From Tartan to Tar Heels

I've been travelling for a couple of weeks, and I'm going to post my travel diary from that time, but for tonight and tomorrow (and probably Friday) I'm going to jump ahead of myself.

Tomorrow Scotland votes.
Tomorrow I vote.

Sitting watching the news this evening, just a few hours before polls open, it's really hitting me how big an event this is.

Regardless of what I think, which side comes out ahead tomorrow, this is an incredible occasion. At the end of the day, when all has been counted, we'll all go home and talk about it, together, regardless of sides. We'll be in the pub on Friday together no matter what side we've been advocating. There might be some here and there who've made one side then the other look more aggressive, but the majority of people have been going through this build up and decision making period without it splitting us apart.

Tomorrow I will go to the polling station.

Early on Friday morning, we'll have the results of one of the biggest decisions in Scotland in a very long time. I'm very happy to be living in the country today.

My friends page is my home page, so I see it every time I open safari, but I still suck at finding time to post, apparently.

Some memorable points since I last updated:
1)C, the boyfriend, got a really good offer from a university in Texas, and decided to go there. I visited him for a few weeks in NC earlier this summer, and I'm going to go over to Texas for a visit in October for a few weeks. Winter is going to be hard because we won't see each other until April or May. But, we're pretty committed at this point *g* We'll put up with time apart because there will (baring any disasters) be plenty of time together later *g*

2) I finished my dissertation at the end of March, and handed it in a whole 4 days early - the earliest I've handed in any piece of written coursework ever, and it's the most important one. (I got a B for it, which I'm happy with.)

3) I graduated! I'm done, done, done! So much free time now, in theory. I got a 2:1 overall, which is what I'd expected & hoped for - again, I'm happy with that.

4) I'm working at the Commonwealth Games at the moment, serving food in the Athletes Village. There are pluses & minuses to the job. Cool to see the athletes up close & get to chat with them, but it's also a really boring job a lot of the time.

5) I'd decided probably a couple of years ago that I wanted to do another ski season this winter, and applied to lots of jobs. After three interviews with different companies, I've signed a contract with a medium-sized company who I'm really looking forward to working with. I'll be a chalet host, serving food & doing the housekeeping, but won't be assigned to a particular resort or building until after staff training. I do know that it'll be in France though, and almost certainly somewhere I"ve never visited before, which again I'm looking forward to.

Those are really the big things from me just now. I'm going to try (again, I know) to blog more often. I read your posts, even if I don't always comment. Thank you for still reading mine when they have been so sporadic over this past very busy year.

I was going to do a February wrap-up post, and then March started being very busy. The short version is that I spent most of February working on my dissertation, with a brief interlude where I went to Skye with a large group of international exchange students, which was really good fun.

The first fun thing from March was that I went home for the weekend with my brother to celebrate his birthday. It was his 21st, but, he says, he has house parties with his friends all the time, he wanted to do something different, catch up with the family, and see the dogs. It's always nice to go home - I love living in Edinburgh, but the house on the west coast is just so peaceful compared to the city. And at this point in my university career, it's just nice to get a breather. There were dog walks, balloons, and birthday cake, making for a very nice weekend *g*

The weekend after that was my birthday party. I'm into the stage between significant birthdays for a while, but this one means I got to spend the whole week singing Blink 182 songs - contrary to what the lyrics would have you believe, it turns out people do love you when you're 23 ;-) I was lucky enough to have some of my friends from summer camp make the trip from various parts of the country to come and visit, including one girl who is on exchange here at the moment from the States. So it was a really good opportunity for a catch up. A couple of my friends from high school also came, which was really good.

In general, the whole weekend was full of spending time with people that were overdue seeing, and remembering why we stay friends with the distance: because the times in between don't matter. When we see each other, it is as though we are carrying on a conversation from yesterday. I'm very grateful for the reminder, and that I have these people in my life.

Hmm. I meant to post this in the first couple of days of February, and now we're half way through the month. Oh.

January was fun, and busy. The boyfriend was here from America for December/January, so we spent new year at home watching the fireworks on tv from our warm spot beside the fire, instead of shivering in the cold at the street party. Then it was back to Edinburgh for a few days before Uni started up again. I've got 2 courses this term, plus my dissertation to finish, which counts as another course. Each of the other 2 gets just 2 taught hours per week, but although that doesn't sound like much, I spend so much of the rest of the week doing my prep reading and notes for those classes that it's not the easy time some people seem to think when I explain how little class time we have.

Anyway, I made it through January of classes. My course on Roman Games is very interesting, and the lecturer is funny, and interesting - I think this is his first teaching job, and he's more in touch with student attitudes than some of them are. My other class is Didactic Poetry, and I think it has the potential to get more interesting soon, but at the moment we're focussing on Lucretius' 'The Nature of Things', and his philosophies. I am really not a fan of philosophy, or at least not any of the Greek and Roman stuff I've had to look at in the last few years.

Apart from uni, I waved the boyfriend, C, off on his plane at o-dark-thirty in the morning at the end of the month. This is a very uncertain time now with what the two of us will be doing next, but we're determined to do it together, at least. He's trying to get in to a postgraduate program somewhere, and has applied to some places in the USA and some in the UK. We'll see where he gets in to, and where he ends up accepting, and then I'll figure out where I'm going to be over the summer and in the autumn. For now, we're both getting very impatient waiting to hear back from the universities. I'm hoping we'll know by mid-March, otherwise I might have gone a little mad from waiting *g*

I'll try to post again soon, so that the next one isn't quite so rambling.

I can't believe it's the end of the year already. It's been such a great year, from my second term abroad at UNC, to travelling at the end of that year, getting lots of writing done over the summer, going on the family holiday in the summer with my boyfriend, and then with my first experience at a convention in November.
It's hard to guess at how this year might turn out: so much will be changing. I'm at that point where the first question everyone asks is "What's your dissertation about?" quickly followed by "So what are you going to do after you graduate?"

I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. Apart from write, I don't know what I want to do with myself next. When the applications start opening in spring, I'm going to apply to work in a ski resort for the winter - I've really been planning that since before I started uni, I enjoyed it so much. But over the summer before that, and what I do after that, I really don't know at the moment.

So many things come down to waiting to see where The Boyfriend ends up going for his postgrad course. If he's at a university in the UK, then I'll be looking for some kind of job near there, and probably moving down once my lease in Edinburgh finishes in August. If he's somewhere in America... we'll see. That's harder to figure out.

At least for now, the next few months are planned: last semester of uni, writing the rest of my dissertation, and studying for the exams. Those are the big things I'm looking at at the moment, my top priorities. The rest will come as I go along.

So my last post was in April. And it's November. Oh dear.

To sum up the last few months:
* I travelled to some really interesting places in the US in May before I came home.
* I had a few quiet weeks at home with the family, going on old favourite dog walks, getting a lot of writing done, and generally enjoying being at home again.
* My boyfriend came over from North Carolina for a few weeks to visit, and we did a lot of touristy things, at home, in Glasgow and in Edinburgh.
* I started my last year of university, and free time to do things like blog quickly disappeared.
* This past weekend, I went to my first ever convention - World Fantasy Con - in Brighton, and absolutely loved it.

And now, here I am, writing on a chilly Tuesday morning while Edinburgh is eaten by the Nothing. I'm still reading people's posts, just not making so much space to write my own posts. I'll try to get back in the habit of posting, but time will tell if I actually manage to or not.

One of the challenges of this year has been living in a dorm, sharing a 'kitchen' with 4 floors of students & one tiny microfridge with my roommate. I'm used to having a kitchen in the apartment, shared with 3-4 other people and just a few steps from my room. Nevertheless, I was determined not to get a meal plan where I'd be paying a minimum of $9 per meal, and eating the same food week after week.
( Collapse )

( Collapse )

I keep meaning to write more about being in NC. I have all these posts stored up in my head, and then life keeps happening and I don't get them written. In the meantime, a meme, because this one is short & I haven't posted anything in far too long.

eneit gave me the age 20.

When I was 20
I lived in: Mostly Edinburgh, for my 1st & 2nd years of university, but I spent the summer in the New Jersey pine barrens working at camp.
I was dating: Was kind of seeing the high-school sweetheart before summer, had a 'summer fling' with the guy who continues to be Nothing But Trouble in an I-like-it-but-its-bad-for-me way. Then got back to Edinburgh in the autumn and had a nice, guy-free rest of the year.
I drove: Didn't have my licence.
I feared: Dying. To the point that for a lot of that spring I would wake up feeling sick and have to stay up until I was too tired to be awake anymore, because otherwise I was too tense to sleep. Luckily I got to camp at the end of May, and somehow managed to push it all away and get things back under control, which I've kept.
I worked at: Just university work during the year, but then as a lifeguard & cabin counsellor in the summer :)
I wanted to be: Relaxed, at camp, happy.

I'm now: 21 (almost 22)
I live in: Chapel Hill, NC, USA. I'm in the middle of a study-abroad year through uni.
I am dating: A lovely southern gentleman who drives an orange pick up, disagrees with me on anything & everything related to politics, and spoils me rotten.
I drive: Still no licence, but I should finally be able to fit in lessons this summer.
I fear: Something happening to my parents or brother while I'm so far away.
I work at: Just uni work at the moment, and trying to wrestle a manuscript into something I can send out into the world.
I want to be: A writer :) I'm working harder at making that dream into a reality than I ever have, so we'll see how that goes.

So as a reminder, I'm studying abroad this year in Chapel Hill, NC, instead of home at Edinburgh Uni. I've been meaning to write about this all semester, and am finally getting around to it now.

( Collapse )