Travelogue: Spain + Scotland

Hello! It’s been a hot minute since I popped on here. To be fair, I haven’t had much of note to share, and also it feels generally weird and squirmy sharing things online when there’s war and genocide and injustice around every corner.

I don’t know what the balance is between being aware and actively involved in seeking justice and also having to do things like cook dinner and answer emails. I’m not blind to the privilege I have in being able to travel freely and enjoy myself whilst millions of people are trapped in a tiny area of land that is being constantly bombed, with no food, clean water, or medical care. I don’t know how to reconcile moments of personal joy with the overarching brokenness of the world. I don’t even know if we’re supposed to be able to reconcile such an imbalance. I think we’re meant to know and to grieve and to tap into the gut feeling that screams “this isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”

I don’t have an answer to the paradox. But I think it’s important to acknowledge before going on to talk about beautiful things. I also think it’s important to remember the beautiful things, not as blinders to block out the horrible parts of this world, but as beacons in the distance that remind us of what can be.

With that, I look to the beauty of the last few weeks, and share it with you. Granted, besides the general weirdness of sharing in this climate, there’s also the general weirdness of sharing, because I feel a little bit like “who cares?” But then I remember I care! I love reading people’s long-form newsletters! I love pouring over blogs to see what stands out to others in our short and limited lives! I love knowing what another person finds beautiful and significant and worth documenting! So I document too, even if it’s just for me.

Spain

By day I work with kids, and part of that work lets me travel to different countries and exhaust myself running 10 hour kids’ programs. My husband (I usually make him come along and volunteer) and I packed up and flew into Sevilla, Spain for a week of joy and mayhem.

Due to said mayhem, there wasn’t much time for art (or sleeping. or eating. or blinking), but I did manage to take advantage of the little free time we had and get sufficiently sandy. I’m a coastal gal at heart, and we were lucky enough to be located beachside for the week. Something about the sand and the gentle crash of waves grounds me in a way nothing else does. So while it was usually just a stolen half-hour of beach time here and there, I’m grateful for even the small moments I got to smell salty and collect seashells.

Personally speaking, this trip was a return to a specific location that catalyzed a lot of hurt in my life. I was a bit nervous going in, but overall it was such a redemptive, full-circle experience. We don’t often get to redeem difficulty in such tangible ways, and the gift of this experience isn’t lost on me.

So really, everything was lovely up until the last day when I woke up to a generous gift from the kids I’d been working with: an abundance of mucus. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving (turned into a double ear infection), but nevertheless, she persisted.

Interlude — Amsterdam

Our trip from Spain to Scotland gave us a 10 hour layover in Amsterdam, so we hopped out of the airport with some friends for a whirlwind few hours of mostly food. We ate crepes and fries and I smashed a giant homemade stroopwaffle in an embarrassingly short amount of time. My husband found a fancy pipe he’d been wanting for ages and I saw more bikes in 4 hours than I’ve seen in 4 years.

Scotland

We arrived in Edinburgh at midnight and promptly passed out at a friend’s house. We came because we’re considering a move there for my husband’s PhD (smarty!), and wanted to experience the city a bit. Unfortunately, because I am D-U-M-B my voice was shot from our time in Amsterdam and my immune system wasn’t fairing much better. I tried popping out a bit for food but was pretty bed-ridden our first few days.

Combined with Josh’s food poisoning, we were a sorry lot for a while. Luckily, I pulled it through for the last few days. Some friends who were in the country to see family came into the city for a few days, and we had a blast catching up— the last time we saw their son was when he was about 7 months old and now he’s a whole toddler!

We also saw an abundance of Swifties (it was TS’s first era’s concert in Edinburgh). Though I’m not personally a Swiftie, I loved all the fashion action going on.

I ate a lot of soup and sourdough and drank copious amounts of tea and ambled through a lot of parks and side streets. Since the Uni is in the city center (and so were the friends we stayed with) and I was out of commission most of the week, we didn’t go super far from familiar turf. On our last day, we managed to bus out to Portobello, a coastal neighborhood of Edinburgh. Happy to announce that I’m in love with the location and am determined to live there, even if it’s not practical.

Epilogue — Home!

After another day of layovers and laying down on mysterious surfaces in airports, we made it back to DC to a fanfare of whining meows. I am still courageously fighting off my double ear infection, which is my immune system’s way of reminding me that if I were born in any other time period, I would have died of plague or paper cut by now.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading <3 A travelogue certainly isn’t the most poignant piece of writing one can produce, but it was a bright spot for me to create. I’m window painting this weekend and stressing out over AI, so I should have another bloated word dump coming soon.

Signing off with a happy cat and a full heart!
~Mary