Finally

I am at Findhorn now. I made it! Here are some stories from my journey:

I started out my travels on February 15th, in the afternoon. That morning, I got a phone call from my doctor saying that I had mono. There was talk of me not being able to travel until later, or to not go at all, but I guess for me those just weren't options I could consider. I'd put a lot of myself into getting ready for this experience so I decided to just head on as planned. So I ate a cupcake and headed to the airport. Healthy.

It was pretty smooth sailing, minimal delays, and I met some extraordinarily interesting people on my flights. On the first one, from Indianapolis to Chicago, I sat next to a girl around my age who was an "urban pop" singer. She was going to Russia to perform (she was Russian and Romanian), and spent the entire flight glueing little crystals onto her cell phone. She showed me a picture of her pet chihuahua, Lil' Romeo. I tried googling her, but I don't think she's famous enough yet. Her name is Vika though, if you want to try. On my second flight, from Chicago to London, I sat next to a woman who was going to visit her father for his 89th birthday. She told me about growing up on her family's farm in India, and also talked a lot about dolphin therapy. It was really fun. We exchanged addresses and she promised to write me in 4 months.

Anyway, I made it through customs in London easily, and landed in Inverness, Scotland at 1:30 in the afternoon, on the 16th. After some confusion (the place we were all supposed to meet up was not actually called what we were told it was) I took a bus into town, and luckily met right up with Marga and Ashley, two girls on the program. We walked around a bit and got some food, but mostly we waited on this town square-like monument next to a shopping mall (I could distinctly see the Claire's store inside, it was very strange to see such an American store there) with our big bags as the rest of our friends slowly trickled in. I think about eight of us showed up by five (it was surprising to me that the weather was nice enough to sit comfortably outside for 3 hours), and then we left for Findhorn with our focalisers, Erin and Melissa.

Focalisers are what in most other communities would be called leaders or facilitators. I think the word focaliser is used because ecovillages usually have a spiritual aspect. Findhorn definitely does. I thought I would be much more uncomfortable with this, but I think I was imagining it to be a lot more New Agey than it actually is; so far I've been very comfortable with everything we've done. Though I must say that because I'm very skeptical about these sorts of things I have been preparing myself for a long time to be able to do activities like sacred dancing, angel meditations, and attunements (all things we have done so far) with an open mind. I'm fairly certain that if I had come here without that preparation I would be in a very different space right now. And don't worry, I will explain all these activities. It's okay if you think any of the things I'm doing are creepy or weird. I'm sure I'll be doing things that push my comfort levels, and I'll probably do things I think are creepy or weird too. But I'm hoping to keep as much of this openness as possible.

It's late here now, so I'm going to head to bed, but I'll get you all updated soon, I promise. There's a lot going on and I really want to try and convey as much of this as I can to you, at least at first, so you can understand the basis for what I am doing as and the place I am in as well as possible. This experience is a lot different from most study abroad programs, and I think it will be hard for me to get anything across without saying a lot. So I'm sorry if it's hard for you to get through a lot of words, I know I use a lot of them. I'll hopefully have pictures soon too, if you're more into that.

See you later!

Love,
Nora