Wander Life

Scottish Holiday (with a hint o' Irish)

December already.  The fall semester's over; the first snow has fallen in Glasgow; and I had the good fortune of being visited by a good friend.  A very good end to the year, indeed. 

Bri and I have been friends since our California-living days, and we've had quite a few adventures 'round the world.  So it was great to have her visit and be able to explore Scotland and Ireland together. 

Per usual, the full photo album can be found on Facebook, but here's a glimpse of what we saw....

St. Andrews:

Belfast:

Dublin:

The drive between Dublin and Belfast (up and down the Irish east coast):

Scotland's scenery by rail:

Edinburgh:

Stirling:

Of course, Glasgow:

And plenty of good times together:

So, thanks for the visit, Bri.  It definitely made this holiday season a happy one!

And to everyone else, here's wishing you a very merry Christmas:

...and a happy New Year!

The Glasgow Life

Glasgow quite literally rocks.  Live music can be found pretty much any day of the week, and the music scene is well-known enough to attract bands from around the world.  Which, nicely for me, includes some sounds from home (the States in general, as well as some specifically from the PacNW).  Last week, I saw My Morning Jacket with a Seattle band called The Head and the Heart (pictured above) opening.  Last spring I got to see The Decemberists (from Portland) when they came to town; The National put on a good slow-down show in August; and Wilco rocked it a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, indeed, Glasgow is not in want of music.  

Glasgow's also got game.

Ultimate frisbee is getting into full swing again, and Glasgow University's team, FarFlung, is once again making the tournament circuit.  Last weekend, the mixed (co-ed) indoor regional tourament was held in Edinburgh, and I'm happy to report that we did well enough to qualify for Division 2 Nationals.  I will also be playing on the women's team again this year, but regional qualifiers aren't until February.

So, as you can see, life in Glasgow's not all about the books.  It has some good study breaks, too.  :)    

 

Bookin' It

The second year of my MFA in Creative Writing is underway.  Which means this is the scene for much of my day:

Sometimes I go to coffee shops, twice a week I go to Number 5 University Gardens for classes, and, of course, I run errands, go for my daily run and engage in various social activities.  But I spend a good part of my day, most days, right here.  Reading and writing.

Our reading list this year is pretty hefty, a lot of classics, as well as some popular and not-so-popular modern stuff.  Thanks to my folks (mailing and bringing some books from home), Amazon (UK) and several pretty good local used bookstores, my collection over here is growing rapidly.  I think I brought 10 books with me when I moved to Glasgow a year ago.  Now I've got this:

Thankfully, I like books.  (I also like my elephant bedside lamp, but I'll refrain from going any further on that tangent or else I'll probably end up listing everything in my flat that I appreciate and why.)  But, yes, books.  I'm spending a lot of time with them, and I have to say, they're pretty good company.  

So, that's how I'm spending my time as the weather gets a little colder and the days get a little shorter.  Hope everyone else finds some good company this fall, as well.  (And I'll try to continue to keep the right sidebar ["In My Backpack"] up to date for anyone who's interested in knowing who my friends of the moment are.)     

 

Back to School Special: A great time with family!

So, summer's officially over.  My classes started up again this week, and, yup, I'm right back into a mountain of books (and what a beautiful mountain it is!).  But before I get too far along into the new school year, I wanted to give one last recap of the summer.  'Cause I had family visit!  And it was fantastic.  Per usual, you can check out Facebook for the complete album, but here are a few highlights:

The Loch Ness Explorers Team: lil' bro Jake, Uncle Ron, Aunt Jane & Aunt Dee.  They came to Scotland for 10 days, and I went up to Inverness (a town in the Highlands about three hours north of Glasgow) to spend it with them.  And we actually saw A LOT of Scotland.  We took day trips from Inverness to check out the west coast (and the Isle of Skye), the way-up-north (if you look on a map, you can see Scotland's kind of a weird shape, but yeah, we went nearly as far north as you can get), Shetland Island, sights of natural beauty, historical sights, Scottish culture (including some good food) and lots more.  It was a great time.  Fun to explore more of Scotland and fun to spend time with people I love.

Dunrobin Castle on the northeast coast of Scotland.  Pretty fancy.

With a great view of the North Sea.

Eilean Donan Castle.  I mean, you gotta admit, Scotland does have some pretty great castles.

Castle Explorers.

Shetland ponies on Shetland Island.

And we even saw a viaduct.  

So, yeah, here's to the wonderful visit - seeing Scotland with you was a blast!

Jake agrees.

Postcards & Portfolios

The reasons for my lack of blog posting in July:

Czech Republic

Slovakia

Hungary

Serbia

Montenegro

Croatia

...and Bosnia

Then, after traveling Europe for three weeks, it was time to return to Glasgow and get back to the whole working-on-a-graduate-degree thing.  Which, as of yesterday, I just completed.  Well, completed the first degree: an MLitt in Creative Writing (which, for you Latin speakers, means Magister Litterarum...or, in nonLatin, means Master of Letters).  I still have another year to complete master's degree #2, the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, but since those classes don't start again for another month, I think I can technically say I'm done.  Done for now.  Done mastering the letters.  Woo hoo!

So, yup, that's where July went.  Flew by in a blaze of hostels, trains and typing.  Up next is the very exciting visit from some family: my Uncle Ron, Aunt Dee, Aunt Jane and lil' bro, Jake.  Time with them will be the perfect way to send the summer holiday out with a bang.  Can't wait!

Until then, I'll be here in Glasgow, taking a break from writing...except for maybe a few postcards.  : )  [By the way, there are more photos of the seven-country trip around East & Central Europe on Facebook...if you feel so inclined.]  Hope the summer is winding down (winding down already?!) well for all of you!  

Summer Here & There

One of the nice things about being in Europe is that there are A LOT of countries relatively close by.  In the States, it's easy to visit other states.  In Europe, it's easy to visit other European countries.  A cheap flight and an hour or two later, and you can find yourself surrounded by a different culture, a different language, different money, different food, and, yeah, just general differences.

So, it seems only natural that I should get out and explore a bit this summer.  Since a friend of mine (from China teaching days) was going to Germany & Denmark for work, that seemed like a good place to start.  Per usual, the full photo album is on Facebook, but here are a few highlights....  

Berlin.  If you like art and/or history, you'll love Berlin.  And what a train system.  Definitely makes me want to check out more of Germany.

Then on to Denmark.  

Um, yeah, pretty.

We went through the country by train and stopped in the middle, the northern-most tip and Copenhagen.  And I loved everywhere.  Seriously, a very beautiful country, beautiful language, good food.  The only negative is that, with the exchange rate from US dollars to Danish kroners, things are pretty expensive.  Other than that, it might be one of my new favorite places.  I suppose it might be a different story in the winter, but in the summer, at least, it's pretty stellar.

I feel like I could just put picture after picture up here - just a lot of very cool sights.  Any place with water and colorful/impressive buildings makes me pretty happy.  

And how can seeing Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid in Copenhagen bring anything but a smile to your face.

And, of course, seeing a friend is pretty great, too.  Thanks for a great trip, R!

 

So, yes, the summer of here & there is a good one, thus far.  July holds a trip to Prague, and in the meantime, I'll carry on writing (15,000 word portfolio due in August. Hmm, I'm thinking...travel writing? :)) and maybe taking some little trips around Scotland.  Like this one last weekend to the Isle of Skye:

Nice, indeed. 

The Great May Days

What a month!  I started out the month by working on a sheep farm in northwest Scotland and finished it out with roadtripping around the UK with my parents.  And, in between, there was some frisbee-playing and Flat-Stanley-picture-taking.  Pret-ty awesome.  

Hopefully, you're all on Facebook, so you can check out the photos there, but, as is my fashion, I'll recap some of the highlights here.

First, a beach frisbee tournament in Aberdeen (NE Scotland).  (And, yes, Stanley got to go.)

Next, the sheep farm.  I spent a week there, helping with the lambs, driving the land rover on errands and putting in a garden.

This was the farm where I worked, near a town called Ullapool.  10,000 acres of sheep, deer, lakes, hills, cows, and a waterfall.

Feeding time.

Running errands (and left-handed shifting).  It took 30 minutes to make it down the driveway.

And all in all, a great sheep-filled week.

Then...!  My parents visited!  Ta da!

Man, we had a blast.  We started out in Glasgow (psst, that's where I live in Scotland) and then spent about 10 days driving in a big loop around the UK.  North Wales, south Wales, west England, central England, east England, Edinburgh, and back to Glasgow.  Amazing.  We ate fish n' chips, full English breakfasts, meat pies, haggis, scones and Tex Mex.  We drove on the left, slept in B&Bs, researched some genealogy, saw castles and monuments, museums, beautiful scenery and Welsh ponies.  It was fun, fun, fun, and though the summer just started, I'm going to have to say, yes, a contender for a highlight of the summer, for sure.

I hardly know what pictures to highlight on this post - there were so many stellar sights.  The full (or more-full, anyway) album is on FB, but I'll just give you sample here:

North Wales

South Wales

Stratford-Upon-Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace)

Oxford

London

Yorshire

And back up to Scotland (Edinburgh)

Quite the trip.  Quite the gang!

Up next...time to get back to some writing and summer in Glasgow.  My next visitors will be my little bro, my Aunt Jane and my Uncle Ron & Aunt Dee in September, so until then, I'll be keeping busy with my usual routine.  I am taking one trip in a couple weeks, though, to visit friend Rebes (we taught together in China my first year) while she's in Germany and Denmark.  So, that's what's up next on the horizon.  I've never been to either country before, so...should be another fun wandertrip.  : )

So, until then, hope all of you are having a great Memorial Day and starting to see some sunshine.  May was great, so bring on June!   

School's Out! (sort of)

You may remember that the reason I am here is to walk the halls (or, in this case, cloisters) of learning.

And, oh yes, it's been good times.  (Here we are at one of our reading parties in the anatomy museum.)

I still need to write over the summer in order to submit the final portfolio in August for completion of the MLitt in Creative Writing degree (which is the first-year Masters; the second year is for the MFA in Creative Writing)...

(notice my new little plant friends)

...but still, when I turned in my two final papers for the term this week, I definitely got that end-of-the-school-year feeling.  Contributing to that feeling is the fact that it's been super nice and sunny recently.  

(the nearby park and botanic garden)

And also, my friend Rachel visited, and we traveled up to a nearby island (and what says "summer vacation" more than a trip to an island?).

Ok, maybe it wasn't the lay-out-on-a-beach kind of trip to an island, but it was very nice, all the same.  Here are a few of the sights (these are isles Mull & Iona): 

Dunollio Castle, in the town of Oban, as seen from the ferry ride over to Mull.

Ruins of a nunnery on the Isle of Iona.  (It's an island with some pretty historical significance; worth checking out on Wikipedia.)

We also got to see a lot of sheep, (altogether now, "Aww...."), which I really enjoyed just 'cause I thought they were cool-looking.

So chill.

And I think they found us pretty interesting, as well.

Either that, or they were just annoyed by us.

Either way, it was a pretty amazing place to see.

Fun to see more of Scotland.

And, of course, always fun to have a visit from a friend.

Next up, my parents are visiting the last two weeks of May (woo-hoo!); I'm traveling up north next week to work on a sheep farm (spending a week doing WWOOFing, which is where you work a few hours a day on a farm in exchange for room and board - I'll let you know how it goes, but definitely should be an adventure 'cause it's way up in the Highlands); I've got some ultimate frisbee tournaments going on (this weekend a beach tournament in the northeast; another beach tournament in St. Andrews in a couple weeks); and I'm participating in a school project for my sweet little second-cousin, Amanda, in which I take pictures of this paper guy named Flat Stanley.  Like so:

(This is a view from my school, looking down on the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery.)

So, yes, I think it's going to be a very good summer vacation, indeed.  Stay tuned, but until then...Happy Easter!

 

Day in the Country

A 45-minute north of Glasgow is Loch (Gaelic for "lake") Lomond.  Pretty pretty.

Fun to go with these two.  

And always fun to have a day in the country.  Thumbs up, Scotland.  

 

Friendly Farming

I've mentioned this before: the downside of moving from place to place is that you're always saying goodbye.  But the upside, of course, is that you're also always saying hello.  Hello to some cool new peeps.  My mom mentioned recently that I haven't been very good at taking pictures of people, so yesterday, I took my camera on an outing with some friends to the local farmer's market.  Here are a few people whom I've met this year and who have made my time in Glasgow all the better.  (Plus, you get to see a couple of my favorite market booths.)

Miles buying jam.  Great guy, great jam.  (I do, indeed, buy my jam here.  Thumbs up on the rhubarb ginger.)

 

Good bread always brings a smile to my face, too, Izabela.

 

 Eric buying potatoes...

...made the vendor happy, at least.  

So, there ya go.  Good people.  Good farmer's market.  Good times.