We all want something beautiful.

I'm going to say right now, this entry is going to do the Highlands absolutely no justice. There aren't words strong enough to actually describe the sort of landscape up there. There just aren't. Maybe if you were to listen the theme to Jurassic Park or Lord of the Rings with your eyes closed and imagine the landscape evoked by that music (minus any possible dinosaurs or hobbits), you could sort of get it. But probably not.
The tour of the Highlands started here in Edinburgh. We took a bus for three days of gorgeous countryside and awesome Celtic myths. I saw mountains and castles and fairy knolls. Also, more sheep and deer than I've ever seen in my life. The guide was a Glaswegian named Tony, and I absolutely fell in love with him haha. It helped that he looked remarkably like Damian Lewis and was impossibly charming and funny, as Scotsmen are wont to be. But yeah, besides Tony being a great guide, the tour had all sorts of other upsides. Mostly, I plan to make enough money to buy a house up there (the going rate for a one-story, modestly sized house is half a million $) and then completely withdraw from civilization. It's overrated anyway.
I don't really know how to write up the trip. I think it's better told through pictures, which I'll post on Facebook eventually. Sadly, I don't have pictures of everything because my camera batteries are sort of waging a war of attrition against me. They've ceased holding a charge for any longer than, say, 5 minutes of use. Fucking frustrating.
Anyway, as I said, the tour was three days. We went from here to Loch Ness and spent the first night in Fort Augustus on the edge of the loch. For the next day, we drove up to the Isle of Skye, where we spent the night. The Isle of Skye might as well not even be earth. The landscape up there seems completely alien, for a variety of reasons. I was basically looking out the bus window and thinking that I was further from what I consider real life than I ever had been before. That night it snowed, so there was a nice coating of snow on everything for the ride back down to Edinburgh for the next day. Abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous.
I know, I'm a total cop-out. I honestly have no idea what else to say about it. If you want some things to Google, to sort of piece together what I saw for yourself, I can give a list:

• Glencoe
• Eilean Donan Castle
• Culloden
• Inverness
• William Wallace Memorial
• Commando Memorial
• Loch Cluanie and Loch Lochie
• Portree (there's video of an exploding whale if you look hard enough)
• Doune Castle (where part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed)
• Ben Nevis
  

Maybe Google will have some pictures for you. It really is all in the seeing of these things. Though plenty of them also have amazing stories, both historical and mythical, attached.
Part of the absolute charm of Scotland is the regard for and love of the landscape. The Scots really, really love their country, and they have been enduring some of the worst weather in the world for thousands of years because of this love. The Highlanders especially exemplify this spirit, because it can be a miserable life up there. Especially in the winter and especially when there were no modern conveniences. It's sort of astounding to think about the things that people will put up with to stay where they are. The Scots enjoy what they call "hill-walking" or "going for a wee wander," which is actually hiking. I've learned that understating things is sort of the Scottish way. We went for a wee wander in Glencoe on the first day, and if I'm going to live in the Highlands, I am for sure going to need to get in shape haha. I am so not a hiker. And Scotland's hills are actually mountains, so yeah. I'd be perfectly happy being a sheep farmer's wife. It's not a bad life, when you wake up everyday to the most beautiful countryside in the world (I haven't actually been everywhere in the world, but I have no reservations about that sweeping statement).
And then I returned to Edinburgh to find that my 18 year old cousin is apparently engaged, fueling my current burning desire to retreat from everything. How did I find this out? Through motherfucking Facebook. Here comes a big, long diatribe, so get yourself a drink or something. It's actually sort of shocking to me how hurt I am by this, but there you have it. I'm changing my life's ambitions because of it. I was considering, following my earlier deep introspection, moving back to the East Coast after graduation because of the disconnect that I'm feeling between me and my family. Not anymore. I will be applying to grad schools here in the UK, pretty much exclusively I think. I probably sound completely irrational, but it mostly feels like my family has forgotten that I exist. It's stupid, I know. They're all so proud of me, talk about me all the time, blah blah blah. But my cousin, who has lived next door to me for all 18 years of her existence, decides to get engaged, and nobody sees fit to tell me this for two months. I have to find out from an update to her fiance's Facebook. Excuse me, what? I talked to my cousin last week. I talk to other members of my family every goddamn week. This is big news, guys. The sort of thing that I would like to know about, if only to voice my disapproval. Because I absolutely disapprove. This is going to change my life as well as theirs, as selfish as that sounds.
Basically, the way I see it is this. Ashley, my cousin, has been dating Ben, who graduated high school with me and was a friend of mine, since spring of my freshman year. So for two-ish years. Fine, whatever. I don't particularly like Ben, as he's always been basically an irritation for me. We agree about nothing, I think he's a fool. His dad's a priest, and he wants to be one too. He's changed religions (from Presbyterianism to Episcopalianism), I think mostly to win over my family. He'll say that it was after deep introspection and lots of searching blah blah don't care. Not the source of my deep-seated dislike. My family also dislikes Ben, for basically the same reasons that I do. He's opinionated, obnoxious, and foolish.
Ashley drags him along to all of our family functions, and, if there's one thing that should be known about my family, it's that they like to tear outsiders apart behind their backs. Maybe not the most noble trait, but whatever. We love each other and try to keep each other from being stupid. It's sort of like being part of a clan, with the inherent distrust of outsiders. Someone who has married into the family will probably forever be criticized, for one thing or another. Examples: being neurotic, being too overbearing, treating a dog like a child (my uncles are excellent fodder for the Lynch tribunal). So Ben doesn't stand a chance, is what I'm saying. He's already been a topic of discussion whenever I've been home, and I'd rather not have to talk about him for the rest of my life. I'd rather not have to see him for the rest of my life. He disturbs my hard-won peace. I know, I sound completely awful and selfish saying all of this. He makes my cousin happy blah blah blah. She's 18. She wants to go to med school, and she's still only a freshman in college. Ben's a junior, and he still lives with his parents. I don't know when they plan to marry, but I'm afraid that he's going to ruin her potential. She's a smart girl, but the women in my family do stupid stuff for love. Like marry idiots.
I genuinely like going to family functions. Have done for my entire life. Ben has made them more difficult than enjoyable. I sort of predicted that this would happen, but not so soon. I expected to have time to wean myself off of using my family as a source of peace. But fine, this is the way it is now. Ashley and Ben will get married, and I'll be the absent achiever. Talk about a person who can't deal with change. I'll probably seem like the jealous spinster, and I'll be forced to endure the wedding to avoid having people say mean shit behind my back. This is an odd side of me, I know. I'm not doing myself any favors here.
I just wish that someone had thought to tell me about this. If I had a fortress of solitude, it was my family. It may seem weird to be so upset about something happening in my extended family, but as I said, clan structure. My cousins might as well be my brothers and sisters for as often as we saw each other growing up. I can't make a distinction between immediate and extended. We all live next door to one another, for fuck's sake. I said before that home was no longer feeling like home. This just sort of clinches it. Growing up sucks, really. I wasn't ready to give up the peace that I felt with my family.
In better news, Doctor Who is back. This is how I will get through everything.

Absolutely fantastic.

I've watched every episode of Doctor Who and Torchwood in existence, so now I have to come back to this. Okay, wait, that's not true. I've watched all of the new episodes of Doctor Who. Because actually, that show started in the 60s (?), and there are approximately 30 series. I've seen the entirety of the new series, which are the last 3 seasons. Basically, when the Doctor was played by Christopher Eccleston and then (now) David Tennant (who you may also know as Barty Crouch, Jr., or, alternatively, my new future husband). Shut up, I'm moving on from Heath. And this is why I try not to keep a blog; the world at large becomes audience to my insanity. But really, David Tennant is brilliant, and so is the show. Torchwood is also good, though a bit more melodramatic and weirder (yes, weirder than a show about an alien who travels through time and space in a blue box). Also, the wearing of Chucks with full suits may be the most charming fashion statement ever. But as nobody else is watching either of these shows, I should move on so as not to bore you.
In case you were hoping to hear about my life of late, that's what the first paragraph was. Also, I've discovered that the BBC, like the major American TV stations, has an internet player for already broadcast shows. It's more efficient in that shows are available as soon as they've aired, but you can only watch the shows for a week after they've aired (unless you download them, in which case you have 30 days or a week from when you watch it). It's a very complicated DRM system, but whatever. I can watch the new season of Torchwood on Wednesday nights, and Doctor Who in the spring, and I don't need to buy a TV or a license. Which brings up another point: to own a TV here, you have to buy a TV license. It's about 140 GBP for a color TV and 50 GBP for black and white. So double that to get the price in dollars. You buy the license for a year, and it covers all of the TVs in your household. I have no idea why they do it that way, except that it may or may not help to pay for the BBC stations, which are all publicly funded.
Right, my life. Enough about TV shows. I also do exciting things like go to the library to do readings for class. And go to class, of course. When it isn't canceled. Which has happened, so far, twice, because the professors were sick, and then I didn't have Buddhist Art this week or last because the professor went on a delegation to China. Yeah, my schedule is much easier than yours, probably. But when I was in the library yesterday, I did see some amusing graffiti on the desk at which I was working. British students, and European students in general, are very political. So there were lots of things like:
FUCK THE ENGLISH, REMEMBER BANNOCKBURN
which earned the reply:
no I wasn't born.
And then there was stuff like:
GALICIA IS NOT SPAIN
which I found amusing because we learned all about that in my AP Spanish class in high school.
Of course, there were some nasty things about Americans, one of which involved being able to recognize the American students from a mile away because of their "stupid-ass UCLA caps" (seriously, fuck those guys). But the very best, for a variety of reasons was (Dan, pay attention):
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
Even the graffiti is cleverer here.
Something that may be of marginal interest to people, I realize, is food. I haven't actually talked about what I can and can't get here much, and that's something that always interests me, and maybe other people as well. I mentioned the American chain restaurants here, but besides them, there's a variety of food types and ethnicities represented. Within a two-minute walk from my flat, I can get: Indian (which is the Chinese of the UK), Chinese, vegetarian (which I think is an off-shoot of Indian), Middle-Eastern, African/Mediterranean, Thai, Italian, pub food, sandwiches, and whatever I want from the 4 grocery stores on my block or the next. Also, there are a variety of uncategorizable cafes and coffee shops and little restaurants, and some place called Elephants and Bagels. I find that place intriguing. There are also tiny ethnic groceries in the same area, as you would expect. And, my personal favorite so far, Greggs. In the simplest terms, it's a bakery/sandwich shop. However, it's better than that, because 1) it's damn cheap and 2) they have savories, which are a variety of (as the name implies) savory things wrapped in pastries. Delicious pastries. For less than 2 GBP, I can get a really filling lunch, with dessert.
If I leave the immediate area around my flat, I can find anything else, I think. I've seen an American style place with burgers/pizzas/salads, though done in an expensive, take advantage of tourists way. I've seen multiple Mexican places, a tapas bar, lots of take-away places with things like falafel/kebabs/fish and chips, and even a Nepalese restaurant. I'm particularly intrigued by that one. Plenty of new things for me to try while I'm here.
As for grocery stores, I can basically buy the same stuff as you'd get in the US, except better quality. Like most places in Europe, Scotland (and the UK) is big on homegrown things whenever possible. So there's a large variety of local meats and cheeses, and fruits and vegetables also to some extent. What I really enjoy are all of the different flavors of things. Juices here are phenomenal. They mix things that we'd never even think of in the US, often involving apples. I love apple juice when it isn't too sweet, which tends to be the problem with the available types in the US. Here, they treat apples sort of like we treat cranberries, for lack of a better comparison, and basically I'm in juice heaven. Apple/elderflower is my favorite so far, but apple/raspberry and apple/mango are also delicious. I'm going to miss the variety when it's time to leave.
Also, ridiculous weather. Today, it was raining early in the morning. Then, it stopped raining and was overcast. Then, it started snowing, like full-on blizzard-style. When I left for class at 10:45, it was sunny. When I left class at 1, it was getting overcast again. When I left for my other class at 1:45, it was overcast. Leaving that class at 2:50, I walked out into a blizzard (and to understand that, imagine the huge, fluffy kind of snowflakes that turn you into a snowman because they stick and 30mph gusts of wind [they're rarely more than 5mph in LA]). It did that for about 2 hours, and then it stopped and got overcast again. The best thing about the weather is the wind. It's awesome to be in the library, or indoors anywhere, and hear it whipping around outside. The snow was also spectacular, as I haven't seen real snow in a few years now. I've missed it.
I think the theme of this post is: variety is the spice of life. I'm thinking that it's impossible to ever really get tired of a place where so much is available and so much is different from hour to hour. Not in the few months that I have here, anyway.
My life is thrilling, obviously. You guys should definitely aspire to be me. That's all.

- C