It is beautiful to be back here. I just woke up from fourteen hours of sleep and am looking forward to an enjoyable day.
I left Concord, New Hampshire sometime Thursday afternoon. Like most of New England, I woke up earlier that morning to subzero temperatures and finished packing and emptying much of my room. Like when I left for Scotland in the fall, I was unsure if I would return to the room or home I had grown up in, and again this time, I imagined a move might occur while in Scotland. I feel as if I've detached myself a bit from the house. While it certainly is hard to imagine leaving, I know it will happen soon and that's it. Life continues to change and it's very good. I arrived at Concord Trailways around 2:30 pm and boarded my bus to Logan Airport. The men on the bus platform spoke of the cold and the bus seats reminded me of train or airplane seats. Leaving Concord for Interstate 93 South and passing the familiar landmarks of Concord brought back several memories. The turquois-roofed plaza of Fort Eddy Road, the heavy power lines by the highway and the tangle of transformers and metal that I thought was a playground when I was younger. And that restaurant, the Common Man, designed to look like a nineteenth century farm house, but built ten years ago. And of course the capitol. The gold dome. The New Hampshire flag and the U.S. flag. And the steeples. The many churches all across downtown. The square brick buildings. The snow-covered railroad tracks where the homeless live. It was barely nine degrees.
An hour and a half later, we arrived at Logan. I was very early for my flight, but I was able to drop my bag (a bit too heavy this trip) and bought a couple of bottles of water before settling into a chair to read for a couple of hours. My friend Julie, who I had planned to fly back over with arrived with her family around 7pm and we soon were through Boston security and by 9pm had boarded our flight to London. It was a semi-full flight, I had a window seat with an open seat next to me. I enjoyed hearing the accents again from the flight crew and many of the English passengers. Drinks and meals and boarding cards are passed out in the first two hours of the flight and once all that was finished I think I may have slept an hour before being awoken by the sunrise which we were chasing.
I think this may have been Wales.
We landed in London about 7:30am London time (2:30am Eastern time) and I soon found I was dizzy with exhaustion. Julie and I made our way through Heathrow, first boarding a tram then progressing through Border Patrol where our visas were checked before our biometric exam took our thumb and index finger prints before our irises were examined with a red light. We worked our way through security and found a comfy area to await our flight to Edinburgh. I drank more bottles of water and ate a sandwich before dozing off for a few ten minute increments. Around 11am, I was examining the departure board as Julie and I were trying to find our gate to depart for Edinburgh when my Creative writing classmate, Lydia from last semester stumbled upon us. She had flown in from Denver and was flying with us to Edinburgh. It was wonderful catching up with her as we found our gate and boarded for our flight to Edinburgh. Once in my seat, I fell asleep and awoke about fifteen minutes later when a basket of snacks was being passed to me. In the few minutes of the flight when I wasn't sleeping, I loved seeing the English countryside so snowy. Even as we landed in Scotland, the fields surrounding the city were covered with a dusting of snow. As the plane landed, the Scottish pilot annonced that tennis player Andy Murray had just won a match to reach the Australian Open. Most passengers cheered. It was exciting.
Once off the plane, Julie, Lydia and I found our bags were quick to arrive, and Julie and I said goodbye to Lydia to go board a bus for Ferrytoll Park and Ride where we would connect to St. Andrews. It was 1:30 pm in Edinburgh, and outside felt about 35-40 degrees yet it was felt so beautifully warm. It was wet and snow-raining, and the humidity in the air felt wonderful! Julie and I boarded the next bus, which came around 2pm and arrived in Ferrytoll twenty minutes later. Our books were back out and we read for the next hour as we awaited our bus to St. Andrews. We ran into my academic sister, Anneka and it was fun catching up with her before we all boarded the bus. I soon fell asleep and found an hour later when we arrived in Glenrothes, the snow had been piling up. It had snowed throughout our bus ride from Ferrytoll, but the roads and ground were so wet it hadn't piled up to much. Most of the road signs, though, were covered in snow and the roads were a mushy brown slush. In Glenrothes, I texted my friend who lives there about the snow, and he said it had snowed all day and night but just started to stay on the ground. About thirty minutes later, we arrived in St. Andrews and were off to our residences. I met up with my friend, Susanna, for dinner and found St. Andrews was cold and snowy, but it was wonderful to be back. :)
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