Reflections on a Glaswegian Day

The last few days have been so good, with Sunday's grand adventure to Loch Lomond and the science centre (the infrared harp is brilliant!) and hanging about town with the girls (minus the good-bye to Cherith.) You all are certainly not making it any easier for me to leave.

I spent yesterday afternoon roaming the city centre to shop and check some more things off my things-to-do-in-Glasgow-before-I-leave list. First of all, ceilidh/ball shoe shopping is not easy, especially for a girl who a)doesn't really like shopping and b)who has bad balance anyway and for whom wearing heels is a bad idea. I really don't know how these Scottish girls do it, plus they wear heels to uni all the time and walking on cobble stones and up and down hills. Anyway, I finally settled on a pair, so come Friday we'll see how it goes.

Something on my list of things to do was to buy a couple meters/yards (which ever measurement you prefer) of Hunter tartan to take back home and have Mom transform into a skirt or other wearable item. My plan has been slightly foiled however. Apparently it costs 45 pounds a meter. I'll have to think about whether it's really worth that to me or not. So far, I'm thinking not.

Onwards I went to the Modern Art Museum. Nothing particularly grabbed me. There was a collection of works by a woman who looks and geography and our relationship with it, which was pretty interesting, but mostly I was more fascinated by the architecture of the museum building itself. The iron ralings on the oval mezzanines are very attractive. Overall, it's worth a look. I always leave art museums with a new perspective on things, a new awareness of how I view the world. It's good to expand your mind in creative ways I feel. From there on I mostly just wandered about the city and took a few photos.

I'm not really a city girl (despite the fact that I'm probably doomed to having to live in some type of metropolitan centre with lots of international organizations like New York or Washington D.C. maybe even London, hopefully Geneva, because of my calling to save the developing world from injustice and inequality). I grew up in a pretty small Western Colorado town, although I realized early on that there was more to life than Grand Junction, CO. My idea of a good day usually involves at least some sort of sparsely inhabited space, good company and preferably horses. Don't get me wrong, I love the cultural opportunities and attractions of a big city, but at the end of the day I would prefer not be living in a concrete jungle full of people. I wasn't even really sure how I felt about Glasgow when I first got here. I immediately loved the contrast between old and new architecture here though. That's something that you just don't get in the States, especially in the west where a really old house has only been around for 100 years. Back east you might be able to find something from the colonial period, but if you think about that the University of Glasgow has been in existance for several hundred years longer than my country it gives it some perspective. Overall, I didn't really care for Glasgow much.

Glasgow has grown on me though. I love wandering around the city centre on a nice day and seeing the masses of people wandering along with me or sitting on the steps of the Concert Hall and listening to the street band du jour. I love looking down side streets to see old and new buildings creating a varied skyline. I love watching people sitting outside sipping their beverage of choice. I love walking the city and I love public transportation. I love it when people gather in the park on a nice day like it's some sort of event (I suppose sun in Glasgow is an event). I love sitting in the court yard of the University looking at all the spires and the cloisters and watching people roam through. It's a little sanctuary really. I love the cone hats that Kelvin and Wellington are usually porting. Since my first visit to Scotland when I was about 13, I have loved it here, but mostly for the dramatic landscapes of the country side. I have grown quite fond of Glasgow though and my old preference of Edinburgh (gasp!) over Glasgow has been overturned. Glasgow is the truly Scottish city--absolutely captivating and inviting whilst bearing the scars and grit from its rough life all at the same time. I love it for that.

In the beginning of the book 'Blue Like Jazz' (which I highly recommend, it's subtitle is 'Non-Religious thoughts on Christian Spirituality', he's very honest, but funny as well), Donald Miller writes about sometimes needing to watch someone love something before you could actually love it yourself. I think that's how I am about Glasgow.

It pays off...

...to be friends with a pastry chef. So yesterday was my last day at the hotel I've worked at here. It was all very nice. They gave me some beautiful flowers and a bottle of champagne. The most exciting thing though was that in the card they gave me, there was a recipe for this chocolate-orange mousse that I've become somewhat addicted to. They're just so good! I was so excited. I still am excited! Why else would I be blogging about this?! I really couldn't have asked for more. The trick is now to see if I can actually make it be like anything that even resembles the ones that Graeme makes. Anyway, moral of the story--befriend a pastry chef.

Chance

As I was browsing the website of my hometown newspaper (gjsentinel.com if you want to see what life is like in Western Colorado...), I came a across a headline about HBO making a movie about one of my classmates from high school. His name is Chance Phelps and he joined the Marines just after he graduated. He was sent to Iraq and was mortally wounded in March 2004, less than a year after we had graduated. Chance only attended my high school for our final year, so I didn't really know him well. He played on my school's football team(American football...) and I remember him being a pretty funny guy. We definitely were not friends but we had a class together and exchanged a few words.

The night that I heard that he had been killed, my university's ice hockey team had just won the national championships, so the whole campus had gone crazy, and I'm pretty sure I had been running and jumping through the corridors of the halls I lived in, along with others. I had called my mom to share the victory with her (she had been watching the game with some people who she teaches with). She was excited with me and then told me that Chance had died. I remember feeling so selfish. Here I was celebrating the victory of some stupid game being played by people whom I didn't really know, without a care in the world. Here he was dead because he was fighing for a cause he really believed in; debatably dying so that I could run around like an idiot in my safe little university world celebrating disgustingly trivial things. Chance's death brought the war home for me. It doesn't consume my every thought, but I do think of him, and others I know who are still fighting, with some amount of frequency.

I don't like war. I don't think anyone really does, but it goes on nonetheless. It is so easy for us to be removed from it. I wonder if President Bush would have made similar choices if his daughters were in the military or the children of close friends. This war is so controversial-- suspicion of alterior motives, the apparent lack of evidence of WMD (how awful is it that this acronym is now understood in daily, civil vernacular?!), alegations of torture and other war crimes, the often-parodied 'axis of evil.' Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the public does not know the full story, so it is hard for us to accurately judge these events. It is difficult to judge whether lives are being lost for a noble purpose or to satisfy greed. I hope and pray that they are not lost in vain.

Father, let good come of this ugly, dirty thing called war.

My First Blog

I never thought I'd have a blog. I've always disliked journaling. I have this thing about keeping my inner-most thoughts, well, inner. If you want to know what those might be on a particular topic, I'd probably tell you, but I don't like the thought of my thoughts just floating around on a page for just anyone to read. The thought of someone reading my journal or diary after I die really makes me uneasy. I suppose since blogs are electronic the chances of someone being able to read my blog after I die are greatly reduced. It's only because of Ailsa that I have created this blog.

The pressure to come up with a name for my blog was immense. I think it took me about an hour to decide and I'm happy to see that I can change it in the future if I feel the need. "Hope and a Future" comes from Jeremiah 29:11--"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and fine me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD, " and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."

I included the rest of that little passage just because it's so good. When I am worried about what I'll be doing with my life (which is something I think about quite a lot), I think of this verse. I don't have to worry about my future because God knows what it is and all I have to do is seek him with all my heart.

Here ends my first blog.