This is my last post based on my journaling or diarying or whatever it was I was doing while I was in the United Kingdom. Either way, I had a lot of thoughts and experiences that really encouraged me and I just wanted to share. If you’ve read any of it, thanks.

March 14

Even though our flights on on the 14th, the trip home actually starts on the night of the 13th as we sit in the hotel lobby charging phones and allowing ourselves to finally feel like we didn’t have to be somewhere right then and there. There’s an odd feeling of traveling exhaustion when parts of your trip feel as though they were two months ago, yet you also still can’t believe you’re already about to head home.

Home. There’s a fatigue I feel when I’m away from my muddy broken home for too long. I tend to lose my charge when I haven’t heard a “y’all” in a while. This trip didn’t have that, however. Not to the same extent, at least. I felt more at home here in London and Edinburgh than I have with other places I’ve been, even if I was rushed. Things started rushed, and since we’re trying to see as much of these countries as we can in only a week time, it has felt like a bit of a blur. Two months of living crammed into seven days.

Continue reading “Impossible Soul”

Obligatory link to the other posts about my trip.

March 13

“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. There shall no evil happen to them: they are in peace.” – Scottish War Memorial

It’s no secret that the Scots are proud of their military history. They’re known for being feisty people and don’t exactly try to hide the monuments to freedom fighters William Wallace and Robert Bruce that stand in front of Edinburgh Castle. The Castle itself, built for function and not style, has cannons set up all along the outside wall, showing how prepared it was to deal with intruders. Resting above the entrance to the castle is the Scottish Coat of Arms, which includes the motto “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit”, which roughly translates into “No one attacks me without punishment.”

Simply put, Scots aren’t afraid of a fight.

Continue reading “Greenback Boogie”

The beginning of my trip is over here. Thanks for reading.

March 12

It didn’t take long for Edinburgh to offer me everything I ever wanted out of a city. Of course, I mainly say this because I was very hungry, had been walking all morning, and the radio in the place we found was playing R. Kelly’s Remix to Ignition. Either way, stopping in a place called Oink was such a good decision that we had to do it again the next day. There’s something about a sandwich made with a half pound of pork, haggis, and topped with a piece of crackling that did my soul right. Oh, and the pig I was eating was just sitting in the window.

Continue reading “Rhapsody In Blue”

Sometimes I write about things I’ve done and so far I’ve been doing that a lot about this one trip I took waaaaaaay back in the day (a couple weeks ago). Feel free to read more over here in this part of the website.

March 11

The sun rose in the mountain in the clouds and on this morning, I awoke on the Caledonian Sleeper Train in the Scottish Highlands. The clouds themselves seemingly rested below the mountain peaks as we passed by tiny train platforms in the middle of nowhere. Names like Orchy, Rannoch, and Tulloch passed by and I had no idea where we were and didn’t care.

I’ve done some neat things in my life. I’ve served adorable orphans in Mexico. I’ve made the crowd go wild on a fast break dunk in a basketball game in El Salvador. Heck, I’ve been in love before, a couple of times. And I’ve certainly been existentialistic before. So I don’t know why today I felt as though there would be something bigger that would happen and  make things make more sense. I would be disappointed if it wasn’t there.

I’m not sure what it was I came here to find, but on this morning, I’m pretty sure I’ll find it.

Continue reading “In A Big Country”

blah blah blah I took a trip and you can read all about it here.

March 10

There is a strange event that happens when you’re riding a subway train and you look out the window into a train going the other direction. The seats, all identically laid out in the same repeating patterns, all blend together. It’s a blurred image, but one that looks permanent. It’s really easy to lose yourself in such a moment.

As we sat in a pub across from the giant British Museum, I asked Zach why he thought it was that seemgingly healthy marriages sometimes fall apart. The conversation had been all about different friendships or relationships or whatever it may be that we had witnessed sour when they looked like they should have been strong for years. It wasn’t necessarily that we were trying to talk about collapsed marriages, but eventually that’s just where we landed.
Continue reading “Caravan”

Yeah you know by now that I went to the UK and wrote about it. That’s cool. Here’s the next post in the series and if you wanna start over you can go here.

March 9

I sometimes play a game in my head entitled “Can I Touch That?” where I try to guess, entirely in my mind, whether I could touch a nearby object.

Maybe it’s something that’s fairly tall and I wonder if I could jump that high. Maybe it’s something that looks dangerous and I wonder if it would kill me. Either way, many times when I’m out in public and I’m zoning out, I’m actually playing Can I Touch That? in my head. And it makes me wonder if I need to go to therapy. Continue reading “Once In A Lifetime (Same As It Ever Was)”