enter the haggis

Happy Burns Night! Though it has been pointed out to me by a number of native Scots, Scotland doesn't really do holidays. Well, I mean, they do, they don't feel remotely obligated to celebrate anything ever. Scotland is a really apathetic place, unless it is something about being "English", in which case they get VERY nationalistic about not being English. As a result I just sort of figured that everyone would get VERY excited about today being birthday of their almost-patron saint, poet Robert Burns. (They did not, in true form.) Today is one of those would-be big holidays that people supposedly do things for, but they're not required.

What do people do to celebrate a poet, you ask?

They hold Burns Suppers which are formal dinners with a bunch of thoroughly absurd traditions, including an entire speech devoted to addressing the haggis, ceremonial slicings of the haggis itself, toasts to assorted members of the table and bagpipe interludes. I guess when you are drinking your weight in whisky this seems reasonable. From wikipedia, this is the order of a traditional Burns supper (click for links):

• Start of the evening
• Host's welcoming speech
• Entrance of the haggis
• Supper
• Immortal memory
• Appreciation
• Toast to the Lassies
• Reply to the Toast to the Lassies
• Other toasts and speeches
• Works by Burns
• Closing

I couldn't find any big public Burns parties - I think it's sort of like a traditional Thanksgiving celebration; it takes place at home. But that didn't stop me from having a Burns supper! A bunch of my international friends and I got together at a local, traditional Scottish pub to celebrate with haggis neeps & tatties and whisky. We didn't have to address any inanimate objects and we got to eat a lot of haggis (which is actually delicious). So maybe we sort of missed the excitement of the night (there were no never-ending toasts, replies, etc), but it was still nice.

And there was a lot of whisky...so we must have done something right.

aye, welcome back to glasgae!

Getting back to Glasgow was only 7000% easier than trying to get from the UK to the US a few weeks ago, despite the 2+feet of snow we had in the Northeast the day before I was flying, so we'll skip over that, as it's pretty boring ("Sitting on a plane!" "This plane is leaving the airport!" "We are landing!" "Welcome back to Heathrow DID YOU MISS US" "Scotland!"). I am still super-jet lagged and that's going to be ongoing for a while, unfortunately -I went out for pints earlier and nearly fell asleep on the table, came home, slept for an hour and a half, woke up panicked, and now can't get back to sleep...

But anyway.

You know what? Scotland's a ridiculous country. Like, I legitimately have no idea how this place manages to function, but I did miss it in it's own little way. While I was home I found myself longing for kettles (how do we live without these?), pub life, how small things are "wee", the ridiculous unpreparedness for any weather event that is not rain, mayo or butter in everything, severe Scottish liberalism about everything ever... even not entirely understanding anything anyone says to me again is kind of fun! (I admit I did not miss having everything close at 7 pm.)

And, you know, coming back and having friends who are excited to see you is nice too - it makes it a lot less scary than the first time I landed, knowing nothing about the city (and only one person on the continent!). This semester a bunch of people I know from UNH are doing study-abroads in the UK, so I think that this will prove to be a little less alienating. It's nice to know other people in the same time zone as you.

I think I've been doing really well at assimilating to Scottish/British culture. Glasgow's a mad city, as the Brits would say, but it's almost starting to make sense.

we've been going transcontinental

It's good to be back in America, but I won't lie - it's been a little strange. I'm sometimes slow to warm up to new places until I get really comfortable there. It's like coming home after your first semester of college - everything is comfortable at home, because you know it.

Though I do really like living in Glasgow, I had missed America a lot; there's a lot of familiar American things that I had taken for granted for the past 22 years. On the other hand, it was like reverse culture shock to come back to the States. I guess I've integrated myself into Scottish/UK culture pretty well. It helps that I'm surrounded 24/7 by Europeans.

My friends in the UK are convinced that everything about America is huge. I respectfully disagreed with parts of this - America itself is huge, you could travel for hours and only make it across a few states - until I came back. Everything IN America is massive! The roads, the portions, the stores.... I went to supermarket recently and was just floored by how much stuff we can cram into one store. I'd have to go to three separate places to get all the stuff we sell in one store. It's almost excessive. I was equally amazed by Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble. (The other thing that floors me is how expensive America seems to be - I've been thinking in pounds rather than dollars. Of course, when you convert everything, it evens out.)

Now, I am not a fashionista in any sense of the word. I can barely put together an outfit by myself - I have effectively one outfit in a few different colors. When I first came to Glasgow I was amazed at how fashionable and well-put-together everyone was; coming back I am amazed at what some people wear in public - American standards for clothing is appalling. I mean, cargo pants? really? Simultaneously I feel awkwardly underdressed for UK standards and overdressed for American standards, which is a little strange.

I even speak this really weird combination of American and Scots English that I didn't realize I was doing. While I was in London, I kept throwing people off by saying really Scottish things with an American accent, but I chalked that up to simply still being in the UK. I came back here and catch myself saying some really BrE/Scots things, like "hiya" and "cheers", which must make me sound really strange. The other day I said "jumper" - I don't even say jumper in the UK! It's nice to hear so many American accents and not have to mentally translate them, but I almost fell out of my chair when I heard a proper Boston accent the other day in the coffeeshop.

I have an ex-boyfriend who lived in Europe for some time growing up. There's a lot about him I understand now, that I didn't understand before. I've definitely noticed how I feel about a lot of things now have changed from three months ago. For starters, I am really alarmed at how self-centered and self-congratulatory American news is... Yes, there's a lot of America, but things that are happening in the world affect us much more than we think! Previously I was amazed at what UK news chooses to highlight about American news, but I came back and read the past months' TIME magazines, like the Person of the Year stuff and all of that, and it is SO us-centric, which is really kind of disappointing, you know?

I do miss how ridiculous the UK can be over simple things. But it's good to be back in the land of fame & excess.