A myriad of academic adventures

The very weekend after my visitors departed, I myself departed with six others in my program down to York. I don't mean York, Pennsylvania, where I come from, settled and established formally in 1741. I mean the original York, England. Most of the Celtic and Viking troupe made the 3.5 hour train ride south for the first World of the Vikings Conference, held in honour of Richard Hall. It was a long weekend of learning, tiredness, and attempting to fit in the things we wanted to see within York while we were there/while we could.

York is a pretty fantastic city, with some pretty fantastic archaeology, most notably in my opinion, from the Roman period upwards. Upon our arrival on Friday, we had some time to go through the excellent Yorkshire Museum as well as the York Minster, a very famous and very beautiful Cathedral.

First visitors!

Six months on the nose from the very day I arrived in Scotland I found myself back in Glasgow International Airport for the first time since. For this occasion however, I was on the other side of the glass doors and customs, waiting anxiously for their arrival. It had been over six months since I last saw them both; in fact I could trace back to the very date I last saw them (23 August 2013). The minute I saw Leah and Alex come down the escalator and frantically almost forget to pick up their luggage, I started to tremble with excitement. Honest to goodness, it felt like that scene in the airport in Love, Actually where people are meeting up with each other and grinning stupidly and jumping up and down and hugging.

That's exactly what had happened.