It's Almost Over

Edinburgh, Scotland

We are approaching the end of our planned year of travel. We have had a lot of fun, but sometimes I catch Ronan when he thinks no one is looking, clicking through slideshows of homes for sale in Idaho Falls. Ha! Kris and I were talking the other day that a couple years ago we were dreaming of the day we would no longer own a home and we could travel the world free of the encumbrances of home ownership but that now we dream of having our own home again; of sleeping in our very own beds with our pillows and our blankets, of cooking in a kitchen that is all ours using utensils and appliances that we understand and can find, and of shopping in familiar stores where we know where to find what we need and where we know that we will find what we need. Traveling like this has really been fabulous in so many ways but it has also had its challenges.

Most of the challenges fall into a category of minor frustrations and inconveniences. For instance appliances that don't function or which are significantly different from what we are used to and thus require a steep learning curve to utilize. A good example being the radiant heating systems in our European homes: turning on the heat in one of our apartments included three different switches in three different closets in two different rooms, all this before turning the dials on the individual radiators in each room could be expected to do anything. In our flat in London, turning on the water to the shower unit (because yes, we had to actively switch on the water), turned off the heating system and if we forgot to turn the shower system back off, then the apartment would be freezing when we returned. Oh, and every single outlet in the houses here has its own off/on switch, no big deal once you know that (and judging from the sparks that fly if I plug something in when the switch is already on, probably a good idea), but confusing before you figure it out. We have experienced dryers that don't work, kitchens that have almost no supplies, kitchens that have bewildering supplies, homes that are just plain dirty, homes that are full of cockroaches (but not necessarily dirty... cockroaches are just a fact of life in Costa Rica). Sometimes we cannot find the house easily, or the directions to get in don't work, or the key isn't where it should be. I used to tell the kids about the horror of growing up in a family of seven living in a one bathroom house, well these kids have lived that horror now many times over. Our housing is usually small, and someone ends up sleeping in the living room. We have been wearing the same few outfits each for a year and most of us are ready to never see these particular clothing items again. We usually have no car and we often hike a mile to and from a grocery store, returning home each laden with full to bursting bags over both shoulders.  Shopping in a foreign country means giving up your favorite peanut butter and being prepared to experiment somewhat with foods that may not be familiar. And every couple weeks we pack everything back in our two bags each and take off  by foot and bus and train and plane dragging all our belongings behind us or on our backs. All of these though truly add to the adventure and are at worst minor frustrations and are frequently even entertaining (including the cockroaches).

But there are real challenges too and they are mostly about what we left behind. We left behind a community. Our dentist. Our ward. The YMCA. Our library. Familiar streets and stores and parks. There is a level of security in knowing where things are, when things are happening, and what you can expect from certain people and knowing that they know what to expect from you. We get a tiny bit of that feeling of community when we go to church each week, where it may not be the same people from week to week, and the meetings may not even be in English, but the basics are at least familiar. Besides that and one visit with cousins in England, we have been largely surrounded by people we do not know, who do not know us and who we are unlikely to meet again. It can be a tad isolating sometimes to always be in an introductory mode with everyone around you and to always be unfamiliar with your surroundings. It makes a simple trip to the grocery store just a little more complicated, a lot more if you also throw in a foreign language.

We left behind a home. Our home isn't even waiting for us to return to, all that remains to us of what was our home in Colorado is a ten by ten storage space behind a big orange door. We aren't even completely sure of everything that we will find when we start to open up those boxes stacked there. In fact I have a persistent fear that I probably got rid of something that I am really going to wish I still had and that I will only realize it when I have unloaded and sorted through it all. My other concern is that I will discover I saved stuff that I don't care about, so I guess the real fear is that the me a year and a half ago saved the wrong things for the me now. We miss having our own space though. Some of our homes this year have been great, some of them have been truly terrible, but none of them have quite been our own.

Most of all, we left behind people we love. Of course we have each other, and we have certainly drawn closer depending on one another for everything. And we have a technological connection (for which we are extremely grateful) to anyone we want. We text and call and skype friends and family daily. But it isn't quite the same thing as playing basketball at the park together or sitting next to one another at the movies or staying up late playing games and we really miss and crave those in-person connections. All year long Ronan and Liam have done an online seminary class, again a technological advantage for which I am extremely grateful, but I worry a little too, that they have missed out on sitting in a room of friends learning and goofing off together. Fionnula talks to friends through a computer, but I worry a little that she doesn't get to giggle and laugh and play on a playground with them. We are really looking forward to seeing, in real life, not on a computer screen, at least some of our favorite people in just a week. Sadly, some of our favorites will still be far away from us when we buy a new house in Idaho, but I guess in those cases there continues to be the technology advantage, and hopefully the occasional visit too, since we will at least have an address again.

We truly loved our year of being nomads, and we do not plan to completely give up our traveling ways, but rather to strike a balance wherewith we can explore far and wide and still have our very own pillows waiting for us when we return.

We Love Edinburgh!

Edinburgh, Scotland

We are in beautiful Edinburgh, Scotland! It really is gorgeous here, and not just because Europe appears to finally be getting some sun! The trip from Tralee involved a train ride across Ireland to Dublin and then flights to London and then on to Edinburgh. We arrived here on a Friday afternoon and my luggage didn't actually make the full trip with us, but rather stayed on in London for an extra day. I really didn't mind so much, as it meant I didn't need to drag it along on the bus to our Edinburgh home but rather it was delivered to our door the next day courtesy of the airline. I had jammies and a toothbrush in my carry-on, so the only inconvenience really was making sure we were here to receive it at the door. It all went a lot more smoothly than when the airline tried to replace Ronan's luggage that was destroyed somehow between Miami and Heathrow, that took a full two weeks to be resolved. We spent our Friday and Saturday exploring our immediate neighborhood, finding a local grocery store, taking walks on the numerous paths where it always smells of wild onions, and enjoying our fabulous flat that is spacious, comfortable and clean and, best of all, has two full bathrooms and beds for everyone! Yay! Our next door neighbor is the Chinese consulate and there is a huge rugby stadium and park across the street.

Our real explorations of Edinburgh started Monday morning. We can catch the bus right outside our front door and go pretty much anywhere within the city.  We toured Edinburgh Castle. It poured rain on us, but we persevered and ran between the dungeon and the chapel and the great hall. We checked out the Scottish crown jewels (twice, cause, why not), watched them fire the one o'clock gun, which startled a scream out of a little girl watching behind us and then ate our picnic lunch at a table inside the cafe during the worst of the rain. We walked the Royal mile and saw bagpipers and a woman with spiked and wildly dyed hair sitting at a spinning wheel right on the sidewalk spinning wool and more shops selling scarves than you would think could possibly be sustainable. We hiked up Calton Hill to see Edinburgh's own Parthenon ruins and to look down on the city as darkness fell. We hiked to the top of Arthur's Seat which I hope really is where Camelot once stood and this time consumed our picnic outside despite the killer winds and cold.

We shopped our way along Victoria Street, and I am going to have to agree with Edinburgh and say that *this* is way more likely to be the inspiration for Diagon Alley than anything we saw in London. We found Thomas Riddell's grave in Grayfriar's kirkyard and touched the nose Greyfriar Bobby's statue (and cried a little inside over the story of this little doggie who lived on his owner's grave in the kirkyard for 14 years!).

We went to the zoo where they have pandas and koalas and chimpanzees. It was really a very satisfying zoo day, even if the "penguin parade" ended up being only about 5 penguins marching out of one gate of their enclosure, along the sidewalk, and then back in another, they were still penguins and thus cute. All day long there were keeper demonstrations at various locations and every single time the same keeper was giving the talk. One night there was a big football/soccer game a few blocks from here and lots of fans gathered at the pub across the street before the game. They were loudly singing something to the tune of winter wonderland and shooting green smoke in the air before they all marched off right down the center of the street presumably on their way to the game. Where they lost, we watched it on tv as tickets to a Hearts vs Hibs game only days before the game are pretty scarce.

We did the National Museum, a decision which was met with some initial moaning that we had already seen a billion museums, but in the end they seemed to genuinely enjoy it, especially all the various interactive exhibits in the science sections. And Robert the Bruce's sword was pretty popular too. Our last trip of the week was to Craigmilar Castle on the edge of town. Liam says it was our best castle yet. He is partial to ruins over castles that still have roofs and this one was ruins but with still functioning stairs so they could climb almost all over it, even up on the battlements. It was very cool. It is also where Mary Queen of Scots possibly colluded with her Lords to have Lord Darnley killed, a possibility that has never really been proven but my kids all say she was definitely part of the plot.

We still have a few things we would like to see and do here in Edinburgh, but we also are picking up a car for the duration of our stay and want to explore further afield too so we are working on prioritizing. And then on Saturday we will begin our drive south and eventually back to London from where we will fly 'home' to Colorado.

PS: When people ask where we are from I still say Colorado, even though that answer gets complicated if they inquire further and discover that I go back to the States in a couple weeks and expect to then live in Idaho. Whatever, I am from Colorado.