[editor's note: Two years ago in late July, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland for a weekend, with food poisoning. Today I am back there on a hike with some Germans, hopefully without food poisoning. Through the magic of the internet and auto-posting, I present the following.]
You guys, I have been in Glasgow for a month! I can't believe it's been a month already. Things are going so, so well - this blog has sort of shown the ups and downs of the first few weeks of moving to a new country by myself, but I definitely feel like each day is better than the last. There's a lot of things that I am still working out - like what side of the street and which side of the stairs to walk on. (This is more complicated than you'd expect.) Sometimes I still have difficulties figuring out where I would go to buy things - we don't have Wal-Mart or Target or CVS here - but this is getting better. Some days I wake up and just really want to see something instantly recognizably American, like peanut butter and jelly or the word "eggplant", and some days I want be able to talk to someone from home and not have to wait for 7pm to be able to do so. But moving to a new place by yourself is an emotional rollercoaster, let alone a new country or a new continent! I think I am doing very well. I have tentative friends! It's all very exciting.
It's an amazing opportunity to be here, and even more of an amazing opportunity to be working with the man who invented my field in addition to meeting all these other important linguists and literary people across three institutions (Strathclyde, Glasgow University, the University of Edinburgh). I am very, very lucky. There's no second-guessing crossing an ocean to do something and the more I am getting into what I am actually doing the more I am absolutely certain this is was absolutely 100% the right choice for me. I love all the work I am doing, and the people around me are so passionate about their work, so deeply involved that I can't imagine them doing anything else. I've been in contact with all these important linguistics people - the other day I met the woman who headed the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. (No big deal or anything...only one of my life goals achieved! She was so interested in what I had done and what I am doing here.) Glasgow Uni and Strathclyde are already both aggressively courting me for their PhD program next year; I just want to tell them to cool off a little bit!
I can't believe this is my life. I am so, so lucky.
I definitely still feel like I have a giant American flag tattooed on my forehead, but with every day I feel more integrated into Scottish life. Maybe soon I will start talking with a Scottish accent. (Or at least write a blog post about it, as I keep meaning to.) Or maybe that will just have to wait for month two...
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