the hijinks of molly & tara

The last week and a half traveling on my own in Scotland has been crazy. I’ve been working at a hostel by Loch Tay, and when I first arrived it was hectic because it was Easter holiday weekend, and the hostel manager took off for the week to be at his other hostel on Mull. It was overbooked most of the weekend, and I had to sleep in a different bed every night.

But the rest of the week was mostly pretty quiet and peaceful. I had the company of Joe, a British filmmaker who was also doing Help Exchange there, and Andre, a colorful Estonian character who’s working at a local restaurant and living at the hostel. Joe is working on writing a screenplay, and we got to talking and sharing ideas. We ended up collaborating on an animation for a logo sequence for his production company, Dreamscape Pictures. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever animated, I will definitely post it here when it’s finished (it’s about 90% done now). Hooray for unexpected creative collaboration!

Pretty much all I’ve done the last couple days is bake and cook and juggle and animate. I think I have improved ten-fold at juggling in the past two weeks, I can do a bunch of tricks now. And I baked chai shortbread biscuits, cinnamon oat scones, and vanilla almond biscotti. All with no measuring utencils! I have a very good sense for estimating ingredients now. Yummm.

SADLY my camera battery charger dissapeared so I have very little documentation of Scotland. I have a few pictures of a gorgeous hike up Ben Lawers, which I will post as soon as I find a place with wifi (I am on a hostel computer now).

Tomorrow I will explore Edinburgh, and on Monday I fly back to Boston. Farewell to Europe for now, and hello to friends and family back in the states!

-Molly

We got into London yesterday and had a lovely welcome-back family dinner last night. Molly’s travels continue (prepare yourself, Scotland!) for another two weeks, but Tara is packing up things here and returns to the States next week.

We have now ridden in what feels like every possible type of train: on the Eurostar, on many varieties of regular trains, in a sleeping-car, on high-speed trains, on little tiny local trains, on a double-decker train… through fields, mountains, cities, and towns, by rivers and through tunnels.

It’s been an exciting, roving, fun, and thought-provoking adventure: traveling through foreign countries, staying with strangers, making friends, taking care of ourselves, observing and exploring and experiencing. This blog has been a rather anemic representation of what we’ve done, but as we return to a more normal pattern the next few weeks, we’ll do our best to flesh things out with all the stories, details, and photos!

For our route, check out our updated Googlemap (link in the upper right-hand corner of the blog).