| September 4th, 2009 |
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(Am behind on comment replies, will attempt to catch up soon.)
So, with a trip to the UK definitely in the works, I'm planning two primary lists:
1) Things To Do Before I Leave
2) Things To Do While I'm There
The first list has more items so far. List 2 is so far:
- travel around
- visit relatives
- visit ancestral home
- go see John Barrowman in La Cage aux Folles, since that's what he's doing in November and whynot
That's pretty much it.
I'm excited about going to see My Ancestral Home. It's a farm on the edge of Aberdeenshire where my ancestors have lived for at least the last nine hundred years, give or take a few decades in the Middle Ages.
Connecting with my roots, aye.
As one who grew up in Australia, and has only visited South Africa (where I was born) and the USA, it's going to be odd being somewhere where I can have an unconflicted feeling that I, and my kin, have the natural right to live there, to have that land be ours. Because that particular patch of land has been ours for many centuries - and it's not that we only acquired it in the eleventh century, it's that that's where my knowledge of any records runs out. For all that can be proven, we've lived there since humans first came to Scotland.
The ancient stone circles there could well have been put there by my own ancestors.
I can't wait to go there.
My mother gave me the address to write to the current heads of the household, my great-uncle Ian and his wife. (There are many, many Ians in my family. It's kind of hilarious. We even have some who come in by marriage. My great-uncle Ian's brother-in-law is named Ian, for example.) I've also been keeping in touch with my uncle Ian (told you), who I will be visiting, and who's kind of my first stop when I get to Britain - partly for the delight of visiting my adored uncle, and partly because it's nice to have a known first destination when your travel plans involve a lot of wandering around.
I'm undecided about whether I'll go to Europe at all - it seems like I might as well, after all, and I speak enough French and German to get by in Western Europe.
This is why list 2 is being formed: I need to work out some major destinations to aim for.
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