Day 1 - Travel and Arrival in Scotland

I cannot believe that I have finally made it to SCOTLAND!!!!!! I AM SO EXCITED! I was thinking on the way from London that this is the trip I have wanted to make ever since I can remember. It was never a question of if I would come…but when. Even long before DoDDS made travelling financially possible, I knew that I would someday make it here. My grandpa was from Glasgow and he used to tell me story after story about Scotland, sing Scottish songs, and make up wild tales about two Scottish horses (Clarissa and Fiona). He would visit his homeland every so often and come back with pictures and even more stories.

As if that wasn’t enough to spark an interest, there were the visits of Grandpa’s siblings and their kids and later the kids’ kids. As I was growing up, the visits were always eagerly anticipated and even when the visitors were new or unknown by me, it never took more than a second to feel like we had known each other forever. Since I have been looking forward to this trip forever, the past few weeks of anticipation have been at the approximate level of a four or five year old anticipating Christmas morning and the many presents left by Santa.

So it was with barely contained excitement that I embarked on this adventure. I left school on Friday, June 6th and sped a quickly as my gigantic van would take me to the airport. Only flight was delayed in my travels from Tokyo to Chicago to London to Edinburgh and I had two seats together on all the flights expect the last one (and it was only an hour long. The funniest thing about travelling was that as soon as I hit London, I kept hearing Maggie’s voice everywhere I went. And of course I knew that Maggie was not in London, but in Edinburgh, so that was impossible. I had to retrain my brain that Maggie is not the only person in the world with a Scottish accent. I thought it was only me, but my dad and Megan said they had the same problem at first.

The London airport was gigantic and I was starving when I arrived. Since I missed my connection I had time for breakfast…soldier eggs and toast..,a fitting first mean in the UK since Grandma and Grandpa used to make them for me all the time. In the airport, I saw some fun signs, one of which said, “Loo seat is wonky.” Another said, “Mind your head when standing.” There were others that made me laugh too, but unfortunately I can’t remember them. We have fun comparing British phrases with our American ones with the cousins too. For some reason they think, “JiffyLube” is really funny, but we laugh when they call soda pop “fizzy juice”.

After saying hello to Maggie and Colin, I needed to get to explore. Hearing the music and crowds, Dad and I headed over the Corstorphine Fair (held every two years and right out the back gate of Maggie’s house). There were thousands of people wandering around the park and listening to music. We meandered through the fair and then I took a walk through the neighborhood to take some pictures.

At about 5:00 pm, we headed to Airth Castle for the rehearsal dinner that was not a rehearsal dinner. ;) Basically it was all of the people in the wedding, out of town guests, and random other friends, but no wedding rehearsal was held. We saw all of the family and chatted and ate. It was great fun and we were there until about 11:30 pm…which felt like about 8:00 pm since it was light outside until about 10:30 pm! We then headed home to crash…at least I did since I hadn’t slept since the flight from Tokyo to Chicago however many hours ago that was… All in all, it was an awesome first day! :)

I also posted some pics at flickr.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennellinjapan/collections/72157605497908361/