Should Auld Aquaintance Be Forgot....

Today is our last day in Edinburgh and everyone scatters to the four corners.  A few are returning home; others are off to London, Spain, Ireland, Switzerland, you name it, someone is going there.  Mixed emotions are the order of the day.  Sadness at leaving, but glad to be getting onto the next phase or home to family and friends.

Yesterday.  I’m not sure how to describe yesterday.  Stress filled, yes.  A stretching of the boundaries ever further than before, yes.  The cohesiveness of the group dynamic restored, yes.  As the last part of the Capstone Project, we had to bring our narratives alive in a spoken word performance.  In groups of three or four, each had to weave their own story into the others and perform it in front of all.  For many, this proved to be the hardest task yet.  For myself, I had already gone so far out on a limb with so many things this term that one more wasn’t going to hurt, so I might as well go for it with guns blazing.  All did an incredible job and we should all be proud of ourselves.  It’s not an easy thing to put oneself out there like that.  It shows a degree of trust in self and those around you.  Douglas College Scotland Field Study School – YOU ROCK!

Dancers at Prestonfield House

Once that was over and done with, we had some time before our wrap up dinner which was scheduled for the Prestonfield Restaurant.  It was to be an evening of food, song, dance and storytelling.  Everything about it was incredibly moving, skilled, humorous and fully involved all those present.  I couldn’t help but be a part of what was being enacted on stage.  The food was excellent and I even managed a wee bit of the haggis.  It wasn’t the taste of the stuff, so much as the texture, not to mention my self-restricted rule of rights for first refusal to eat innards.  Things that slime along the ground and innards – two things that need to be staying where originally placed and that don’t belong in this human’s digestive system.  Those along with any unidentifiable food.  If I can’t identify it, I don’t eat it.  I know this restricts the possibilities of opening up vast new opportunities for food love, but I’ll risk it.  As everyone knows, this eating thing is not high on my list of priorities.

Some of our stories are over for the time being.  Mine will continue a little longer.  I, too, leave Edinburgh today, heading to Aberdeen, then to Inverness.  After that, it depends where the wind takes me.  The next week or so, I’ll be sticking pins into the map to find the place I go to next.