It's Alright To Miss Home

       It’s getting near the end folks. The finish line is within sight. Before I know it, I will be boarding United Airlines Flight 162 back to the good ‘ole U S of A. Our journeys in life will always have a beginning and an end, a start and a finish. We all know this, but still- I really wish this journey would keep on going.

       To describe the extent to which I have loved the past two and half months would be impossible. Glasgow has become my second home, filled with great people, amazing memories, and an overall sense of satisfied fulfillment. Now, however, is when the irony starts to set in. I both miss my home in Albany greatly, but do not want to leave here. Someone seriously needs to develop a teleportation machine within the next four weeks so that this dilemma can be resolved peacefully.

       A constant thought going through my mind lately are the things I both miss back home and will miss here. Sometimes it helps to create lists, to visualize our thoughts and figure out how our mind is working. So I thought I would share my lists with you. Let’s begin.

Top 4 Things I Miss About Albany

1.      I miss my family. Plain and simple. I miss spending time with my cousins playing card games all night, I miss going on random shopping ventures with my mom and my aunts, I miss sitting down and talking to my gram about everything and anything going on in my life. I love my family.

2.      I miss American foods (i.e. Chipotle, Goldfish, Cheesecake Factory, Cheezits, Potato Stix, Chipotle [again], Homemade Lasagna, Coffee Cake, etc.) and the endless hours I would spend eating American foods to the horror and disgust of others around me.

3.      I miss talking to my friends, whether it be those I see constantly throughout the day or those I simply run into around campus. Not having all of them here has been hard, but I cannot wait to share all my stories to make them insanely jealous. Insert maniacal laugh.

4.      I miss my dog. No description necessary. I love my old pup.

Top 4 Things I Will Miss About Glasgow

1.      I will miss the friends I have made here. Thinking of leaving them is not an option right now. I cannot express the immense bond I have formed with all of them. December 20^th is going to be an incredibly hard day.

2.      I will miss my two favorite pubs: Brew Dog and Hillhead Bookclub. I want to take home with me an endless supply of BookClub burgers and every bottle of Brew Dog’s Dead Pony Club.

3.      I will miss the ability to travel easily and, more important, cheaply. I have been to so many amazing places and I cannot imagine going two weeks without visiting another country or city for a few days.

4.      I will miss the energy of Glasgow, that friendly, positive, inviting, cultural, innovative feeling that comes about with every step I take around the city. This city has redefined my dreams for what I want in my future and I could not be any happier about that.

       It is perfectly acceptable to miss our old lives. It is natural sensation we cannot ignore. It reminds us of how far we have come and how far we can go. I love Albany. I love Glasgow. To say that I have had a worthwhile experience by studying abroad would be a severe underestimation of the truth. Glasgow has changed me for the better, and I cannot wait to bring a little bit of this Scottish city back home to New York.

 

 

Chase Your Dreams

       The following advice should not come as a surprise, as I would both hope and assume many have heard this phrase throughout their childhood and adolescence, but I must say it nonetheless.

       Chase your dreams. Chase them down like a lion hunting for his lunch.

       Sometime in the spring of 2009, a trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released, featuring, in its opening scene, two characters standing atop an immense rock in the middle of the water and looking up towards cliffs that can only be described as dumbfounding. Despite the waves crashing against the rock with colossal power, the beauty of the scene could not be diminished. I learned later on that the scene was filmed at the Cliffs of Moher, a tourist hotspot and visual magnificence located on the western coast of Ireland overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I knew from that moment that somehow, someday, I would have to go there. And finally, that day arrived.

       I took a day tour from Dublin to go see the cliffs, admiring the Irish landscape along the way. My fears began to set in when our bus driver alerted us of hurricane winds moving along Ireland’s coast and that the cliffs may be closed off to visitors. Due to the already intense winds at the cliffs, the hurricane could make it very dangerous for people to see. Luckily, the winds subsided slightly and we were allowed access.

       The Cliffs of Moher stand, at their highest point, at 702 feet. I knew this fact going in, but nothing can compare to their size when you are standing right on top. They are gargantuan, enormous, and magnificent in every respect. Visitors are allowed to walk all along the tops of the cliffs, allowing people to look out into the Atlantic, feel the spray of the water hit against their face, and smile at the absolute perfect beauty in front of them. I cannot express the amount of positive emotions I felt while I was there; it is another one of those moments that reminds each one of us how large the world actually is and how much there is to see out there.

       Seeing the Cliffs of Moher was a long-sought dream of mine and I completed it. Dreams are meant to keep us going, to keep us reaching for things throughout life, allowing our ambitious nature to reign and seek out new and exciting experiences. With dreams on our side, nothing can stop us.

       For anyone that would like to see photos of the two day tours I did while in Ireland, please see the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202277686648760.1073741831.1388736035&type=1&l=3311e9d0bc

Interact With The Strangers

       We interact with people on a daily basis. Family, friends, classmates, colleagues, even the cashier at the grocery store around the corner. Whether it is for a long span of time or even the briefest of seconds, these many people occupy a unique moment in our lives. And that can make all the difference.

        Two weeks ago, I traveled by myself to Dublin for five days, seeing many wondrous sights and meeting some great people. I stayed in a hostel not too far out of the city center in a 12-person room. Little did I know when planning the trip, but that weekend was actually a bank holiday weekend, which meant that my hostel was full almost every night. Over the course of my stay, I met various people staying in my room, from teachers to students to families, all enjoying the magnificence of Dublin in various ways.

       On my first night, I met two girls who were studying abroad in Finland for the semester. We talked about the different things we each had planned to see while in Ireland, glorifying over our mutual love for the Cliffs of Moher and learning about the many odd and different museums in Dublin, such as the Leprechaun Museum. It was particularly enjoyable to have them to talk to on my first night; I began to feel welcomed and excited for what Dublin offered.

       Throughout the next few nights, the people in my room cycled in and out, leading me to meet a new group every single night and then to never see them again. On one night, I met a pair of post-graduate English teachers studying in England and we shared our common interests in being English majors. They talked about the haunted bus tour they went on that day and I discussed my day in County Wicklow and Kilkenny. Another night, I met a French family taking a short vacation by passing through various cities in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Finally, on my last night, I welcomed in a group of Brazilian and Mexican friends studying in Paris and told them all about where I had been and where they needed to go in Dublin before they left.

       I remember when I was a little kid and I was learning about fate and destiny and all that. I imagined that each person’s life was a piece of string, or this one straight line. As we met people, our lines crossed and intertwined, creating a beautiful pattern of endlessly intersecting lines for each new person we met. The longer we knew someone, the longer their line stayed alongside ours; yet even for those people with whom we only interacted once, their line still passed along us.

       I may never these people I met in Dublin again, but they were there, their lines had an impact on me. For various reasons, they affected me on my journey, by making me feel welcome, by telling me about some great sights, by sharing common interests. This may all sound like a ramble right now, but I think it is important to remember on any journey that we should try to meet new people, to interact with the strangers out there for even a brief moment. You never know what could happen…