twenty-one

Every year around this time I subconsciously do the same thing. I make an inventory of my life, decide that I’m unsatisfied with certain aspects of it, and set out to create change. It’s not like this is an active decision. In fact, I usually don’t even realize I’m doing it until I start noticing that uneasy feeling, that feeling of needing to do things differently, of looking at myself and not being happy. This isn’t self depreciating at all, but, I figured out today, a need for constant reevaluation and moving forward with life. It’s like my brain is sending me signals: you’re older, you should be wiser, should be better, should be doing something to make yourself better. So in that light, the belated birthday post that I really couldn’t have made until today, not understanding why I was in a funk.

Inevitably, this self evaluation comes up dissatisfactory, and I turn to changing the obvious – how I look (this is probably why last year I cut all my hair off to chin length). This year I spent hours and hours looking at clothes, looking at hair and makeup and thank God not doing anything about my obsession, because the bank can’t handle that right now. This European culture is so centered around appearance that it’s practically exhausting. Everyone, it seems, is constantly buying things. The girls wear so much makeup that you can’t tell what their faces ought to look like. At first it made me uneasy because I stood out so much, because I don’t spend an hour figuring out what to wear every day and doing my face unrecognizable to the world. Now it makes me sad because so no one needs to do that. Being so worried about how you look means you aren’t happy with how you are on the inside, and that’s not the kind of person I care to be.

The boy and I have been making a conscious effort to read the Bible together every day, and in addition to bringing us closer on several levels, I’m starting to see things in a different light. None of these things here matter – not clothes or how people see you or going and to be seen. There’s a great song by Lecrae, “Identity,” which says “I’m not the shoes I wear, I’m not the clothes I buy, I’m not the house I live in, I’m not the car I drive … nothing on this green earth, identity is found in Christ.” Proverbs 31 talks about the same thing: "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I want to be like that, not like these girls here – or at home, for that matter. Not just for when I get married, but for me. There’s a great website about this if anybody’s interested:  http://www.gci.org/bible/poetry/prov31.

This year I spent the birthday happily – just a quiet night at a café with some friends and live music and a sinfully delicious chocolate cake. There was no going out, no pressuring to drink or get drunk, and for that I was so grateful. I’ve found good friends here, the kind that accept you for who you are. And, although it sounds so painfully worn out and cliché, the fact is that people who want you to be someone you aren’t really aren’t people you want around you anyway.

We also went to Loch Ness on Saturday – and no, we did not capture the monster. But we had an incredible time. I’m anxious to go back to the Highlands in the spring, and hopefully get another few hours of glorious sunshine.

we had nothing, we had not much, we had very little, we had everything

last night was pancake night. and although ours looked nothing like the ones above, and more like little bitty baby pancakes all thin with crisp edges and wonderful doughy middles, and some more than slightly burned they were still very good with lots of maple syrup and whipped cream. my flat's kitchen is pretty small for twelve people all trying to cook different things at the same time, but we still managed by eating and cooking in shifts to make two batches of pancakes as well as scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. it was choatic and loud and messy and there were always dishes being washed and reused and washed again, and it was exactly like i've always imagined an italian kitchen to be - very fun and very exhausting, so that as soon as we'd finished eating we sat in a pancake stupor for about ten minutes before realizing that the kitchen was a disaster, and that we still needed to clean.

then we were told that pancake day isn't actually celebrated til march.
however, this is the first time that i've ever made pancakes from scratch and i am darn proud of them, and refuse to be upset about it.

the weekend in Glasgow was great; lots of shopping and wandering and discovering of little cafes with hot chocolate to die for. we saw the cathedral (the only church not damaged by the Reformation in the 1650s, which i now know entirely too much about due to Early Modern Class) and its necropolis, which was huge and grand and would have been entirely gloomy and gothic if the sun hadn't decided to (finally) make an appearance and illuninated the entire thing with glorious light and warmth.

claire and i at our favorite cafe (we literally spent hours there)

inside the church, at the tomb of St Mungo (harry potter reference)

there are more pictures on the facebook, which is a lot nicer about uploading pictures and doesn't take nearly as long.

oh, and i promise that i am actually doing work here too.

somewhat.

lately ...

i haven't been sleeping much.

life has been a measure of places visited, times with friends, and pictures taken.

i've eaten too much chocolate.

i haven't cared.

i've been happy.

i've been thinking about home and how this is starting to feel like it.

So apparently when you start having a life again, it means you have so much less time to do blog things. Oops.

Last weekend was my homestay, in this tiny little town called Kirkoswald (literally, the church of Oswald), population, like, 200. It was the best of everything British: lots of sheep, rainy mornings and rainier days, more tea than I've had in the last 20 years, breakfasts of toast and jam, saying "ta, love" instead of thank you, and talk of hunting as an elite sport. The town and area were so perfectly English that I almost kept expecting Mr Darcy to come striding up out of the mist, black cloak billowing behind (sadly, no such thing happened).

[[Side note: I manged to forget my camera in my flat, so all pictures are stolen from my friend's facebook.]]

The family that I stayed with was hosting another Butler girl from my program, also named Emily, so we were called "the two Emilys" all weekend, and although I'm pretty sure I haven't met her before, we clicked so well it wasn't even funny.

But the homestay was incredible, despite all the rain. Our family (Judith and Paul, their two daughters Libby and Ella, and black lab Midge) host students frequently and had this knack of making you feel like a part of their family instead of a house guest. We compared odd sayings and food habits (apparently they had never heard of peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches and thought they sounded gross. Our immediate response was "what kind of children are you???").

They kept us busy constantly, with rock climbing lessons Saturday morning (and yes, I conquered my fear of heights enough to do it too), then a trip to Carlisle for the youngest to go shopping and us to see Carlisle Castle:

although of course it was rainy when we saw it. That night we had a casino night fundraiser for the girl's cricket club, where Emily and I discovered that we should never gamble for real and they gave raffle prizes of wine to twelve year olds. Back at the house the kids went to bed and the adults (so weird, being an adult now) sat around with - you guessed it - tea and more food talking about the big things in life. The next morning we took the girls to cricket practice and then sat in a tiny little cafe with the best Italian hot chocolate and appetizers probably on the whole island, talking more and laughing until we couldn't breathe. It was very sad leaving them, but they invited us back and gave us all their contact information so we could get in touch if we had any questions about anything at all (like what "rocket" is - turns out to be arugala). I'd like to think that they weren't just being nice, because I liked them a LOT, and Penrith station is only two hours from Edinburgh by train. It was so nice eating home food and feeling like part of a family, even for a few days.

In other news, we discovered that the fantastic bakery we visited in St Andrews also has a store in Edinburgh, so five of us are venturing there tomorrow, and then the reunion dinner for the Butler students is tomorrow as well. Strange to think that we've been here for a month now, long enough to have a reunion. Life here is moving so fast, it seems. Then Friday I'm off to Glasgow for the weekend.

And I promise not to forget the camera this time.

London was amazing too.

Meesh and I in front of Buckingham