Home is Where You Don't Need an Adapter Plug

Hi from New York! I've officially been home from Scotland for just about a month now, so I thought it would be a good time to wrap up my thoughts on Scotland. There are a trillion things for me to say about my time in Scotland, and there are posts still in the works about my travels and my final, wonderful week in Scotland with my best friend, but I thought I'd wrap it up for now with a list of things I'll miss about my time in Edinburgh. 

I took this on my last day in Edinburgh. View of the castle from Princes Street.

life's a tangled web (of cellphone calls and hashtag, 'i don't know's)

Travel posts are turning out to be much more intimidating and harder to complete than I had anticipated. While I work on them, I thought I'd put together a quick post about the 5 Seconds of Summer concert I went to last night in Glasgow. 

A Sunday by the Sea

Yesterday  Aaron sent me a message that said "how much work do you have to do tomorrow?" and I knew right away that I was had. I do have a lot to do today, especially before we leave for Ireland, but Aaron sent me two photos of North Berwick and all my willpower left without a second thought.

Homestay Weekend

I didn't actually stay in this castle (Lowther Castle) but we can pretend

One of the tenets of my study abroad program is the mandatory homestay weekend that all students must take part in.  During a homestay weekend, students are sent off to live with a family for the weekend, which will hopefully give some insight into what real life - not student life - is like in the UK. This past weekend was mine.

What I Did This Week

Snow falling on Drummond Street on Feb 13, the day before my family arrived. Snow's not uncommon here, but it rarely ever sticks because it's not quite cold enough. 

This week was probably one of the best I've had since I came to Edinburgh, due to a few different things. Firstly, and probably most importantly, my family came to visit this week! My brother's high school (read: my old high school) had the week off for February break, which just happened to coincide with the University of Edinburgh's Innovative Learning Week (for some students, it's a week to present projects, for me it was a week off). So, my parents and brother flew out and arrived on Valentine's Day to hang out and explore Edinburgh with me. 

It seems as though my family brought that blinding winter sunshine that is so typical to New York with them, because we had incredible weather all week. This hasn't happened to me at all in Edinburgh yet - although there have been a decent number of sunny, rain free days, I hadn't yet experienced this many in a row. My family visiting, the great weather, and the lack of school definitely contributed to my improved mood this week. 

Write It Out

Not an exciting travel post, and no pretty pictures of Edinburgh today. Instead, I'm talking about calendars! Because that's really exciting!

agenda: Ban.do (sold out)

One of the biggest things that stressed me out when I first arrived in Edinburgh was the thought of being here until May. There was something about the blank space of 140 days between January first and May twenty-first that really, really freaked me out. I knew in the back of my mind that pretty soon school would start and that would help fill in some of the time, but it still scared me. It felt like forever. It still feels like a pretty long time.

On February first I was really excited. I had made it an entire month in Edinburgh, despite telling myself over and over on day three that I was going home, that I wouldn't have to stay. I'd been desperate to go home, I'd told myself that I would be going home, I'd cried and wished I would wake up at home, but I had made it an entire month. But then I realized, or remembered, that I'm here for four months. And while I had made it through the first one, I still had three more to go. I wasn't even halfway there yet.

Scotland So Far

Edinburgh as seen from the inside of the castle

I've been in Scotland for just over 3 weeks now,  which is a pretty crazy thought, because it honestly feels like I've been here for a few months. I'm not quite sure it feels real yet, though - May seems like a very long ways away, and the fact that I'll be staying here until then is really daunting, so I try not to think about it. 

I spent a long time thinking about what I wanted to write in my very first post from Scotland, and how I wanted to say it. This trip honestly didn't start out the way I had hoped it would - namely, it started with a whole lot of tears and wondering what I had gotten myself into. I have since settled down a bit, though I want to record everything as honestly as possible. 

I think the value in recording how I'm experiencing Edinburgh honestly is twofold. One: it will help me to remember it correctly in the future, which is important, and Two: if someone else who I know is not loving or, in the future does not love, their study abroad experience, I hope that knowing that someone they know struggled as well will be helpful! There's a lot of pressure, I think, to love every single second of studying abroad. Everyone tells you that it's going to be the best time of your life, that you're going to miss it more than anything when you come home. I guess I think it's really important to acknowledge that not every second abroad is going to be absolutely incredible, and that sometimes it takes a while for you to feel okay in a new place. That being said, what follows is a mostly honest account of my first few weeks of being in Edinburgh + a bunch of really cool photos I took! If you don't feel like reading everything, I still encourage skimming through the photos! This is a really beautiful place (especially when the sun is out).

Plane Playlist

Pretty much every fibre of my being wishes I could strut through the airport like Karlie Kloss on a good day - actually, even Karlie Kloss on a bad day. But, reality tells me that airport-Gwen will not suddenly grow ten inches in height, shrink like six sixes in jeans, and make $15 million overnight. So, while airport-Karlie can make her way through every terminal in the world glowing and stress-free and first class, airport-Gwen is likely going to be sweaty, stressed out, and showing the season's latest trend of crumbs from a Starbucks croissant all down the front of my shirt.

exactly what I won't look like this week

It's all good, though, because I will be beating airport-Karlie in one thing: my playlist.
Okay, Karlie Kloss probably also has a really good taste in music, but let me give myself this one. I have nothing else.
Anyone who knows me knows that music has been one of the most important and consistent things in my life since I was in middle school. I don't have any claims to musical talent or any knowledge of musical technique or theory, but I do, if I may say so myself, have a really sick taste in music - mostly because it's insanely eclectic and really, really bizarre.

So, before I take off for the UK, I thought it would be fun to share a playlist that'll get me through the day of traveling. And, since I don't have the space, time, or patience to make a playlist that will last for the entire flight, what follows is a list of the top 20 songs I'll be listening to while I'm cruising at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic. (In no particular order, one song per artist, and also mostly new music or music that I just discovered because if I started going back in time we'd be here forever.)

Embrace it.

Over and Out

So, it's been ages. But I'm back again, and this time, hopefully, it's for real. This blog is changing themes a little bit as my life does the same - for the next five months, I'm leaving New York and moving to Edinburgh, Scotland to study English literature at the University of Edinburgh!

I'm headed out all alone - my dad is traveling with me for the first few days, but after that, it's all me, as I don't know a single person headed here this semester. Beyond that, I'm studying at a school that feels way out of my comfort zone with over 35,000 students (for reference, my school at home has 2,500) and a ranking as seventeenth best university in the world (my school at home isn't even the seventeenth best in the country). But, I'm excited as well. I've got friends all around Europe this semester (London, Paris, Madrid, Germany), and plans to make the most of this experience.

Hopefully, I'll be blogging regularly while I'm abroad and hopefully I'll be back here with success stories. New year, new country, probably the same me. But maybe I'll come back a little different. Who knows.

Catch ya on the other side of the Atlantic!

xx g