Ireland, Liverpool, and more!

The last two weeks of break were, quite frankly, exhausting. I had a new adventure pretty much every single day! So let's start from the beginning, shall we? (Cheers to Ramona, Lottie, and Lou - who are all mentioned in this lovely update!)

On the 4th of January, I got myself up, caught a train to Glasgow Prestwick Airport and boarded a flight set for Dublin! I was going to be staying with a friend Ramona and her wonderful family. Ramona and I had never met before, and before anyone winces and exclaims how ridiculous and dangerous such adventures would be, let's go back to 2005-2007, when I was in a phase of my life where everything was Harry Potter and nothing else (little has changed). In 2005, I wandered onto a wonderful website called HPFF.com, which was an archive for fanfiction of Harry Potter. Unashamedly I will admit that, yes, I did write Harry Potter fanfiction. And if I do say so, I did quite well. It was through the forums that I developed friendships with people I would've never met or had the opportunity to talk to otherwise. They were helpful, they were kind and funny, and some of them I kept in contact with via the internet consistently even when I left and came back to the site several times. Others, I lost contact with for many years.

Ramona and I reconnected via happenstance Facebook encounters last Spring and when it became apparent that I was going to be in Scotland for my graduate program, we both contemplated the idea of finally meeting up. And so we did! I'm very glad that we did so, too. So before I delve into our shenanigans in Ireland, I just want to toss a great big thank you out to Ramona and her family (including the wee ones) for their hospitality, and to say that Harry Potter is truly very magical!

Holiday adventures

Christmas away from home is hard. I won't lie about that.

No, hang on, let me correct that statement. Christmas away from my family is hard. If I had had the opportunity to spend Christmas in Scotland with my family and my dog I would've been the happiest on the planet; the fact that usual routines with family members was taking place without me being there was startling - seeing as that hadn't ever happened (as far as I know) in my short 22 years. But what needed to be done, needed to be done, and cherishing new experiences and saving money were top priorities. So myself, and a few other friends, bought train tickets and booked a hostel up North to Inverness...