I listened to her music endlessly from about September until December, and it brings me right back to where I was then. Jury’s out on whether that is a good thing or not.

The songs I have loved all remind me of times in my life. Death Cab for Cutie’s Plans reminds me of first year. Something Corporate always brings back high school memories. Vienna Teng, Jason Webley and Damien Rice remind me of Ireland. Ingrid Michaelson reminds me of my last year of my undergrad.

Besides smell, music is the thing that most triggers my memory. It’s strange how songs can be shaped and changed by our experiences and the things we associate them with. I can’t listen to one of my former favourite songs at all anymore, because it reminds me of an ex boyfriend I would rather forget.

So I’m listening to Kate on repeat and I think I’m a little stuck in the past.

When I see I’ve had enough
And the seas are getting rough
I just need time
Til everything is back to normal
And everything is as it should be
If everything is less than you hoped for
Everything’s okay by me

-Shoebox by Kate Miller Heidke

I am happy with it. I am confident that I did everything I could to make it perfect, and there is nothing I would change. That’s all one can ask for, right?

Now it only remains to be seen what other people (namely my supervisor and two other markers) think about it and if I get a decent grade.

It was my life for an entire month. When it was done I was both immensely relieved and strangely empty. I had no idea what to do with my time anymore.

Luckily, packing came along to keep me busy. That and Firefly.

I’m proud of myself. For finishing this and for getting this far. This is the physical manifestation of all of the work I have done in the last 5 years, and everything I have learned.

And, believe it or not, I think I finally found my niche. Yes, I could talk about pots, myths and political myth making forever.

I get tired of saying goodbyes. Why is that you have to say goodbye to one set of people in order to be back with another? Why is it that you have to leave one home to return to another? Why must there always be that trade off - losing something to gain something else?

I think it’s not about the places you go, but the people you meet.

This year has undeniably changed me for the better. But it wasn’t the place so much as the people. Places are only the backdrop for experiences, and experiences are largely dependent on the characters.

I know that distance is a relative thing, and I know that friendship can survive distance. But it’s hard when things change. When you go from seeing someone nearly everyday to maybe once a year. It was hard when I came here, and now it will be hard when I return to Canada. The more places I go, the more homes I have… the more people I have to leave behind.

So I’ll settle with an au revoir to Newcastle and my Newcastle cast of characters, because goodbye is too final and too sad.

I’m not really sure where I’m going from here.

And I feel like in just a few weeks I’ll be looking at these fragments of one of the best years of my life and trying to piece together a time when I was free.

When I saw my life packed into a suitcase again, I sat down and cried.

I don’t think it’s because I’m sad to leave. It’s because I’m sad that it’s over. I need to leave because by the end of the week there will be nothing here for me anymore. But I wish it were January again and all of that possibility and adventure still lay ahead.

Because that was good possibility.

The possibility I have now is also called uncertainty and I am not good at uncertainty.

And it’s interesting, to think of one’s self as non-linear. There’s something comforting in knowing that one hour leads to a next, that Wednesday follows Tuesday and March follows February.

But there’s a reason why Jeanette Winterson’s books speak to me, and I think she touched on it with this. While consciously I have trouble being non-linear, my inner self recognizes something about how the past, present and future are not fixed but simultaneous, are non-linear. Because, when it comes down to it, each moment we live is affected by our past experiences and our hopes or worries of the future just as much as it is affected by our present situation.

It gave me a lot to think about. And a lot of insight into Jeanette Winterson’s unique writing style.

I thought that the hardest part would be the actual writing bit. But I adjusted to that fairly well. I woke up every morning at 8am (not willingly, but because construction begins at 8am sharp right outside my front door), had two to three cups of coffee while I watched some tv show or another to wake up, then sat at my computer from about 9:30am until 5pm, almost everyday. And I wrote. Lots. And most of it was even decent.

On Monday I finally finished the actual writing bit, and that’s when I started to get stressed.

Why? Because I have a million little nit-picky things to do to the dissertation, in terms of editing, formatting, etc. And they all take a lot more time than they should. And to make matters worse, I took on the task of typing someone else’s dissertation for some extra cash. I finished typing it weeks ago, but he wants me to do the nit-picky things on his as well.

This afternoon I spent over 45 minutes trying to get a picture into a Word document. No matter what I did, the picture would not go anywhere but at the top of the page. In the end I had to get Kaitlyn, my Amazonian Webmistress, to fix it for me. Thank God. Because by that point I had thrown things around my apartment and slammed every door I could think of while swearing like a sailor at the construction workers outside (who couldn’t hear me, I promise… not so sure about my neighbours though…)

So, I guess writing a dissertation isn’t as stressful as polishing one up.

I should be all done next week. I hope. And then I promise I will come back from the blogcation of the last month or so.

It starts with a month of goodbyes and a plane, lifting off and crossing an ocean. Dissolve to sleepless nights, hurried words and uncertainty. Pan left to the silence of 2am. Star wipe to a few Christmas scenes.

As the tempo picks up, there’s the Colosseum, the Pyramids and some monkeys. Spliced between are books and faces. Cue the Eiffel Tower and sunsets. Fade into sun reflecting off an ocean and then bearing down on the Acropolis. Cut to Scottish hills and the North Sea. Dissolve to extreme close up of a Greek pot and a computer screen. Intersperse people, here and left behind. Fade to black.

So, it’s my birthday. Number 23. And it’s been a hell of a year. I’ve been looking at photos of people and places and I know that there’s no going back. Even if I am, technically, going back. It’s all different. Everything’s changed. And isn’t that the most you could ask for in a year of your life?

This is the song I would put behind this year’s montage:

I’ll be talking about this year for at least a decade. Remember that time I got stuck in Pompeii? Well, when I was in Greece…. You know, in Egypt... Oh, yeah, I got that in Paris.

Dear 23,

You’re going to have to try really hard if you want to contend with 22.

Love,

Hez

When Jes and Tariq came to visit, they decided they wanted to see Hadrian’s Wall. They wanted to see Vindolanda, where I did my excavation in April and some other wallish things.

You can get to all the forts and landmarks on the wall on a bus from Newcastle, the AD122. But it only leaves once a day, at 9am. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to catch it on time, but with lots of coffee and a little luck, we boarded the bus and drove along the wall (literally, the road sometimes follows on top of the wall).

We started out at Vindolanda, where I gave them a tour from what I remembered of my orientation, told them what I’d found and showed them where I’d dug.

The original plan was to take the bus to Housesteads Roman Fort and look around. Housesteads is usually used as an example of the typical Roman fort plan and I hadn’t been yet.

We were waiting for the bus in front of Vindolanda. It was cold and windy and we were bored.

So we decided to walk to Housesteads instead.

I’m still not sure how far it was, but it wasn’t an easy walk by any means (though we were definitely the youngest and the most exhausted of the wall walkers that day - clearly the old people were in better shape!)

But it was beautiful.

It looks nice until you realize that once you get to the top you have to go down again. And then up again. For at least 3 miles.

And sometimes the path would go over an old farmer’s wall and you have to climb over it on an Official Hadrian’s Wall Path Ladder (UNESCO approved!)

But the views from the top are spectacular. I think you can see Scotland back there. That’s Jes and Tariq, being cute.

This was my second favourite view.

The Romans had a Milecastle on every Roman mile of the wall. This is Milecastle 39, one of the best preserved on the wall.

Recognize this? This was my favourite part of the walk. This is none other than the iconic tree from the beginning of the Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner. It’s somewhere between Once Brewed and Housesteads. Isn’t it a great tree?!

So we had to take a self portrait, obviously. My hair was escaping from its braids by this point. It was so windy!

All in all, it was a great day adventure and a good workout. My legs really hurt the next day.

The more I travel, the more proud I am to be Canadian. I love Canada. I love what it means to be Canadian. I love that most people love Canadians.

And I know that Canada is home.

Other countries may be older, more historically interesting and even more beautiful.

But Canada is a country that I am proud to call home, even from across an ocean.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!!!!!

The first time I went to Scotland was three years ago, when I was living in Ireland. My friend Alaina and I went to Edinburgh for the weekend, and managed to squeeze in a Highlands tour while we were at it.

I adored Scotland, from the first. It’s just a beautiful place. Scottish people are so nice, even if they’re difficult to understand sometimes. The Highlands are breathtaking. I’d really like to run away from life someday and rent a cottage in the Highlands and write my first novel. Though maybe it will have to be my second novel, so that I can afford it.

Technically, my heritage can be traced back to Scotland. My name’s quite Scottish. And they love the heather flower there. So, you know, if you believe any of that stuff about having a subconscious cultural connection, then I could have one to Scotland.

Of course, my grandmother was from Newcastle and I definitely don’t feel a connection to it.

Anyway. So, my friends Jes and Tariq came to visit me a couple of weeks ago. I’ve known Jes since I was about five, and Tariq’s her boyfriend of five years, who I’ve become friends with too, over the years.

We decided to head up to Inverness for the first weekend they were here. Actually, I sort of decided. I told them I’d always wanted to go and we should. Luckily they agreed, and ended up loving it as much as I did!

That’s the city of Inverness, on the river Ness.

There are some beautiful walks you can do from the city centre, along the river. This one takes you by two little islands in the river.

This walk went along the Caledonian Canal and out to where the Ness meets the sea. Sometimes you can see dolphins, according to the owner of our B&B. We didn’t have that much luck though.

And, of course, Inverness is right next to the famous Loch Ness. So we took a little boat tour and looked for Nessie. No such luck, unfortunately.

But the tour finished up at Urquhart Castle, which I’ve always wanted to visit.

Even though we were technically in the Highlands, most of what we saw of the quintessential hills was from the window of our train. But for good measure, I’ll throw in a photo I took the first time I visited: