"This country hasn't treated you very well, has it?"

I heard this phrase from two separate friends this past week; commenting on my string of seemingly unrelenting bad luck over the past year. And it is somewhat true, I guess; financially, romantically, culturally it has been a struggle and it does not seem to be getting any easier. Once one struggle is resolved, another arises, all more difficult than the usual life struggles that my friends here are facing. So these statements set me to thinking, why haven't I thought this? Why is it that I wake up happy and enthusiastic every single morning? Why is it that outsiders have to comment on my situation for me to notice? Am I just in another screwed up relationship, where my love for this country is blinding me to how I am being treated?

This week, I had a nieghbour from back home come to visit me. It was fantastic, because I had a chance to show her around and prove to her what a great city Glasgow really is. I believe I convinced her, at least to the concept of a single malt whisky nightcap every night and having delicious curry as regularly as a pizza. I do love this city, with all my heart. I sit in the corner of Tennent's or the Uisce Beatha and I watch the city of Glasgow live and exist around me with elation and joy. I do not know if I am truly one of them yet. It takes a long time and even though I feel that I am at home here, there is a struggle in the sense that I am still an 'outsider' with a different accent and a different culture. After a heated debate with friends in the pub this week, they did not understand my frustration with the dating culture in particular. They always thought that I was perfectly happy to throw away all aspects about America that continue to haunt me. Then one of my close friends made an astute observation. It was not until she lived in Italy for a year, did she ever understand how actually English she was, and how comforting certain cultural habits were, even if you previously wanted to reject them. This is somewhat true about me as well. I find myself longing for American culture sometimes, particularly when I feel frustrated with certain aspects of my life. I know how to handle them in America and I know how I will be received. Being me, I have spent my life studying how I am perceived by others and what is expected of me. I am starting this completely anew here, and it is not easy. So though I have wanted to live in this country my whole life (well, since about the age of 10) I still find that I am frustrated with it from time to time. I do not know if it will get any easier.

After showing my friend around the city and hearing her reaction, I thought a lot about this culture and why I am, in fact, actually happy. She left yesterday, in what happened to be a gorgeous day of sunshine. I went to the Botanic Gardens (along with seemingly every other Glaswegian from my neighbourhood) by myself and had a think. She commented on the fact that she appreciated how Glasgow was unashamed of it's love for the alcohol. The long queues in front of the cashpoints at 5:05 on a Friday, the crowded corner pub, the impossible table to find if you arrive any later than 4:45, the constant flow of the cellar-cooled ale, Glaswegians love their alcohol. But I realised that it is not only the fact that Glaswegians are unapologetic about that particular cultural aspect. They are unapologetic in every aspect of their lives. They stand by their decisions, their culture, their reputation and embrace it all, wholeheartedly. You would be a fool for even trying to mock any aspect of any Glaswegian's life. This has definitely worn off on me as well, once I think about it. I have become much more proud of who I am, and more importantly, much more defensive about my life. I feel a sense of pride, far beyond what I have ever felt before. You do not notice it, either, until your being is threatened in some way. You become more willing to stand by who you are, the people around you and any decisions you have made, to death if necessary. Not even joking. It is weird.

There is a great sense of camaraderie here as well. Sitting in the Botanics, reflecting on my life, I recall doing the exact same thing almost a full year ago, when I first moved. I went to the Botanic Gardens by myself, on a nice day in June and sat with a book, fighting back tears watching all the couples, families and friends enjoying themselves in the sun and each other's company. At that point, I did not have anyone and felt very very alone. Sitting in the same park, almost 11 months later, I was still by myself, but things had changed. Not only was I waiting for a friend to call to get together that evening, but I was not even in need of a book. I simply was happy being around the people. Maybe that is because I feel like I am one of them, or maybe it is because I have established a life here and do not feel left out. One thing I noticed this time was that there were a lot of other people by themselves, lying in the sun, reading, eating lunch, and I did not feel lonely. There was a young family next to me that started chatting to me, and a young couple on my other side who were talking about their impending exams watching the young kids play with the pigeons. The happy faces, the friendly smiles; I did not feel lonely, though I was alone.

I have a great sense of respect for immigrants now. You do not understand the frustration that comes as you start to feel part of a city and part of a culture, but the first thing people bring up when you talk to them is that you do not belong there. Nothing rude, of course, but it is a constant reminder that you are an 'other' no matter how much you feel like you belong. Not only are there more aspects of the Scottish culture that I do not understand, but I constantly have a stigma over my head as being an outsider; people are much more quickly jumping to conclusions because of their assumptions of my place of birth.

You do start over when you immigrate. Which I realise can sound like a fantastic opportunity; the whole 'clean slate' concept has always appealed to everyone at some point in their lives. But what you do not realise is that you do, in fact, start over. Completely. You are cut off from everything that was familiar and comfortable. You cannot easily go back, you cannot easily keep in touch. It is a constant struggle, but at some point, you do have to accept that you have moved on. Keeping who you once were is simply too difficult. Friends and family are moving on without you, even if they have the best intentions of not doing so. You are just simply too far away. The friendships you thought you would always have sometimes fall through the cracks, because that is simply easier to let happen. The friendships that do continue are a constant effort of scheduling, emailing, any sort of communication possible to keep all updates on each others lives so there is some possibility of recognition if and when you get the chance to see each other again.

I gave up a lot to move to this country. I really wanted it, and in fact, I really needed it. However, I have given up a lot. I have accepted the fact that I will not get to see my relative's and friend's children grow up, I will not be able to be there for every wedding, every graduation, every life experience that my friends have had and are having. This is heartbreaking in a sense, but it forces me to ask myself if it is all worth it. I now, after about a year, have close friends whose weddings I want to attend, whose kids I want to see grow up, whose housewarmings I want to attend here in Glasgow. I have a new family here who would miss me as much as I would miss them. When it seemed that, due to financial reasons, I would have to go back to Colorado, my friends here seemed devastated at the prospect, which meant a lot to me, probably more than they knew. One of my friends here also just submitted her dissertation and I was mentioned in her acknowledgements, which to her may mean little other than a drinking buddy and a neighbour, it meant a lot to me. Hopefully, one day, I will feel like I belong a little bit more, but as things stand, it is not that bad. Though it may seem to outsiders, and even to close friends like this has just been one bad experience after another, I am content in simply waking up every day to a cup of tea, rainy weather, queues outside of pubs, steak pies, scoobie snacks, ales, curry, single malt whiskies, bagpipes, highlands, cars on the other side of the road, great friends, fantastic colleagues, the list continues on and on.

I have written this over the span of about the last 24 hours, with lots of care and thought given to it. I sit here now, in my kitchen, alone on a Sunday night writing this on my laptop with a view out my back window. I can hear the neighbours upstairs, the magpies on the rubbish bins, the rain falling on the cars. I am looking out on green grass, cars, clotheslines, an old dairy building, a dilapidated park and an abandoned school building. I have only a bottle of wine, leftover curry carnage, the magpies and the rain for company, but really, I am happy. The ambiance around me almost brings tears to my eyes. This is actually what I always pictured my life to be. Through all the struggle, through all the disappointment, through all the months of being alone, I feel like I will make it; that this is in fact, now my home.

Concerts and Volcanoes

Wow, what a crazy two weeks. So, what's been going on... the week before last was a little slow; catching up on work and everything. We spent most of the end of the week preparing for our National Astronomy Meeting. On Friday, after dealing with the incompetence and lack of awareness by some of the PhD students, a few of us went to go try a new bar in town. They had a decent special on wine so two girls and myself split a bottle. Then this awful band started practicing and we realised that we have reached that age where we start whining when a band starts to play. So we decided to go back to one of their houses, order Mr India and watch Star Trek. It was an awesome evening. We now have another recruit for our Star Trek nights!

On Saturday, I had a nice lie-in before finally getting up and packing to go hang out in Edinburgh for the night. I went to the Queen Street station and got the train to Edinburgh Haymarket. It was a beautiful train ride as the weather was absolutely lovely. That train journey always reminds me of Colorado on a nice day. It is a stretch of farmland with the highlands behind them, but instead of Colorado, the farmland has the quintessential 'rolling hills'. When I arrived in Haymarket I met up with my friend and his girlfriend in their flat. We had a few beers and put on some heavy metal LPs. We also watched a documentary on the heavy metal culture and his girlfriend made some bolognese. Her sister and one of his friends showed up as well before the show we were going to. We wandered into the streets of Edinburgh and decided to walk to the gig, about 20 minutes away. It was really great to walk through the city. Edinburgh has such a great cityscape with fantastic old streets and buildings. We went to a metal show in a venue down an alley with about 4 bands playing. The gig was fantastic and had some bands that completely rocked the house. After the gig ended, we went outside and hung out with one of the bands as they packed up their equipment in a hatchback. They had an inflatable football that we kicked around in the street a bit and they were playing the Star Wars soundtrack from their car. Afterwards we went to a pub called The Doctor and had some gin and tonics and ate some really good beef jerky that my friend had brought from America. He also had brought me some pickle relish and Fat Tire beer. What a great present. We then went back to the flat and crashed until the afternoon on Sunday. After a quick breakfast I caught the train back to Glasgow and on the way, I got a text about a last minute barbeque that night on the University hill. The weather was stunning that day and so I jumped right on that. It seemed that all of Glasgow was out enjoying the rare sunlight. We met at the university flagpole that overlooks all of Glasgow and the Clyde river. We had a little portable barbeque and made sausages and drank beer while lying on the grass in the sun. It was absolute bliss and super relaxing. We are now enjoying sun that stays up until 9:30 at night, so if the sun is out, it's fantastic!

I woke up early on Monday to go help out with our meeting. I was in charge of helping out the press room the whole week, which was not too terrible and I got to see a bit of the action. I wished I could have seen more talks, but they needed someone to man the press room and help if necessary. I kept track of all the news stories on the meeting as they came out all week. It was pretty interesting to see the science press working, especially against an election this month. On that note, it is really bizarre to have a one month election cycle. One month for everything. Debates, registration, adverts, all the things that us Americans were inundated with for 18 months straight condensed into 4 weeks.

Anyway, speaking of Monday, I had the most wonderful, fantastic, liberating, thrilling, exciting night that night. I finally got to go to the Barrowland Ballrooms to see a show. Not just any show, but the Dropkick Murphys. The Barrowlands is Glasgow's most famous concert venue. It used to be an old ballroom (obviously, from the name) and has low ceilings, wood floors and in a delightfully sketchy location in East Glasgow. On Saturday, it's also home to the black market, The Barras. It lived up to everything I expected from it. The floor was sticky with beer, there was no airflow and the people were going nuts. It was the first time I had seen the Dropkick Murphys live as well and they exceeded my expectations. They played all my favourite songs including ones I did not expect at all. At one point, the singer said "We never play this, but you seem the crowd to like this sort so here is FIELDS OF ATHENRY!!" The Fields of Athenry was my first favourite Dropkick Murphys song, so I went friggin nuts. They played a brilliant show. Glaswegians are just as nuts about music as I heard. It was a crazy, primal show; so much sweating and dancing and singing. Airflow would have been nice, but people were pretty good at getting their passed-out friends out of the crowd (not even kidding!). I had a few close calls after 4 of the best songs all in a row, but I managed not to pass out from the heat. It made it such a more fantastic experience. My friend who came with me really got into the show as well, which made it even better, especially as it's not her sort of thing, but she absolutely loved it. We left covered in sweat and beer (as plastic glasses of beer are constantly thrown into the crowd, it felt great!) and we could not hear or speak. It always feels great.

On Wednesday we had our conference dinner in the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. This was an absolutely phenomenal event. They have a giant organ in the entrance hallway. As the delegates were arriving, we were lead through the gallery and up a large marble staircase to a champagne reception over-looking the dining area and amongst the art and statues. It was an elegant reception and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Thanks to the fact that Glaswegians were organising this conference dinner, you can scrap the idea that there were going to be the standard one bottle of white and one bottle of red wine for a table of ten people. No no no, this is a glaswegian event. There were four bottles of wine and five bottles of beer for a table of 10. Thankfully, this got everyone properly liquored up for the ceilidh after the meal. Most people had not been to a ceilidh before but most of the people got up to dance. We had a smashing time. After the dance, we decided to have an after-party at the Oran Mor which lasted until 2 in the morning. We filled the Oran Mor with astronomers and drank whisky all through the evening ending with the obligatory chippy at the corner of the Botanic Gardens.

Thursday morning we woke up to the most bizarre news we have ever heard. A volcano had gone off; no one could fly in, out or around the UK. My friend did not get to move to Berkeley, I have a friend stranded in Austria, my friends from America could not come visit me and our speakers could not arrive or leave from the meeting. Sadly, the sky was not as apocalyptic as we hoped and many people were in denial about not being able to fly. We are going on four days now of being completely cut off. The inconveniences I mentioned are only a small fraction of the problems that my friends are having. Though my plans for the week have been completely thrown out the window, I thankfully am not flying myself. We did however have to deal with the chaos of trying to get our delegates from the meeting home. They did a pretty good job of giving each other rides back to London and other places. It has been just such a weird experience, which is still going on.

On Friday night we finished up the meeting at around three in the afternoon and took the leftover alcohol up to the common room and drank our beer, reveling in the post-meeting enthusiasm. We had another great day in terms of weather, so we went out looking for beer gardens, but could not find a good place. We went to the chippy for dinner and then crashed the Ben Nevis for some whisky. As I was completely knackered from the past week, I went home relatively early.

Last night I went across the street to my friends' house. Him and his wife are from Mexico and made Mexican food for a few people. We had a ton of great food and drink and enjoyed good company. The best part? Living across the street from them...well, really, the posole was the best, but just walking across the street at night was really nice.

Anyway, so that has been the last two weeks for me. Since I do not have visitors the next week, it should be pretty boring, but I will still let you know if anything exciting happens! Ta for now!

California, Parties and Leaving-do's

I realise it has been a month since I last updated. Do not worry, I have not forgotten about you! The biggest event that happened since the beginning of March would be the two weeks I spent in California. So I will quickly fill you in on the past events.

We left for California on Thursday morning. A bright and early cab ride to Glasgow Airport started the 24 hour travel marathon. After waiting for about 4 hours in Heathrow, then an Air New Zealand flight to LAX. Air New Zealand was amazing and really comfortable. The plane was also really empty so my office-mate and I got to share a row, and it's always nice to have space and company on a long flight like that. We got to Los Angeles in the early evening. I called some of my family to let them know that I arrived then met with people in the bar for a quick drink and some food before crashing.

The next day was our 'jet-lag recovery' day so I got together with my family. It was great to see everyone again and to relax. I went hiking with my aunt and my wee cousin after breakfast in Eton Canyon outside of Pasadena. It was so fantastic to bask in the sunlight and get some exercise after the flight.

The meeting started on Saturday morning, bright and early. The second day is always the worst when it comes to jetlag and sitting in a windowless, over-airconditioned conference room does not help the situation. Especially when it's coming on 2am my time. The weekend is simply the smaller working groups, informally discussing our current projects. I gave a presentation on my work and got to put up with some pedantic egos. Thrilling, let me tell you.

This hotel is a special place. It does free drinks for it's residence for two hours every single evening. And these are not small drinks, let me tell you. Say you ask for a vodka and cranberry juice, which is mostly what I drank to start the night after the meeting. They fill up the glass with ice and vodka and then put a splash of cranberry in there. It is just asking for alcohol poisoning. As these free drinks are timed to be post-meeting and pre-dinner, it makes for interesting evenings. The problem too is that we are relegated to a one-block radius around this hotel, which means cheap, nasty American chains. I was not able to finish a single meal any night I was there.

It was good to catch up with everyone but I get quite sick of the science chat and most of the personalities. I found a good group of people to hang out with and spent most of the time with them. The funniest bit was that during lunch and coffee breaks, the only people outdoors were the ones from the furthest north. It was so clearly a bunch of people who had not seen daylight in a very long time. Our skin glowed white like a sheet of paper.

I am pretty convinced that the rampant alcoholism that takes place at these meetings is due to the fact that we are all working towards and for something that has not been detected yet. One night I went out to this dive bar called the 'Drinkers Hall of Fame' with 4 guys. We were the only ones in the bar (as it was a weeknight) and the bartender introduced us to good tequila and let us stay until he wanted to go home. The worst night was when we started our drinks during the free drink hours and I had the experience of a Tokyo Ice Tea, which is a Long Island but with tequila as well. Death in a glass, especially on an empty stomach. After that, I missed the Glasgow people going out to dinner so I went out with the group from Australia to the Outback Steakhouse. This basically made my life complete as you all know what a garish representation of Australia that place is. The best was the 'Aussi-tizers' and the 'Steak on the Barbie'. There was about 10 of us, I was the only girl and we drank lots of Australian beer. I do not think the staff knew what was going on, but we definitely cleared out all the tables around us in a very short period of time. We finished our food and went back to the hotel to find that the Academic Advisory Council opened a tab at the hotel bar for all the students and postdocs, wearing mardi-gras necklaces. Apparently we racked up a pretty hefty tab (about $1200 from what rumor has it) and the carnage that remained was not pretty. I, personally, reached a point in the night where I had to go to bed. No questions asked. I left my purse, my camera and didn't say goodbye to anyone. Bedtime. Oh and those glass elevators are one hell of an experience with that much alcohol in your system. On my way to bed, I saw a friend and asked him to keep an eye on my stuff and he was just like, "No. Bed." and walked away. The next morning, I came down to breakfast to see everyone sitting at the tables staring at pieces of dry toast. I crawled into the back of the conference hall and about an hour later, one of the guys from Australia came in, pulled a chair against a wall, propped his feet on another chair and promptly fell asleep. Oh, and that day was St Patrick's Day, but that holiday seemed a bit lack-luster after my previous 6 days so I decided that it would be more fun to go over to my grandmother's. She got some corned beef and we watched the Lion King. It was WAY more fun than going out drinking again would have been.

Finally, the meeting was over and my parents came out and met me at the hotel. I was so sick of being confined to that block for the last six days that all I wanted to do was get very very far away. We went to Cal Tech, visited lots of family, went to Old Town Pasadena, all that fun stuff. It was fantastic to take those days off and let my brain relax. I really enjoy Pasadena, though we went shopping there and it was a harsh reminder how body type expectations are so different in California. We went shopping at my mum's favorite store which has a branch in Glasgow. Everything in the Glasgow shop looks great on me, but nothing fit me in the LA store. It was really depressing. I also got to see one of my old neighbours who lives in LA now. Him and I went to a farmer's market and ate at a Korean Barbeque. It was fantastic to catch up with him again and to see how our lives are doing. After that, my parents and I then went down to San Diego, ate seafood on a pier and sat on the beach. Paradise.

After sad goodbyes, I started my multi-plane journey back to Glasgow. Oh, and this was exciting: Princess Anne was on my flight back to London. She got to get on first and then we all waited in the plane while she exited to her convoy on the tarmac. Short woman in a white jacket, that's all I got. Still cool, though. I did not manage, again, to sleep on that flight and once I boarded the London-Glasgow flight, I passed out before we even took off and woke up when we landed, desperately needing more sleep.

I was welcomed back to pouring rain and an incredibly foul-mouthed, but really friendly, taxi driver. I called my friend and we met up in Tennants. I was walking to meet her and was walking in the rain, down the usual Byres Road, happy to be back, but then a car nailed a puddle at Mach 10 and splashed water all over me. Welcome home. Anyway, her and I caught up and then I went home and crashed. It took me quite a few days to get over the jetlag, but finally was able to.

On Thursday, I got to catch up with a friend back home, which felt really good. I have been really afraid of losing touch with some people, so it was great to reconnect again. On Friday, my friend and I planned a Star Trek night to battle homesickness, our usual cure, but the evening turned out different than expected, in a great way. Another friend came over as well and we ordered Mr India's (tried the Chicken Hot Pot, new favourite!) and sat at the dining table drinking wine and eating curry for 9 hours. Nine hours. We left at 3:30am. I do appreciate living in a city where I can walk home at 3:30 in the morning and feel safe. It was a really really fun evening. The next night I went over to another friend's house for some wine and chat. We played Perfect Dark on the xbox and complained about work.

This last week I was struggling with my code, but I think I finally have it working. We also had a visitor open day in which we have to go down and talk to prospective undergraduates about why they should study physics. My few hours down there was relatively quiet, but still fun. I always like seeing parents and their kids. The parents are so enthusiastic and the kids are so not. Ah, to be 17 again.

The next day we had a party at one of the faculty member's houses and everyone came along. There were four reasons to have the party so there was a lot of champagne and food. The quality of stories that came out of that party are endless. It was even in the middle of the week and once we ran out of port at two in the morning we all decided to go home. I made it in to the office at ten and the department was dead. We are hosting a big UK Astronomy meeting next week so we all spent the morning stuffing folders and putting name-tags together. It was good, mindless, hangover work. Of course, in the classic way of our research group, we got an email at about noon saying that there would be champagne available at 4pm in the common room to toast two people who were leaving the group. When I need a liver transplant, I am going to charge it to our group's expenses. That same day as well, one of my closest friends had her PhD defense (called a 'viva' in this country) so we all sat in the common room drinking the champagne until the text message/email flurry was sent around saying she was done. At six she was out and newly minted with 'Dr' and we went to the astronomy coffee area for some more champagne. We gave her some presents, one being a giant rock, a memory of 'thesis mountain'. We then hit the West End pubs for proper celebrations. One of the best places we went had lots of rum and good cocktails. She got a 'six rum cocktail' that had six shots of rum, a special grapefruit liquor in a beer stein with an absinthe-soaked sugar cube lit on fire on the top. Once that place closed, we went to the Oran Mor until about two in the morning at which time, Scooby-snacks were calling. We have a theory that the scooby snack is a delicate mix wherein if you're sober enough to talk yourself out of it, that is a good thing because you don't have enough alcohol in your system to absorb the whole thing. If you have enough alcohol in your system that a scooby snack sounds good, then it is the best thing for you.

She crashed on my floor that evening and we had a very slow morning the next day. Thankfully, there's a bonus to living in a religious state as we get Friday and Monday off around Easter. On Friday night, we wanted to fulfill the promise that we would go dancing before she left. A few of us all went and had a really fantastic time. It was great to be with a bunch of people who were all really happy and positive and enthusiastic. I unfortunately blew my whole budget for the week, but it was worth it as she is leaving. We started out at The Captain's Rest where two of the people we work with are in separate bands and both bands happened to be performing. Then we went to the city centre and went dancing until about three o'clock. Got some great chippy and the taxi home.

Saturday I went to the Glasgow Roller Derby fundraiser at a great underground place in the city centre. It was funny, too, because the world Irish Dancing Championships were taking place at the Concert Hall. Talk about the ultimate flashback. For Easter I went to my friend's house for dinner. It was three couples and myself, so it felt a bit like Bridget Jones, but we all had a really good time. I ended up crashing there after the Ouzo knocked us all out. Today I walked back, crawled into my pajamas and spent the day lounging around, eating and writing this!

The weirdest thing about this weekend was the fact that it was leaving parties for two of my close friends. Think about that. I have close friends here, and now some of them are leaving me. It is actually really sad and I will be missing a lot after this. It really cements my dislike in the mobile academic life. It is just too difficult and you don't feel settled. I do wish both of them luck though; life in Glasgow just will not be the same without them.

Until next time! (which will be a lot sooner than a month, I promise)