts, and again for water at the Moy Swing Bridge. Then I hobbled into Gairlochy (that last mile and a half was the hardest), where someone from my B&B picked me up and drove me to Spean Bridge.

I'm footsore, and my left ankle and the back of my right knee started doing some odd things during the last stretch from Moy Bridge. My pecs also hurt where the backpack straps dug into my armpits. They didn't do that this morning, so I'm not sure what the deal was with that. Maybe the weight in the pack shifted around when I put it down. Tomorrow is going to be the real test: Can I walk 12 miles in a day, having just walked 10.5 miles the previous day? I guess we'll see.

Lots of rainbows and heather today. After the weather cleared, it was most serene.

***

15 September 2012
Gairlochy to Laggan
Start: 9:00am
Finish: 4:00pm
Distance: 13 miles
Weather: Cloudy but dry, with patchy sunlight

I woke up this morning feeling great. I went to bed at 8pm last night and slept almost without interruption until 7:30 this morning. When I woke up, my legs were sore but not unmanageably painful, and my feet were fine, much to my surprise. My shoulders were the most sore part of me. I had a hearty breakfast at the B&B, got a ride back to Gairlochy, and set off toward Laggan.

Loch Lochy was on my right-hand side for almost the entire day. The way took me to Clunes (my first rest stop of the day), where it joined up with a Forestry Commission track. This was charming at first. Trees all around me, a loch nearby, and a well-packed gravel and dirt track underfoot. This was my kind of walking!

But then it got wearisome. Devoid of landmarks, it was difficult to tell where I was or how far I had traveled. Plus there was some kind of bicycle race on today, so I spent the better part of the day dodging cyclists. At least they were all coming toward me, so I could see them. Though, while stopping to talk to the couple I met yesterday, I swatted a bee and very narrowly missed smacking a passing cyclist!

I was extremely grateful to get out of the forest at last, near the north end of Loch Lochy. But as with yesterday, the final push (which I reckon was about 2.5 miles today) was the hardest, not least because I was bursting for the loo by the time I got to Laggan Locks and was bitterly disappointed to find the toilet locked. So I trudged the last mile along the canal towpath desperately needing to pee, and almost wept with frustration when I encountered TREES again. Seriously, whose idea was it to forest the canal towpath between Loch Lochy and Loch Oich? Because after something like a 6-7 mile walk in the woods, the last thing I wanted to see was more woods.

After despairing of ever getting to my destination for the day, I finally saw the sign for the Great Glen Hostel. Getting there required me walk about 300 meters along the A82, back the way I had come, and when I got there, reception was still an hour away from being open.  But the bathroom was unlocked, thank goodness.

I am checked in and showered. I have a twin room to myself (because there were no female dorm beds available when I booked), which is nice. I'm nursing a blood blister on my left big toe and a smaller blister on my left pinkie toe, both of which are causing some comical walking. Why only my left foot, I wonder?

***

16 September 2012
Laggan to Fort Augustus
Start: 9:20am
Finish: 3:20pm
Distance: 10 miles
Weather: Rainy in the morning, sunny in the afternoon

Today was harder than I thought it would be. I think I was thinking "Oh, today's the short day, this will be easy."

I walked back along the A82 to rejoin the GGW, which shortly crossed the A82 again to the Great Glen Waterpark. The track climbed up into the forest to join the abandoned Invergarry Railway Line along Loch Oich. Then it was more forestry tracks until I got to the north end of Loch Oich, which was the halfway point and also my first rest break of the day. There were several trees down on the railway path, which required some interesting maneuvering around.

I began seeing blue sky near the end of Loch Oich, and it was properly sunny by the time I got to the swing bridge at the beginning of the canal. The rest of the day was canal walking, similar to the first day. I find I prefer this to the forest tracks, because I can actually see where I'm going. Unfortunately I think I saw the last of that today.

I caught up with the trio from the first day (whose names I have since learned - Mim, Helen, and Phil) at Kytra Lock, and had a break there. Then I shambled onward to Fort Augustus, and was passed by a group of kayakers along the way. How embarrassing. My heels pained me quite a lot today. Maybe I was landing on them harder in an effort to spare my blistered toes. Anyway, they bloody HURT. So when I finally reached Fort Augustus, around 3pm, I was immensely happy. Then I had to walk through pretty much the whole town to get to my hostel. Rawr. But, guess who I'm sharing a hostel room with? Mim, Helen, and Phil!

I'm nervous about the next 3 days. I really am. I'm considering trying to book an extra night in Lewiston, to give myself a rest day. Four new blisters on my right(!) foot today. I guess it figures it needs to catch up!

***

17 September 2012
Fort Augustus to Alltsigh
Start: 9:10am
Finish: 6:30pm
Distance: 11.5 miles
Weather: Sunny with occasional drizzle in the morning, rainy in the afternoon

I started this day with good intentions. I met a man on my way into Fort Augustus yesterday, and we exchanged the usual "Where are you going? Where have you been?" details. I complained about my feet hurting. And he said "Yes, but are you having FUN?" I've definitely lost sight of that aspect of this trip. It's meant to be a journey, and it's meant to be fun. It's not meant to be a painful slog into wherever I'm spending the night.

So I made a conscious effort to enjoy this day. In the morning, it was easy. The sun was out, I had my first proper views of Loch Ness, and the forestry track was broad. I shortened my stride today - a necessary measure for my blistered feet, along with 400mg of Ibuprofen - so I made slow but steady progress. I even had a bit of a sing to myself ("No Man's Land" by Billy Joel).

I stopped for a nice, lengthy meal in Invermoriston, which was an excellent idea. It gave my feet a nice rest and gave me a second wind for the last 4.5 miles to Alltsigh. The first section of the walk after Invermoriston was a steep climb, and it was a piece of cake (although this was the first time on this walk that I had to stop and catch my breath). Interestingly, uphill climbs were the easiest part of the walk today. I adopted a sort of modified lunge while doing them, which got my weight off my heels and onto the balls of my feet, which felt much better and made for quicker progress.

After passing the Stone Cave, it started raining and my mood went to pot. I was wet. I was cold. My feet hurt. The forestry track had closed back in and there was nothing to see but trees and mud. And I just wanted to get out of the rain and into my hostel, where I could put my feet up.

Finally, I saw the sign for the hostel. Now, this hostel (the Loch Ness SYHA hostel) advertises itself as being directly on the GGW. I'm pretty sure the profile says something to the effect of, "The GGW passes by our front door." LIES. You have to go through a gate, pass a couple of B&Bs, cross the poxy A82, and walk a short way up said bloody dangerous highway to get to the hostel. Cue me stalking up to the reception desk, dripping from head to toe, with an absolutely thunderous expression on my face.

They gave me a single room.

Was passed by 3 parties relatively early in the day - 2 going my way and 1 going the other way - but didn't see a soul after Invermoriston.

***

18 September 2012
Alltsigh to Lewiston
Start: 9:45am
Finish: 4:55pm
Distance: 10 miles
Weather: Mostly sunny, with rain at the very end

Oy. Where to begin? I trudged out of the hostel and back onto the GGW at 9:45 this morning, and the GGW quickly climbed up into the forest via a couple of switchbacks. The morning light hit Loch Ness very prettily, and I stopped to admire the view more than once.

But then, as ever, the trees closed in and the walking just got dull. Thankfully, the trail eventually climbed out of the trees and gave way to a significant portion of road-walking. This was okay, and I was actually able to slip back into my modified lunge and make good time, until one my blisters burst. Ow.

Then it was off the road and onto a pony track which took its sweet time wending its way down to Lewiston. This means I had a tantalizing view of the place, ages before I got there. Plus, I suppose whatever mechanism it was that made uphill walking the easiest part of the day for my feet, made downhill walking the hardest part. I was in absolute agony by the time I got to the hostel.

I have made a decision: Tomorrow, I am going to walk into Drumnadrochit and take a bus to Inverness. I've had enough. And I'm physically not going to be able to handle this last day. 19 miles is a long way to walk in a day, and it's a REALLY long way to walk on feet as abused as mine. 55 miles in 5 days is an accomplishment, and I'm going to take it and go.

*****************

I must interject that my mood improved immeasurably after writing that last journal entry.  Let's just say that good things tend to happen to me in Lewiston.  :)

So, the following morning I walked the last mile to Drumnadrochit.  The Citylink bus to Inverness pulled up right as I got to the bus stop, so I took it as a sign that this was the right decision and hopped on.  I spent the day in Inverness, reading a second-hand mystery novel and resting my feet, and got the train back to Edinburgh the next day.  At some point, I would like to go back and do those last 18 miles, just so I can say I've walked the whole Great Glen Way.  But as you can tell from the changing tone of my journal entries, I was completely Over It by the fifth day and ready to go home.

One final note: I never did eat that spaghetti I bought in Fort William.  I carried it on my back all the way to Drumnadrochit, then by bus to Inverness and train to Edinburgh.  It's sitting in the kitchen cupboard now.  I'm thinking I might never eat it, but continue to carry it around on trips and see how many miles it accumulates.  :)

Cheers, y'all.

Fort William: Final preparations

Arrived in Fort William.  Acquired a map and spent 45 minutes in intense contemplation of it.  Now I'm going to have a proper meal and buy some trail food.  It's extremely rainy, and I'm not counting on it letting up.  Thank goodness for waterproof clothing.

Cheers, y'all.

Packing. Or, the million-dollar question.

The million-dollar question is, how lightly can I pack?  There are companies which transfer one's baggage to one's next destination along both the Great Glen Way and the West Highland Way, but the idea of my things getting to my destination before I do, without any direct intervention by me, feels a bit strange.  Plus, I find the idea of making a journey under my own power, with all my worldly goods on my person, to be very charming and romantic.  And so, I'm intending to make this trip with only my small knapsack, which usually serves as my day-pack on trips of this length.

What I'm taking:
2 pairs of quick-drying nylon trousers
1 pair of tracksuit bottoms
1 pair of jeans
2 camisoles
1 T-shirt
7 pairs of thick socks
7 pairs of underwear
1 sports bra
1 light jacket
1 heavy-duty raincoat
1 money-belt (containing cash, a debit card, and my ID)
1 digital camera
1 cell phone
1 toiletry bag (containing shampoo, deodorant, spare contact lenses, a washcloth, and various medicines)
1 towel
2 plastic grocery bags (for dirty laundry and other sundry uses)
1 journal

So far everything fits except the toiletry bag, the jacket, and the raincoat.  I've decided to simply wear the jacket and raincoat at all times, for warmth as much as anything else.  I figure I can wrap the jacket around my waist if I get too warm.  I do need to figure out where I'm going to put the toiletry bag, though.  I haven't decided whether to take my iPod or not.  It only holds a charge for an hour or so these days, so taking it (and its charger, and an adapter) will probably be more hassle than it's worth.  The backpack has holsters for water bottles, so that takes care of my water.  I don't plan to carry a great deal of food with me while I'm walking, except maybe on the last day.  Just enough for lunch, plus something high energy like nuts and candy.

So.  Here goes nothing!

UPDATE: My flatmate Sam has offered to let me borrow one of his rock-climbing backpacks.  I think this will be a better arrangement.  There's room for everything, plus a thick sweater, another pair of tracksuit bottoms, and another shirt, with room left over for trail food.  I'll need to fiddle with the straps and the weight distribution of all my stuff so that there's not too much pressure on my lower back, but I think this will do admirably.  Huzzah!

Cheers, y'all. 

Preparations.

The Great Glen Way is now fully booked.  I'm staying at a very reasonably priced B&B in Spean Bridge the first night, which luckily does pick-up to and from the GGW, saving me seven and a half extra miles of walking.  I've also got a bed booked in Inverness on the last night, and a train ticket back to Edinburgh the following day.  My camera battery is charged.  I need to do laundry and pack, and then I'll pretty much be ready!

In other news, the weather was crazy today.  I woke up at 8:30 this morning to brilliant sunshine, which gave way to variable clouds by noon.  I went to the Moray House library to make some copies of my passport photo page, and when I went to leave, it was pouring down rain.  In the time it took me to use the restroom, the rain had stopped and the sun had come back out.  Scottish Weather, I tell you.

Cheers, y'all.

Great Glen Way: COMMITTED.

Just booked a train to Fort William and several nights' accommodation along the way.  I am officially committed.  I leave on Thursday and start walking on Friday!

An explanation: the Great Glen Way is a long-distance route that runs southwest to northeast for 73 miles, from Fort William to Inverness.  It is so called because it runs the length of the Great Glen, a valley formed by plate tectonics which pretty much divides Scotland in two.  There are four lochs in the Great Glen, connected by the Caledonian Canal: Loch Linnhe, Loch Lochy, Loch Oich, and Loch Ness.  It is possible to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea via these lochs and the Canal.

I'm planning to take 6 days to walk the GGW, with overnight stops in Gairlochy, South Laggan, Fort Augustus, Glenmoriston, Drumnadrochit, and finally Inverness.  Most of these legs are between 10 and 12 miles in length, with the exception of the last one (Drumnadrochit to Inverness), which is 18 miles.  I'm quite nervous about that one and would split it up if I could, taking 7 days in all rather than 6, but there are very few places to stay between Drum and Inverness and none at all cheaper than 50 quid per night.  So I'm sucking it up and hoping for the best.  Surely after 5 days of steady walking, 18 miles in a day won't be too bad? 

I have accommodation booked everywhere except Gairlochy and Inverness.  There seems to be a dearth of places to stay in Gairlochy, and the one place I've contacted so far (selected for its proximity to the GGW) hasn't gotten back to me.  There are more places in Spean Bridge, some of which do pick-ups and drop-offs on the GGW, but I'd prefer to avoid that logistical hassle if I can.  I haven't booked accommodation in Inverness yet because I think I might want to swing over to Stromeferry for a couple of days, rather than going straight back to Edinburgh.  Still thinking about it.

And now I have to plan what to pack.  Stay tuned...

Cheers, y'all.

Changing seasons.

The season is changing.  The days are getting cloudier, cooler, and slowly shorter.  If I want to have any serious outdoor escapades, they need to be relatively soon.

I am tentatively planning to walk the Great Glen Way next week.  This is the trip I had originally planned for May, and ended up postponing so my data collection trip to the States could happen sooner.  I am also toying with the idea of doing some hillwalking while I'm in the area, especially since it's going to be too unseasonable (for me, anyway) for such things soon.  Details to follow as things get booked.

Cheers, y'all.

A birth announcement. :)

I'm a cousin-once-removed, once again.  Welcome to the world, Abigail Rae Bennett!

Cheers, y'all.

Waiting.

My life is a waiting game at the moment. I'm waiting to see if my dissertation will pass (although I don't have any reason to think it won't). I'm waiting to hear back about jobs I've applied for. In the meantime, I'm trying to enjoy my free time. I've been doing a lot of cross-stitching over the past few days, and the project I'm working on is finally nearing completion after about four and a half years of on-and-off work. I'm also close to finishing a couple of books. It was a nice day today, so I walked to the bottom of the Royal Mile and laid on the grass in front of the Scottish Parliament and read for a couple of hours (The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon).

If nothing is happening on the job front by the end of this upcoming week, I think I'm going to take a trip somewhere.  Probably the Uists.  I'm also aching to get back to Ben Lomond and finish climbing it, but Rowardennan is bloody difficult to get to even if you've got a car, and impossible to reach by public transportation.  Western Scotland, y u so remote?

Cheers, y'all.

Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

On 20 August, I went to the Edinburgh Tattoo, which is a big pipe and drum show that gets put on every year during August.  It takes place on the esplanade in front of Edinburgh Castle, and military bands from all over the world come to perform.

The first hour of the show was quite good.  The opening pipe and drum number, in which the esplanade is filled with hundreds of bagpipers, was a grand spectacle.  I had chills.  Also, before the pipers came out, a bunch of little kids dressed up as Picts came out and did a little pantomime, which was very cute.  Here's an amateur video of it:



The rest of the show was really quite kitschy and twee.  There were various military bands playing the usual military band fare.  There were highland dancers, doing dances meant to represent whisky-brewing and the industrial revolution.  The one truly awesome performance (aside from the massed pipes and drums at the beginning) was a drumline from Switzerland.  They were AMAZING.  Truly the best drumline I've ever seen.

The last 45 minutes were kind of disappointing, to be honest.  All of the performers came back out onto the esplanade, but only a couple of the bands actually played.  This part of the performance was a celebration of QEII's diamond jubilee, and was essentially supposed to be a reenactment of her coronation.  So some of the bands played a couple of the pieces that were played at her coronation, while everybody else stood to attention for ages.  Toward the end, they played the theme to the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, and there were fireworks.  The fireworks were being launched directly behind me, which was annoying, and they also weren't all that impressive.  I had heard that the tattoo ended every night with a big fireworks display, so I thought "Okay, this must be the warm-up."  Then the lone piper played, high up on the castle battlements, and everybody marched out to "Scotland The Brave," which always ends every tattoo...and that was it.  No final bombastic fireworks display.  So that was a let-down.

All in all, I'm glad I went, because it's something you should really do if you're in Edinburgh in August.  But having done it, I feel like I can check it off the list and never do it again.  But who knows?  Maybe next year's show will be better.

Cheers, y'all.

Let the job-hunt begin!

This summer has been a whirlwind, and I've spent the last two weeks recuperating from it. 

I've also begun looking for jobs.  The jobs I'm applying for fall into two broad categories: temporary, part-time stuff that will keep me busy and moneyed until my visa expires; and more serious jobs that would enable me to switch into a Tier 2 visa and stay in the UK longer.  I'm discovering that if I do end up staying in the UK, I'm pretty much going to have to move to London, as that's where the jobs in my field seem to be.  So far I've had one interview, for a local part-time job.  I'm supposed to find out about it next Tuesday, so we'll see.

Truthfully, I'm bored.  Dissertation-writing is terribly stressful, but at least you're never bored while doing it!  I spent the first week after the hand-in being grateful for the boredom, but now, as hard as I try, I can't enjoy the empty days anymore.  Reading and embroidery (both of which I've been doing a lot of lately) are great, but I can only do them for so long before I want to do something else.  I'd love to do some traveling right now, but I'm anxious about my finances.  I spent a lot of money in Shetland, so I'm reluctant to spend any more right now.  This is another reason why I'm looking for a job.

So, until further notice, I'm hanging out in Edinburgh and looking for a job.  I'm also going to try to be much more diligent about updating this blog, now that I have so much spare time.

Cheers, y'all.

One year!

One year ago today, I arrived in Edinburgh with four suitcases, a student visa, nowhere to live, no local bank account, and the determination and resolve to make this work.  Now, one year later, I've discovered where the decent and not-so-decent places to live are (the hard way), met some interesting new characters among my classmates, flatmates, and various traveling companions, been to new places including Tiree and Shetland, and finished an entire Masters degree.

My Masters dissertation is the single hardest bit of academic work I have ever done.  I can say without exaggerating that I've never worked so hard on anything before in my life.  And I think it paid off, because I turned in a finished product that I'm quite proud of...and a day early, no less!  I learned a new skill in qualitative analysis, and I've learned quite a bit about where my own interests and priorities lie.

This past weekend has been one big party.  I went to dinner with my classmates and a Peatbog Faeries concert with Ewan and Kath on Friday, to the Edinburgh Book Festival, where I met Garth Nix and he signed my well-worn, well-loved copy of Sabriel (AAAHHH fangirl moment!) during the day on Saturday, and out drinking and to a nightclub with my classmates on Saturday night, and to the Tattoo last night.  I also went to a comedy show yesterday, put on by the same girl whose comedy show I saw last year, on my first day in Edinburgh, which seemed like a great way to come full circle on this year.  I have free time for the first time in a month, and I don't know what to do with myself.  And it's great.

I don't know what the next few months are going to have in store for me, and I find that genuinely exciting.  I'm at the point now where I'm going to have to make some decisions about where I'm going to live and what I'm going to do, and I feel like the entire world is at my feet.  Many are the options.  And I'm thrilled.  I can't wait to see what happens next.

Cheers, y'all.

No relaxing until after August 17.

I might have spoken too soon about finding my productive groove.  I seem to have hit another wall with my data analysis.  At the moment I've put it to one side and am trying to write my introduction instead.

I'm abandoning most social media until after the due date, because I'm going to need every single one of my waking hours to devote to this thing for the next 18 days, and I'm not exaggerating at all.  This is shaping up to be a photo finish, which I'm not at comfortable with at all, but there's nothing to be done about it at this point except work my butt off for the time remaining.  And also try not to let the anxiety consume me so much that it makes me sick, because I need an illness right now like I need a hole in my head.

The one good thing that's happened lately is that the weather has improved.  I seem to have brought the sun back from Shetland with me, as it's been sunny for at least a portion of each day since I got back.  If only I had the leisure to go outside and enjoy it.  :/

Also, do not expect any posts about the Olympics.  I do not give a flying fart about the Olympics; I don't have the time to.

Cheers, y'all.

Shetland summary/Dissertation 4-evah.

Visit Shetland - accomplished July 14-20, 2012.

Shetland was wonderful.  I looked at and bought crafty things, climbed hills, saw seals and puffins, watched waves breaking on rocks in an ocean a breathtaking shade of dark blue, listened to fiddle music, and went as far north as it is possible to go in the UK without convincing a local with a dinghy to give you a lift.  I also got to watch people shearing sheep, both the modern way, with an electric razor, and the old-fashioned way, with a serious pair of shears.  Eventually I hope to post pictures of all this.

For now, my dissertation owns my life.  I have finally found my stride with the data analysis, and not a moment too soon, because there are only 3 weeks left before the due date.  It's going to be tight.

In other news, the Olympics start tomorrow.  Reading the news, I am so glad I'm not in London right now.

Cheers, y'all.

A perfectly cloudless sky.

I'm still in Shetland, and still loving it.  I've seen a good bit of Mainland (the biggest island), as well as Mousa and Bressay, and I'll be adding Whalsay, Yell, and Unst to the tally before I leave.

Today was supposed to be a catching-up-on-schoolwork day, but the sky is a perfectly cloudless blue outside, and it seems like an inexcusable crime to miss out on it.

Cheers, y'all.

Journey to Shetland

I've been in Shetland for less than 12 hours, and I already love it.

I got an early train to Aberdeen yesterday and spent the day wandering around the area immediately around the train station and ferry terminal.  A good part of that was at a mall.  I ate lunch, saw a movie (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World), and discovered that cross-stitching supplies are WAY more expensive in the UK than they are in the US.

Then I got on the ferry, which left Aberdeen at 7pm.  I dropped my stuff in my shared cabin and spent the next few hours eating dinner, watching the Scottish mainland shrink up on deck, and reading academic papers.  I had a less-than-restful night in the cabin.  Toward dawn, as we got closer to Shetland, I could feel the waves getting bigger.  My body still thinks it's on the boat at the moment.  The ferry arrived in Lerwick at about 7:30 this morning, and I walked from the ferry terminal to my hostel.  I got acquainted with the guy at the front desk, and then wandered off in search of an ATM and breakfast.

If I had to describe Shetland in one phrase, it would be "almost Scandinavian but not quite."  The houses are almost Nordic-looking but not quite.  The Islanders' speech is almost Scandinavian (and I swear I've heard some pseudo-Dutch phrases used in greeting) but not quite.  The atmosphere is lighter than on the mainland.  The air is cleaner.  I've seen more sun today than I have in the last two weeks put together.  There's an air of small-town neighborliness.  This afternoon I was hanging out by the harbor, near the dock for the Bressay ferry.  (Bressay is the island just across the harbor from Lerwick.)  The ferry had just pulled away when a kid came running up, trying to catch it, and the ferry actually reversed direction and came back for him.

I wandered down Commercial Street in the town center, before many of the shops had opened for the day.  Having found an ATM, I came back to the hostel and had a nap, a shower, and a change of clothes.  Then I went back into town.  I had intended to just do some browsing, but I ended up buying 2 CDs of Shetland fiddle music, and three bars of locally-made soap.

I love this place already, and I can't wait to see more of it in the coming days.

Cheers, y'all.

Events of the past week.

In the past week, I have:
- Gone to a Fourth of July party, hosted by Kelley, the only other American on my course.
- Played beer pong for the first time ever, and discovered that I am halfway decent at it.  Yay!
- Made friends with Miller the dog, such that he sleeps in my bed more often than not, which is kinda nice.
- Gone to a little soap shop on Brunswick Street and purchased some lovely-smelling cinnamon and clove soap.  I also bought some mint soap, but haven't tried it yet.
- Slept in a completely empty dwelling for the first time since...possibly undergrad?  Sam and Ieuan are rock-climbing in the Peak District and Danielle is in Paris, so I have the whole flat to myself until Wednesday!
- Cooked scallops for the first time ever.  The oil spat at me with gusto, so I ended up cooking most of them directly on the surface of my frying pan.  They were edible, so I'm calling it a success!
- Made tiramisu for the first time in ages.  I couldn't find ladyfingers anywhere, so I used shortbread cookies instead.  It's in the fridge now, so I'll try it tomorrow and make an assessment then.
- Begun to panic a little bit about my dissertation.  But so is everyone else, so at least I'm not alone?  I have SO MUCH DATA, and now I need to sift through it and figure out what's relevant, and then I need to figure out how to present the relevant stuff in a coherent way.  AAAAHHHHHH.

Cheers, y'all.

New flat!

I am all moved into my new flat!

It was an arduous weekend.  I don't know how I managed to accumulate so much STUFF during the ten months I lived at Kirk Street.  It took three trips on Saturday and one yesterday to get everything moved, and it would have taken more if my new flatmate Sam had not gallantly offered the use of his car for the third trip on Saturday.

So far, so good.  The kitchen is well-equipped and has a proper dining area, with a big window looking out on the garden.  My bedroom window also looks out on the garden, and my desk is situated in front of it, so I can look out while doing work.  The living area is big and light, too.  My flatmate Danielle is also a Masters student and does most of her work in there, and I think I am going to follow her example.

The flatmates:
Sam - from Warwick, England.  The only non-student living here.
Ieuan - from Shetland.  He's a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh.
Danielle - from Chicago.
Danielle's dog, Miller.

At the moment, Ieuan's girlfriend Heather is here for a visit, and a couple friends of Sam's, named Andy and Elva, are crashing here en route to their new flat.

***

In other news, I've just booked the train and ferry tickets, so I am officially going to Shetland on the 13th.  I've been asking Ieuan and Heather all about it, since they're both from there.  Heather is going to be in Lerwick while I'm there, so we already have tentative plans to meet up.

Cheers, y'all.

Dismal weather.

Blegh.  To anyone not following the news, Britain is having its wettest June in a century.  The Isle of Wight Festival this past weekend was underwater, as was Download earlier this month.  The sky over Edinburgh has been that horrible so-pale-gray-it's-almost-white smother blanket color for the past couple of days, and I loathe it. 

I've been trying to distract myself from the weather by planning future adventures.  I am pretty much officially going to Shetland in a couple of weeks!  I booked a hostel in Lerwick today, and the plan is to book some day excursions, as well as train and ferry tickets, tomorrow.  I've also been researching Uist.  The only multi-day tours I can find are wildlife tours.  Like, really srs bsns birdwatching tours.  And they cost more than I really want to pay.  I'm toying with the idea of just renting a bike and getting around that way, maybe even doing the entire Barra-Eriskay-South Uist-Benbecula-North Uist trek, but I doubt my biking skills/fitness are up to that.

Three days until the move!

Cheers, y'all.

Bucket list update/A visit to Stromeferry.

Places to Go:
Mull, Iona, and Staffa.
Islay and Jura.
The Uists.
Shetland.
Aberdeen/anywhere north of Fife and east of the A9.  Accomplished January 21
Wales.  Accomplished April 26
Cornwall.

Things to Do:
Go on a winter hike with crampons. Accomplished January 21
Visit The Real Mary King's Close.
Visit the National Museum of Scotland.
Jump into Loch Carron.  Accomplished June 23
Walk the Water of Leith walkway.
Walk the Great Glen Way.
See a ballet. Accomplished January 13
See an orchestra concert.
Read all ten books currently sitting on my bedside table. In progress
Get my MSc.

People to See:
Becca, Kat, and Chaz in Yorkshire.
Brian, Carol, Craig, and Kathryn in Nottinghamshire.
Shaina when she's in the Netherlands in February.  Accomplished February 18
Tracey when she comes to visit me.  Accomplished February 22-29
Sima. Either I will go to Russia or she will come here.
Musical acts I'm fond of, if and when they visit Scotland or northern England.

***

Accomplishments since I last updated this include Tracey's visit in February (which was grand), a trip to Wales with my family at the end of April, and a jump into Loch Carron this past weekend.  I'm going to do a proper write-up of the family trip as soon as I get my camera back into working order - the battery has suddenly decided it doesn't want to charge.  For now, here's my trip to Stromeferry over the weekend:

I got up shortly after 5am on Saturday to catch a 6:30am train.  I changed trains in Stirling and Inverness and got to Stromeferry at 1pm.  This was my first time journeying from Edinburgh to Inverness in a northerly direction, and also my first time riding on the Inverness-Kyle of Lochalsh line.  It was a gorgeous train ride, through some very remote countryside, passing through tiny villages.  Everything was in bloom.  There were lupins everywhere, and I was reminded of Monty Python's Dennis Moore sketch!

Ewan met me at the station, which is within sight of the Stationmaster's House.  I dropped my stuff and went for a walk on the beach along Loch Carron to stretch my legs.  It was sunny and warm - around 60 F - and I had originally planned to do the loch jump as soon as I got back.  It was low tide and I was wary of landing hard on the rocks at the bottom and cutting my feet up, so I thought I'd sit down and ease in.  Big mistake (or possibly a very wise decision) - I discovered to my horror that the loch was ice-cold, and quickly postponed the mission.  Brr.

Stromeferry has no shops whatsoever, so I brought a few essentials with me.  I cooked jambalaya for dinner, and then went outside to contemplate the loch, which was now at high tide.  I changed into a tank top and tracksuit bottoms (my usual attire for this sort of harebrained adventure) and, with Ewan and Danny as my witnesses, took the plunge.  And it was cold.  But the beauty of jumping off a dock, rather than wading in from shore, was that I could haul myself right back out.  I scratched my arm up doing so, but I daresay I'll live.  I pulled the bottoms off under cover of a towel (much to Ewan and Danny's amusement) and then ran inside for a hot shower.  (I thought it would be the polite thing not to track loch water all over Ewan and Kath's nice clean house.)  Hot shower accomplished, I sat outside with Ewan, Kath, Danny, and a few of Danny's current tour, with whom I was sharing the place on this particular night, drinking beer and watching Ewan's wheelbarrow-bonfire.  I was able to read my watch at 11pm.

I had a leisurely day on Sunday.  The tour left in the morning, and I had the place to myself for the better part of the day.  I woke up with the beginnings of a cold, which I'm sure was at least partly owing to my swim in Loch Carron.  I read, did some data analysis, and went for a walk through the forest above the village in the afternoon.  It was exactly the kind of relaxing, middle-of-nowhere day that I needed.  A couple of girls from Italy turned up in the afternoon, and I chatted with them for a bit.  I made spaghetti for dinner, and helped myself to some of the tour's leftover bolognese sauce.  Then I sat around the bonfire with Ewan and Kath again, as well as one of Kath's friends.

Yesterday I had a quiet morning, and then caught the 12:26pm train back to Inverness, and thence to Perth and Edinburgh.  I rode over the Forth Rail Bridge for the first time ever, which was very exciting.  Before we got to the bridge, we rode along the Fife coast, which is extremely pretty.  Seeing Edinburgh from the north bank of the Firth of Forth was an entirely new experience, and a very cool one.

This was an excellent weekend.

Cheers, y'all.

Some photos from March: Water of Leith and the Pentland Hills

On March 17, I walked the first eight miles of the Water of Leith Walkway, a path that spans 12 miles from Balerno, a suburb southwest of Edinburgh, to the Leith Docks, not terribly far from where I live.

The reason why I didn't do the full 12 miles was this:

It's a lovely walk, and doing the full length of it is definitely on the agenda.  I've revisited the first bit once or twice since then.

***

On March 31 (my birthday, incidentally), my plan was to go for a ramble in the Pentland Hills.  There's a sign on the Water of Leith pointing that way, so I took it.  I didn't quite make it all the way into the hills, but it was a nice day and I did walk through some nice fields.

Cheers, y'all.

September 4-8, 2011: Loch Ness, Orkney, and far northern Scotland

On the morning of September 4, our groups parted ways: some of us to Orkney, others back to Edinburgh.  The other Orkney folks and I met our new driver, Heather, and set out for the day.  We actually shadowed the folks going back to Edinburgh as far as Loch Ness and Culloden.

The first stop of the day was Scotland's most famous loch, Loch Ness.  I was the only one brave enough to go for a swim, and managed to cut my toe open in the process.

...Or was it Nessie???

Then we went to Culloden, site of the last battle fought on British soil.  After this, the two group parted ways.

We continued through Inverness and along the northeast coast through Sutherland and Caithness, stopping here and there along the way.  After a few days of indifferent weather, we finally had a warm and sunny day.  We got to John o'Groats, the northeastern-most settlement in mainland Britain, in time for a hike to Duncansby Head for a view of the sea stacks before catching the evening ferry from Gills Bay to St. Margaret's Hope, on the island of South Ronaldsay in Orkney.

Orkney is an archipelago of approximately 70 islands (20 of them inhabited) off the north coast of Scotland.  Is is almost entirely flat, almost entirely treeless, and has entirely dead-straight roads with no traffic lights to speak of anywhere outside of Kirkwall, the capital and largest settlement.  But for anyone with an interest in archeology and/or Iron Age history, it is a must-see.  Among the things we visited on September 5 and 6 were the Tomb of the Eagles, the remains of a Neolithic village called Skara Brae, and a burial mound called Maes Howe.  Also, two stone circles: the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness.  The Stones of Stenness are probably my favorite standing stones out of all the ones I've been to.  There aren't that many of them - they form barely half a circle - but they're bloody HUGE, and they give off a very positive, protective energy.  I get the same kind of vibe from them that I get from Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh.  It honestly felt like seeing old friends again.

Other noteworthy things we saw in Orkney were the Italian Chapel, a tin structure converted into a church by Italian prisoners of war during World War II, and the Highland Park whisky distillery.  I've still got two small bottles of Highland Park that I purchased there.  We also had free time in Kirkwall on September 6, most of which I spent holed up in a cafe with a book.  True to form, the weather was reasonably nice when I went into the cafe, but I watched storm clouds get rapidly closer until by the time it was time for me to go back to the bus, it was absolutely pouring down rain.  I got wet through.

On September 7, we caught the early morning ferry back to Gills Bay, poked around Dunnet Head (the northernmost point on mainland Britain) for a bit, and then began wending our way west along Scotland's north coast.  The scenery up there is indescribably gorgeous, and these are the photos I'm the most heartbroken to have lost, because I have no words for what it looks like up there.  It's nothing short of spectacular.

We stopped at a deserted beach near Durness, where I completed the Triple Crown of Lunacy Involving Very Cold Water, legs 1 and 2 being the beach on Harris and Loch Ness, respectively.  I have never experienced water that cold in my life.  I actually waded a far way out, because I couldn't forced myself to put my head under.  I was hoping a wave would do the job for me.  Somehow or other I did it, then scampered back to the beach, and in spite of my best efforts, managed to get sand everywhere.  From there, it was a short drive to Smoo Cave, most of which I spent shivering and thinking I was never going to be warm or dry or sand-free again.

Smoo Cave is a gigantic cave near the northwestern tip of Scotland.  Some days, there are boat trips into the water system inside the cave, but there had been a lot of rain recently and the water was way too rough on this particular day.  After that, we turned south and eventually wound up at a hostel near Lairg for our final night together.  This hostel is made up entirely of train cars, and was very cool.  I liked it almost as much as the blackhouse on Lewis.

September 8 was a long driving day, as we made our way back to Edinburgh.  Our one significant stop for the day was the Hermitage Forest in Perthshire.  It was here that I lost my old camera into a waterfall.  It was heartbreaking.  But as Kathy told me, at least it wasn't my wallet, or my passport, or God forbid, ME.

And so, this finally concludes the trip that reintroduced me to Scotland over nine months ago.  It was an excellent trip.  I just wish I had my own pictures of it!

Cheers, y'all.

New flat acquired!

As of yesterday, I am officially moving out of this rodent-infested flat!

I'm moving to Elm Row, which is a little area near the top of Leith Walk, nestled between it and Easter Road.  I'm going to be closer to town and to school - in fact, pretty much within walking distance of everything.  The flat itself has hardwood floors, big windows, and is full of natural light.  The area is quiet, and many of the windows look out on the back garden.  The room I'm moving into is probably about the same size as my room now, maybe smaller.  But it's got all the furniture I need/want: bed, desk, wardrobe, drawers, bookshelf, nightstand.  There is a proper dining area, and a nice airy common room.  AND THERE IS A DOG.  The dog and I have already made friends.  His name is Miller.  And best of all, a dog means I don't have to worry about vermin.

I am actually a bit nervous, because I haven't actually signed anything yet.  And it took these people ages to get back to me.  I had actually resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to get this flat, and was looking at a place in Marchmont instead, so it was a surprise to get this phone call yesterday.  And I actually sat down and had a cup of tea with the people in the flat in Marchmont, and knew I like them.  I haven't met anyone in this flat besides the girl who's moving out, so I'm taking a little bit of a leap of faith.  But there are only going to be four people living there, including me, so that's an improvement.

I called the leasing agent today and gave notice, so I'm officially committed.  I'm moving some of my more cumbersome stuff over there on Thursday, and I'm sure I'll feel better once I've done that.  I figure once my stuff is there, they're committed too.  All that's left is to call the folks in Marchmont and let them know that I've accepted an offer at another flat.

Still, yay!  No more mice!  No more loud, obnoxious, pot-smoking flatmates!  No more noise from the approximately seven pubs within a two-block radius of my flat!  YAY!

Cheers, y'all.

One year.

One year ago today, I found out I'd been accepted into grad school!

I have tales and pictures of Orkney, Water of Leith, and Wales that need posting, and I'm hereby resolving to do at least two of those this coming week.  But for now, it's back to thesis-writing.

Cheers, y'all.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I officially put pen to paper on my Masters thesis today!  Aaahhhh!!!  My meeting with Ailsa yesterday was good.  Apparently I'm well ahead of the game, by virtue of having all my data collected already.  The fact that not all of it has been transcribed yet is apparently immaterial - I can go ahead and get started analyzing the interviews that are done, and finish the others as I go.

However, my Masters thesis is pretty much the only thing that is going well in my life right now.  I viewed two flats on Monday and absolutely fell in love with the second one.  In fact, I made an offer on the spot.  The girl showing it to me said she'd talk to her flatmates and get back to me yesterday.  Still haven't heard anything, so I'm assuming at this point that the answer is no.  And the first place I saw was a shoebox, so I turned that one down.  I've got another viewing scheduled for Friday evening, so we'll see how that goes.  I want to get out of this place soon, because I am at my wit's end.  There are simply too many people living here.  And then last night, I did some fiddling with my itunes in an effort to restore some songs that "could not be found."  The good news is I did get them restored.  The bad news is that I lost all my playlists and play counts.  Basically, my entire listening history all the way back to 2006, and some playlists that I've spent a lot of time and thought on, and that I'm not sure I can re-create from memory.  This is probably irrational, but I'm very attached to my music and this upset me a lot.  And finally, I'm still feeling rather lonely and alone.  I saw my classmates Kelley and Susan on the way home from the library today, which lifted my spirits considerably, but aside from Ailsa, they were the first friendly and familiar faces I'd seen since arriving last Friday (I do not include my flatmates).

I've been reflecting that last Friday was the first time I had ever arrived in Scotland without a backpacker trip booked in the immediate future, and I'm wondering if that might have something to do with what I've been feeling.  No prospects of seeing lovely scenery, making some new friends, and being driven around for several days to look forward to.  Just sifting through housing ads on gumtree and chipping away at this Masters project, with no foreseeable end in sight.  God, I need to get out of Edinburgh for a few days.  Last night I booked train tickets up to Stromeferry for a couple of days next weekend.  Ewan has reserved me a bed in exchange for a case of his favorite beer.  I just hope I don't go stir-crazy before then.

Cheers, y'all.

Loneliness.

I am very alone here.  And I was never more acutely aware of that fact than I am today, newly re-arrived at my flat in Edinburgh.

The smell of my bedroom was the thing that struck me first.  It smelled new.  Uninhabited.  Actually, it smelled like the flat on Balfour Street where I lived for two days back in September, one of which was the day immediately following the loss of my old camera.  So this smell does not have positive connotations to me.  On the other hand, my bedroom in North Carolina smelled like cinnamon and sandalwood.  It smelled how it always has, even though it had been uninhabited for several months before this visit home.  My bedroom in my flat has reverted to its "empty" smell after only three weeks.  How can that be?

I don't have people I can call upon at a moment's notice here.  I don't have people to take care of me.  Ewan and Kath would never turn me away if I were in need, but they're in Stromeferry, which is a minimum 6-hour train journey away.  My classmates are here, but they have their own lives and priorities outside of school.  It can be like pulling teeth to organize a night out, but I need to do that or else it's going to be a very lonely summer.  My flatmates are completely useless.  I long for the days when Mandy and Roy lived here, and I'm now realizing just how lucky I was to have them here when I first moved in.  Finding a new flat is now more of a priority than ever, because I cannot stand this place and the people who live here anymore.

I am normally a very self-sufficient person, but this was a very lonely and disheartening homecoming today.  Here's hoping things will look a bit better after a nap.

Cheers, y'all.

An increasingly global society.

I'm on the eve of leaving North Carolina for Scotland for the third time in ten months.  I think this will be easier than the departure after Christmas, but not as easy as the departure last August.  I'm feeling the same feelings of fear and loss at the prospect of parting from people and places that are familiar to me.  It may be Christmas before I see my family again.  It may be longer.  I am probably never going to see my tired, feeble, stone-deaf, 14-year-old dog again.  And there's another source of poignancy: I said that after this visit, I wasn't going to set foot in North Carolina again until Amendment One is repealed; and while I still mean it, that doesn't mean I'm not going to miss the place.

But at the same time, I've got a real sense of purpose attached to this journey.  I'm ready to start analyzing data and writing this thesis.  I'm ready to start seeing some places in Scotland I haven't seen yet.  And there are people over there who are just as dear to me as some of my friends here, and I want to see them again.

For another thing, I know I'm not alone.  Many of my friends here in the US are beginning to scatter to the four winds.  One is moving to Los Angeles next month, another is moving to Korea later this year, and another may be moving to Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the state two doors down from NC) in August.  It should maybe be a sad thing that we're all moving so far apart, but I'm actually happy about it.  In the increasingly global society in which we live, distance is but a number in many ways.  And I'd like to think that my move to a foreign country has maybe inspired all these subsequent moves a bit.  Is that vain?

I can't wait to see what state the kitchen is in when I get back to my flat on Friday.  Ugh.

Cheers, y'all.

Goals for the summer.

I've been continuing to collect data.  I'm quite behind on transcribing, but I've got a long plane ride and an empty weekend between me and my next meeting with Ailsa, so that shouldn't be an insurmountable problem.  My ninth and final interview is tomorrow.

I went to the beach this past weekend.  I swam, boogie-boarded, and got satisfactorily less pale than I was when I arrived in NC.  My cousin Jennifer, her sister-in-law Tammy, Tammy's daughter Brittany, and Brittany's friend Juliana were all there as well.  We spend Saturday afternoon drinking alcohol on the beach.  My back is extremely red.  These two items may or may not be related.  Before driving back to Durham, I bought two magnets for my classmate George.  One is tasteful, the other slightly less so.  I also finished The Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon and made significant progress on Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick.  I'm determined to finish the latter before I leave on Thursday, so that I can leave it here.  While decent, it's not Ms. Chadwick's finest and I'm not going to be eager to read it again.

I only arrived at the beach after driving to Greensboro and then Indian Trail (a suburb of Charlotte), the first to conduct an interview, the second to visit my brother.  As Greensboro and Indian Trail are both in the opposite direction from the beach, this made for a very long driving day.  However, I had the pleasure(?) of driving through Scotland County, NC on my way from Indian Trail to the beach on US-74.

***

Goals for the summer:

- Write at least 300 words per day, including weekends, starting June 12.
- Have my thesis basically on its feet by July 31.
- Travel to Stromeferry, Shetland, and Uist. Also Kendal Calling, if the chief planners are still interested.

Tentative daily schedule:
- Get up at 9:30am. Eat breakfast. Write 300 words. Do various internet nonsense, to get it out of my system.
- Lunch.
- Go to the library no later than 1pm. Analyze data and/or read literature until 7pm (5pm on Fridays and weekends). Dinner.
- Read, cross-stitch, or socialize until bedtime.

I may be excused from data analysis and reading papers on the weekends, but not writing. If I am going to be computer-less (i.e. traveling) over the weekend, I must have a surplus word-count before I go.

Tentative travel dates:
- June 22-24: Stromeferry
- Mid-July: Shetland
- July 27-29: Kendal Calling
- Third or fourth week of August: Uist

Mull/Iona/Staffa are tentatively on for September, as are Islay/Jura for October. I figure I can do the Great Glen Way anytime I have a spare week.

All these travel plans mean that I absolutely cannot spend any frivolous money. I'm taking a bunch of books back to Scotland with me, and I'll go ahead and buy the next three Outlander books when I get back, and then it's NO MORE BUYING BOOKS. I also need to rein in my food spending.

And, break!

Cheers, y'all.

Research!

Research owns my life right now.  By June 7, I will have done more work and more writing than I've done all year.  Mostly, I did not realize how time-consuming transcribing the interviews would be.  An hour-long interview equals 20 pages, and takes at least four hours to transcribe, more if the interviewee is a rapid talker.  Yesterday's interview ran over 100 minutes, with a very rapid and animated talker.  I got loads of interesting information out of it, but it is going to be BITCH to transcribe.  I'm also about 2 days behind in my transcriptions at the moment.  I know that if I get really up a creek with it, I can enlist help...but it's something of a point of pride to get all this done by myself.  Plus, there's a lot of value in hearing oneself speak, and in getting as well-acquainted with one's data as one does whilst transcribing it oneself, and I'm reluctant to give that up.

It's going to be a challenge to see all the people I want to see and do all the things I want to do on this visit.  This is compounded by the fact that my car broke shortly before I got here, so I'm sharing cars with my parents, which takes some planning.  I went to the beach last weekend, and I want to go again next weekend, which may prove problematic because my aunt, cousin, and a few of their friends are using the house there next weekend (but I'm definitely going to pull the "it's my house and I'm not going to see it again this side of Christmas" card on that one).  I would also kind of like to see my brother's new digs in the Charlotte area, but the likelihood of that seems remote at the moment.

I thought three weeks would be plenty of time, but I'm seeing the reasoning behind my supervisor's question, "Is that going to be enough time for you to visit?" more and more each day.

Cheers, y'all.