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.