Well… I finally got my butt in gear. I’m leaving for Scotland on June 10, and I shall be returning on July 7.

Date?

I am so excited about this trip, yet there is anxiety also. This will be the first major trip I shall make that I’ll have planned entirely on my own. What will it feel like to land in Glasgow with 26 days to fill and a whole country to explore? What awaits me over there, across the mighty Atlantic? Will I be the same person when I return? I look forward to the lesson in autonomy that this trip shall bring.

From the moment I set my mind to going to Scotland, I came to realise that I can do just about anything I set my mind to do. Financially, this is the probably the most unsound thing I’ve ever done in my life, considering my impending move to Ottawa. Yet, emotionally, this trip comes at the perfect time in my life. I’ll have almost a full month to learn self-reliance, to grow up, to catch a glimpse of the woman I could be.

I look forward to this trip with a mixture of hope and of anxiety. I am about to see a country that has haunted me for years, a land that has nourished my imagination. I don’t expect anything of Scotland but that she be herself. Perhaps then I won’t be bitterly disappointed if she is not as wonderful a place as almost everyone who’s ever visited her claims. I am going to Scotland. Reality has yet to hit. Perhaps it never will. Maybe Scotland will be like Colorado, a pleasant dream, yes, but a dream none the less.