Everything Changes

Reverse Culture Shock

 and the Realisation that 
Everything Changes

Hello again readers, 

It's only  been a few days but all I have the urge to do these days is write. A lot of my scribbles have been creative - I restarted a well-loved story during the Fringe. I first wrote it years ago but a new friend reminded me of it and I've been puttering about on plot etc ever since. Similarly, when I first came back from the States, I jotted out a new novel that I hope might one day sit next to your Grishams and James and Christies and such. Yup - I decided to turn my hand to crime, probably all that Criminal Minds I watched in ADPi. 

Anyway, this isn't really about any of that. It's not about the continuation of ideas or their coherence. It's about the beginning of the return, the start of comparisons and critiques, reverse culture shock as my beautiful, wonderful, Jeykll and Hyde city comes under the scrutiny of Post-America-Me. 

I love Edinburgh. I fell in love that warm, bright day in March 2009 when I stepped out of a taxi with my overly concerned mother and saw the city framed by Arthur's Seat. The sky was so blue and clear and the wind had the hint of winter still in its touch, but the sense of spring, of possibility and adventure was tingling in my fingers. Or that could have been the chill. Either way, I was hooked. Oxford and interviews and the heavy bleakness of IB seemed distant, unimportant next to the fact that I had an offer to this place - Edinburgh. You can read about my first reactions to Edinburgh here. It might make a good opposition to this addition. The other comparison might be my Carolina Culture Shock after being asked if I wanted to go shag by a perfect stranger. 

I reckon that right now I'm moving out of the Honeymoon period as reality (dissertations, classes, work) sets in.

During the Fringe and even before the Fringe when I was dreaming of Edinburgh, there was hardly a fault I could find in anything related to it. Even the weather has always been my favourite weather - you know the kind when it tangles up inside your clothes and you feel the thrill of a chill on your skin? And it still is. But there's something: a niggling, wiggling, wriggling something that tugs at my sensibilities. It's not that I miss Chapel Hill. I don't, not even when I think of the balmy nights spent on Franklin Street. But I miss the people. I miss Jay and Foxie and the hours spent moaning over deadlines and planning to go to Coffee Shop and failing. I miss Coffee Shop on a Tuesday Night when every international descends on the bar. I miss 304 Pritchard and everyone in it. I miss lunchtimes in ADPi with all the girls. I miss Rebecca and calling her up to swap silly stories about ridiculous nothings. 

I could hear people upstairs before I went to Stella's houseparty tonight. They had plenty of friends over and I could tell, from their voices, that at least some of them were friends of mine as well, friends that I left behind  when I went to America. I think most of all I miss them and I miss the feeling of being part of a group as I was before I left. I'm scared to start my fourth year, terrified of the lack of familiarity that I feel when it comes to university in the UK. The societies I was apart of, especially MUSOC, is now full of new faces that look at me with puzzlement and curiousity. 

"I was one of you," I want to say, "I've only been gone a few months..."

I can feel the approach of that all too recognisable sensation of oddness, of not quite fitting in, of being uncertain in a world that's both similar and different to what you know or, in this case, remember. 

Some of this I chalk up to restlessness. This is the first time since I left Chapel Hill that I've not had a new adventure up my sleeve. Going up to St Andrews for the day or nipping up to Glasgow for a show only seems to encourage my all-consuming want travel and travel and travel. Funnily enough, I don't want to leave Scotland, but I'm now hyper-sensitive about the fact that I've never been up to the Highlands or gone to the coast or seen a loch. It's utterly barmy. 

Somethings Never Change. Opal Lounge 2012.

Of course, some things never change - our little holland house crew is pretty much exactly as it was, meeting up and everything picking up where we left off. The boys are back from France/Melbourne, the girls are returning for their fourth year and even though the absences of Madeline and Mineta are far too keenly felt, there's the sense that if you put us all in a room we'd just leap straight back into conversations about dodgy men on the meadows, how to creep each other out and/or tea. 

I love Edinburgh. Every day I walk through Marchmont and across the Meadows and smile and I let the absolute joy of being here sweep over me. Relishing every moment that I can say belongs in this city, I walk and I talk and laugh with my friends. But there is the constant catching up and not even the knowledge that they also have to catch up with me can appease the fact that I left them and now I have to come back and build my world up again. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,

SCRIBBLER

HURRICANE!!!

IRENE
The Storm of a Generation

Irene. Irene. Irene. I-Reeeee-eeeen.

Wait... sorry that's Joleen. But we're all rather glad that the Hurricane didn't quite live up to expectation here in Chapel Hill.

Yes, that's right, despite that huge swirling mass that you can see in the picture above as the storm graced the East Coast with its presence, we're all ok. It was strange actually - I admittedly slept through a lot of the rain, waking up quite late after a crazy night on Pritchard Avenue - but it was pretty much like that infamous day in Edinburgh all those months ago.

If you remember The Windy Day, it was a Thursday and it seemed like the sun never rose it was so dark. Trees were uprooted, branches snapped in the wind, slates came off rooves, people buttoned up their Barbour jackets as tight as possible and donned their heaviest boots to reassure themselves that they wouldn't fly away. It poured and poured. We pushed against the horizontal winds as they lashed out around us and laughed and joked as thunderous gusts bellowed above us. We thought it was insane. We were insane. We just giggled as we dashed through the Meadows and as the Boreads tried to push us back down the steps from DHT.

Well people here weren't joking or laughing. They were sending out warnings about moving electricals away from windows, hiding valuables like passports in places far away from the door, memorising routes to safe places in-case-of-evacuation.

But it was no worse than Edinburgh here.

Of course, that's not to make little of the effects Irene has had on the rest of the American East Coast.

For some people it's been terrible and there are people here whose friends and/or family were moved out of the danger zone or who chose to flee the coast before the storm hit.

I just wanted to make sure you all knew that things in Chapel Hill have continued as usual (despite some very heavy rain and some gusting winds) and no one needs to worry (if any of you were). In fact it's now a beautiful beginning to another Carolina Blue day right now and probably a Carolina Blue Week. As they all say here: God must be Southern.

My thoughts are with those who have been effected by this event.


Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER