525,600

Truly, I have come to love Edinburgh as a home. There were many things that excited me coming into this year, but I never fully expected to grow attached to the city itself. I was definitely hesitant to allow myself to become comfortable over the first semester, knowing that I would be leaving in less than a year. This was the same hesitancy that characterized my year in Greensboro, providing me previous experience with this sort of approach. My reluctance was exacerbated when the sun began to set before 5 pm and remained dormant until nearly 9 am the following morning.

I remember heading back on the bus from the Edinburgh airport after my trip to Paris. I was bummed that I had to leave such an amazing city (which, as I documented at the time, was full of firsts). But there was something else on my mind that I had a hard time pointing out. I remember feeling a sense of calm as I sat on the bus, looking out the window. I knew the serenity was not from the view, which due to the lack of sun resulted in my staring at my own reflection between every road lamp. It became clear that what I was feeling was a sense of belonging; that I was returning to a place of not only familiarity, but of comfort. I can't say i ever felt this way in North Carolina. This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy my year in Greensboro. The people I met and the experiences I had with Habitat are priceless memories that I really have missed this year, but it just never felt like home. I'm sure this was due to a combination of factors, from leaving Holland and all my friendships for the first time, to never having entered a major commitment with such a temporary nature. Whatever the reasons were, the degree of comfort I realized on that bus ride was never present in Greensboro. Basically what I'm trying to say is that from the middle of March, Edinburgh has been my home. Surrounded by a community of peers that shares such a mass amount of interests and level of commonality has established an odd sort of family in the UK. It's definitely going to suck leaving it all in little more than two weeks.
The one thing I wish I had more of was time. I suppose this is part of the human condition and is therefore a pretty universal principle. But it's definitely true. I don't believe I want more time away from the US (my time in the UK has bolstered my patriotism and national pride in a way I never knew possible; this isn't to say I'm ready to pick up a gun, slap on a uniform, and reminisce about the good ol' days of Andrew Jackson and General Patton, but I've gained perspective on what distinguishes the US from other nations, and I'm rather proud of those distinctions), but I just wish I had more time to process this past year while I was still here. I had a nebulous preconception of the workload and intensity that would accompany an accelerated Master's program, but there is no way I could have anticipated what I walked into last September. So much has happened in such a short period of time. I was talking to my dad the other day on skype and I remember telling him how I don't know if I'll be able to truly grasp the significance of this year for a long while; that my lack of general life experience makes it relatively impossible to fully appreciate everything I've been blessed to do these past eleven months. I've tried to not take my situation for granted, but it's been difficult. So I wish that I had more time to reflect on the impact and influence of my time in Scotland toward my current self, and what it means going forward. But alas, that time is nothing more than a pipe dream. My plane leaves from Edinburgh Airport at 09:00 on 24 August. That is 17 days, 12 hours, and (from the moment) 34 minutes. Between now and then I must finish this small piece of hell they call a dissertation, figure out what to take and what to toss, pack, clean, close bank accounts, check out, and say goodbye to several good friends. And they expect me to do this in the midst of the Edinburgh Festival, which has the city crawling with wide-eyed, oblivious tourists (i say this in full knowledge that I myself have played this part flawlessly on several occasions) that manage to make my daily commute to the National Library of Scotland similar to an over-sized kidney stone's journey through the urinary tract of a recently vasectomized male, in respects to both difficulty and induced pain. It's a bit strange knowing that things wont return to their state of normalcy until after I have left, making my last weeks in Edinburgh a strange and uncomfortable experience. People who know me well know that although I become antsy, with regular flareups of wanderlust, I firmly rely on a degree of stability and consistency. Which is a political scientist's way of saying, I don't like change; that although I prefer the outer sphere of my life to maintain a level fluidity, the center should remain constant. I rely on an elastic tether to bring me back to familiarity each time I leave. For the past six years, this center has been Columbus, Ohio, with the tether taking the form of family (which has also seen a degree of elasticity, as family members have been lost and family members have been gained throughout the process). This is what makes leaving Edinburgh so hard: it has slowly begun to usurp Columbus as the place I feel connected to. But it's not Columbus, and nothing ever will be. This is the bittersweet reality that has been present since the moment I responded to the offer of attendance from the University of Edinburgh in March of 2009, and it's finally here.

Top 5 things I'm looking forward to back in the states:
5) Chicken wings
4) Jan Castle's mashed potatoes
3) tie: TCM/availability of my car
2) Jeopardy
1) My heart says sports, but my head says family.... (i kid, i kid. sports it is).

Top 5 things I'll miss about Edinburgh:
5) National Library
4) View from my apartment
3) The architecture/city layout
2) proximity to Continental Europe/cheap travel
1) the extreme diversity of people/perspectives*

*i dont include friends because i dont wish to sound overly Brady Bunch/Full House-esque


ps- bonus points to anyone who understood the title of this post as reference to "Seasons of Love" from the Broadway musical RENT. yep. i'm cool.

Homestretch

For those of you who still periodically check this blog with whatever hope remains that I have added a new post, here's a summary of where things stand at this moment in time. I have recently completed a 2 month stretch that included trips to London, Vienna, Pisa, Siena, and Florence. While it has been an amazing ride, it's time to crack down and finish this dissertation. August 20th is a date that has been in the back of my mind since I arrived in Edinburgh last September, yet it has always felt so distant. Well, Castle, it's here. I have six weeks to complete my dissertation before heading home on August 24th. I tend to hate cliches and have a pretty reactionary personality against all things identified as the norm or expected, but I must say that my time in Scotland has gone by too fast. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. It's been an amazing experience, but it's time to move on. Of course I will miss the people I've met, the places I frequent, and the proximity to exotic destinations but (with the exception of a finished dissertation) I have accomplished/received/realized what I came for. Things are still up in the air for what I'll be doing next year or where I'll be living, but it is a real comfort to know that I'll be back in Columbus for a while.

I don't know how many more posts I will write, but expect at least one more between now and August 20th. Cheers.

8/12, or .66666666666667

It's been a great couple of weeks here in Edinburgh: Classes have finished and the final essays have been handed in; The weather continues to be surprisingly nice; summer travel plans are beginning to formulate; the search for a job has commenced; and I suppose there should be mention of my dissertation. It'll be interesting to see how all of these elements play out in the coming three or four months. This is about the third year in a row where I've been in the precarious position of having immediate responsibilities that require a large degree of attention while also having one foot out of the door, looking for that "next step" in the process of life. I have fought hard to maintain a fragile balance of "living in the moment" and "looking forward", planning for the future. I suppose this is a dichotomy that will play out several times throughout my life but I've already had about enough. It's tiring. It's stressful. It's scary as frick. But it's also exciting.
It was about this time two years ago when I cemented my plans to work for Habitat in Greensboro following graduation from Hope. I remember how quickly the melting pot of emotions shifted from confusion and chaos to anticipation and excitement upon having the opportunity to work for AmeriCorps. So although I have absolutely no idea where I'll be living, what I'll be doing, how much I'll be making, or how I'll manage the incurred debt, I am pretty stoked to see how it all plays out. Call it naiveté or a return to innocence, but as many question marks as there may be littering the prospects of the future, I am excited. I suppose that's all I can do.
These 8 months (dang) in Edinburgh have been an unparalleled life education. In that regard, I've received what I came for. With four brief months ahead, there is still so much to do. Realizing this, any reaction/interpretation to the current situation other than excitement is foolish. There will be much, much more to report as the summer takes its course and the veil of uncertainty begins to lift, revealing bits and pieces of what is to come. I hope everyone is well.

ps- in case there isn't another post before hand: Happy Mother's Day to mom, grandma Castle, and Melissa, and congrats to my brother Aryn as he graduates from Miami University (OH) on May 9th.

Paris, with a little Pep

This past month has been pretty special for several reasons, one of which was my trip to Paris. Although it did not go nearly according to plan, it was an experience I would be hard pressed to trade for any alternative. It started out as a planned weekend rendezvous for three friends; it became a weekend of site-seeing and first experiences for one, playing tour-guide and translator for another, and wrecked travel plans/40 hours in JFK for the third. When it was all said and done, the three friends converged for 45 brief minutes near the Eiffel Tower on Monday afternoon before they had to part for their respective destinations. Now, I could spend the next 4000 words explaining the details of how this all came to be, but I'd rather tell you all in person one day. So I will just give you a few highlights from my end (the one with the "weekend of site-seeing and first experiences"). Here are my top three highlights from my weekend in Paris:

3) Walking along the Seine. I must have expressed my desire to walk along the Seine esplanade to Brianne a solid half-dozen times. Recalling memories of Gene Kelly - Leslie Caron, Cary Grant - Audrey Hepburn, I was set on taking a stroll along the famed river at some point during the weekend. That time came on Sunday afternoon/evening. Brianne and I had finished lunch and had spent some time scouring a book stand on the edge of the Seine. Brianne came away with a copy of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo; My prize was a tattered, two volume translation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. The total price for our purchases was an incredible €6. Still beaming from our recent finds, we headed down a ramp from the main road to the river esplanade.
Other than a bout of stiff wind, the weather was as nice as it had been all weekend: dynamic, but sporadic, cloud cover with plenty of room for the sun to reach us below, and a temperature of around 45 F. We walked westward from an area east of the Louvre towards Brianne's "pont préférés", of which I have forgotten the true name. It was an amazing walk that I won't soon forget.

2) The apartment. One of Brianne's friends (I don't know exactly how to spell it, but phonetically it sounds like "Guy-Elle") opened her apartment to us for the weekend. I'm not too familiar with the average living accommodations in Paris, but from other people's reactions it seems as if Guy-Elle has a ridiculously nice place. Located near Montmartre, the apartment was in a nice part of the city. But the story here is not the apartment; it's the overwhelming hospitality and authentic French experience lavished on me throughout the weekend. Spending Saturday night drinking wine and eating pasta, various cheeses, and sweets with Brianne, Guy-Elle, and Gwendalynn (another Brianne's friends,sp?) was surreal. I use the term "eating" loosely, as most of time the food was being forced onto my plate while I played guinea pig for what I was told was "uniquely French" cuisine (not that I was putting up much of a fight). After an elongated Sunday brunch, which included brioche and homemade jam from a fruit that supposedly doesn't grow in the US, I began packing my pipe to smoke outside when Guy-Elle insisted that I smoke inside. I was stunned. I didn't know how to respond! It was the first time I was ever allowed/asked/able to smoke in an actual apartment/house! I had smoked in garages, cars, stairwells, and an unfortunately cramped "smoking room" in an attic at Hope, but never sitting in an actual kitchen chair in an actual living accommodation. It was awesome. Guy-elle sat there and chatted with me as we shared a bowl of aromatic Cavendish that had made its way from Easton Town Center to Montmartre. With another dinner party featuring crepes on Sunday night, my weekend was made. This would have been the number one experience if it were not for the long-waited for arrival of Adam Pepper.

1) You may have noticed that to this point there has been no mention of the third party of our planned rendezvous. That's because Adam Pepper spent the better part of two days in JFK airport. After a series of delays, cancellations, and airport changes, Pep made it to Paris at 1:15 pm on Monday afternoon. All I could do when I saw him carrying his luggage on his shoulder and looking half-dead was laugh. That's actually all I did each time I heard of a new misfortune in his travel plans throughout the weekend. Before you judge me, you should know that out of our group of friends, Pep would be the one that this would happen to. He's the nicest, most upbeat/kind-hearted guy I know, so of course the crap would fall on him. The situation was hilarious. Anyhow, we finally met at 1:15 under the center of the Eiffel Tower. As you have probably witnessed from the title picture, we proceeded to make the most of our extremely limited time together and had a session of catch on the lawns sprawling to the north of the Tower. There probably wasn't a way we could have stuck out more from the multitudes of tourists and local schoolgirls on field trips other than nuding-up. But I didn't care. i had accomplished a mission I had set for myself when wer first decided upon meeting in Paris. The weather was perfect. It was the perfect end to a perfect weekend.


Again, there is so much more to say about my trip to Paris, and this past month overall, but that will have to wait for another time. Hopefully a time where it can be shared over coffee.

Pictures from Paris

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

That quote by Roger Hornsby pretty much sums up my attitude over the past sixty days. Winter has finally subsided here in Edinburgh. Since the calendar hit March 1, the weather has been frickin awesome: mostly sunny, little rain, and a temperature that has flirted with 50 on a couple occasions. The winter weather had mercilessly beat the remnants of energy and enthusiasm from most people in Midlothian- everyone, that is, other than the Scots, whom have grown accustomed to an incessant climate of depression. Through years of evolution, they have learned to maintain their joviality through the winter by consuming copious amounts of alcohol, sausage, and cigarettes. The few foreigners who attempted to keep pace with the locals fell by the wayside in January. But the dark days have past! Spring hath cometh! Once again, the sun rises before the city; it stays until after 6. Baseball season is right around the corner! The change in weather, however, has opened a new front in the battle for my attention and focus. Whereas I had fought a constant threat of ennui for the better part of two months, I am now struggling against a determined case of wanderlust. This is not, needless to say, good for my studies. The semester is coming to a close, bringing a unique blend of ignored fear and subdued panic to most postgraduate students' lives. I know I will have to confront the end of term essays sooner or later. But for now I choose to turn a blind eye. I am traveling to Paris this weekend to meet up with two great friends from Hope- a trip that will hopefully put a rest to my need to get out of my daily routine and enjoy the newly born Spring. This trip will mark the first time I have traveled outside of Edinburgh since I arrived last September, not to mention my first ever trip to France. I can't wait. It's going to be an awesome experience. Hopefully I'll come back with my wanderlust satisfied (for now) and a renewed focus that can carry me through the end of the semester and into the formative stages of my dissertation. We'll see. In the meantime, everyone should be cheering for Notre Dame basketball in the Big East Tournament and throughout the NCAA Tourney. Also, your thoughts and prayers for Chase Utley and the Phillies as they prepare to defend their NL crown are much appreciated.

"As if you could kill time..."

so the last few weeks have been pretty uneventful here in edinburgh. with limited funds, daylight, and motivation, ive tried to not expend myself more than is absolutely necessary. the good news is that i am in good company. there seems to be a general tone of ennui amongst the members of my program; no one i have talked to has expressed any genuine interest in their classes or studies yet this semester. it is hard to tell whether this feeling is truly universal, or if it began from one nefariously influential member and gradually spread through the rest of the class, assisted in its infectious invasion by the weak collective will that has also pervaded the programme.
and while avoiding and bemoaning seemingly meaningless class readings is fun for a while, i cant help but start to feel guilty. i dont know if you all have seen the film Dead Poets Society, but there is a scene early on where Robin Williams, who plays a recently hired English and Literature teacher at a highly prestigious college-prep school, leads his class to a trophy case in one of the school's hallways. he explains to his class of two dozen male teenagers that the boys in the photographs from years past once stood in the same spot as they currently exist; they were young, ambitious, privileged, and with nothing but time and potential ahead of them. williams then explains that the athletes in the pictures are now contributing to the growth of graveyard flowers. successfully capturing their attention, williams begins circling the group (whose attention is now strictly on the faces in the black and white photos), whispering "...carpe diem....carpe diem." williams is later shown in class reading the famous lines from poet Robert Herrick, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And the same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying." these scenes portray the central theme of the movie: taking advantage of the day you are given. as a last emphasis on this theme, i have to draw attention to Henry David Thoreau's poignant observation: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." And while this is an oft-quoted line, the line immediately prior is all too ignored:
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!"
I love that last line. so as i sit here, masticating every bite of Kung Pao chicken into amorphous clumps of chaos, i start to feel a tad guilty. although it's completely quixotic to expect myself to "carpe" every "diem", i should probably be making more of my short time here in Scotland, not just waiting around for that long off April day when the mercury breaches 60 to take advantage of my surroundings. hopefully by my next post i'll have something of significance to report.
i hope everyone is well. cheers.

PTI: pardon the intermission

The past 2 ½ months have been dynamic. There is no other way to put it. From the end of October to the middle of January, several events have taken place that seem more or less surreal. I suppose it all started with the onset of end of semester essays that surreptitiously and methodically undermined any competition for my every waking moment they encountered on their rise to hegemonic dominance. I gradually lost touch with any outside pleasure I may have had prior to the middle of November. Having fallen into a state of lucid dreaming, I was shocked back into reality with the news of the death of my grandpa, Hollis Lanning. Although his passing was long expected, it confronted me with a sense of helplessness that I had yet to experience. Being in Scotland, I was unable to be there for my family; I was unable to pay my respects; I was unable to carry his casket with my brothers and cousins. This tore me up. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that if I took one day off from school I’d fall behind and the work load would quickly become insurmountable.
I soon faced another uncomfortably unfamiliar experience: being away from home for Thanksgiving. Anyone who knows me in any depth is aware of my unrelenting dedication to all things traditional. Although some may label my being as a collection of numerous anachronisms, I hold strong belief in the relevance and significance of the past, with particular emphasis on family traditions. Finding myself an ocean, twenty hours, $1000, and 3500 miles from home, I found solace in an eclectic mix of unlikely friends: a half dozen Americans, a handful of Norwegians, a few Germans, a Canadian, and a Russian. After an interesting game of American football, we gathered for a potluck dinner that kept my mind from the wandering to one of many possible distractions. I have no doubt that it was better than any Thanksgiving away from home I could have wished for.
From the day after Thanksgiving to December 13th I existed exclusively within the confines of my apartment, leaving only to gather food and books. The term “burnt out” had never applied to me more than how I felt on December 14th. I flew home on the 16th, arriving to see my mom and brother Ryan waiting for me. It was a good moment, for it was the beginning of a three week long vacation that saw the reunification of family and friends. Being back in Columbus for Christmas and Holland for New Years was a therapy few ever have a chance of receiving in their lifetime. I am blessed beyond belief, and it is easy to take it all for granted, but it is this recognition that will carry me through the next eight months and into the following chapters of my life. I cannot thank you all enough for your friendship and support throughout the past year. I wish you the happiest and healthiest of New Years for 2010. Cheers.