Touchdown In Edinburgh

After months of preparation and anticipation, our departure date had finally come and the six excited representatives from Rotary District 5510 began their month long journey and traversed the globe, making our way to our final destination, Edinburgh, Scotland.

The day of travelling was not without it's hiccups, we had a very tight connection in Newark and a late arriving plane from Phoenix to make things interesting however after Kylee flagged down an airport transport and arranged for a ride to our gate, we thought we had beaten the system. I'm not sure if the man had a horn or not, but regardless he decided not to use it and spent most of the ride yelling, "beep, beep" "coming through" and clapping his hands. We annoyed most of the people in Newark quite quickly. To be fair, some of them looked annoyed before we got there.

It was all for not, as the plane ended up being several hours delayed anyways and we grabbed a quick bite in an airport diner.

We made it into Edinburgh and ran into a slight stumble at customs but they were finally overwhelmed with our charm and decided to let us into the country. After meeting with a lovely welcome committee we quickly went our seperate ways and headed off with our first hosts. Levi an I (Scott) were extremely fortunate to be staying with Jim and Judith Slater. Two amazing rotarians, generous hosts, and great people.

The both of us decided to try to push through on no sleep in effort to acclimate ourselfs to our new Scottish time zone. We headed out for a beautiful scenic drive along a narrow windy road and stumbled upon our first touring oppourtunity. ook us to a local cranog center which was a site of excavation and recreation of how certain Scottish people lived on the river over 2,500 years ago. Their tools and methods had many parallels to our native americans. We had this fabulous tour guide who was German, but had a thick Scottish accent and he was very passionate about demonstrating his skills at building a fire from scratch.

We both felt a bit like zombies, but after a bite and some coffee, we were able to stick it out through our fatigue and had a wonderful first day in Scotland. We all anxiously await our next destination and chance to interact with the wonderful people of District 1010.

~Scott