So one or two things have happened in the last few weeks. And by one or few things, I mean a whole ton of stuff.
At the beginning of October, my parents came to England for a series of fun adventures. We drove around because my dad considers it a personal challenge to take on as many foreign roads as possible. Bookstores were visited and historic sites toured. Our trip included high tea with my dad, which was something a little like trying to have high tea with Ron Swanson.
At the end of October, my parents helped me pack up my flat and we moved everything out. Seeing your home stripped back to the way it was when you moved in is always a bit disconcerting, and I was glad for their help (and moving expertise).
We relocated to London and met up with my older sister. This episode included a memorable journey across London with nine rolling bags, two duffle bags, three backpacks, three purses, and three misc random things (including but not limited to a falling-apart trash bag of laundry) split between the four of us. It was epic. And by epic, I mean a nightmare. But we made it, and spent some time in London before the parents took the majority of the suitcases back to the States.
Amy and headed out to Llanelli, Wales. I camped out in a flat there for the next few weeks, while Amy came and went on various trips. It was an intensely beautiful spot right on the beach, and Sarah joined me for a few days on an informal writing retreat (disclaimer: not much writing got done).
Then, around mid-November, we headed back to London for the Trust Women Conference. This was two days of sessions with awesome speakers, learning about women’s rights around the world, and about trafficking specifically. It was inspirational and intense, and I’ll probably be processing it for a long time still.
The day after the conference was my first book launch! (Of a sort, anyway.) Becca and I were included in the Letter to an Unknown Soldier anthology published by WilliamCollins (a branch of HarperCollins). The launch was in London at the Royal Society of the Arts. It was surreal to open a book and find our names. I also loved meeting some of the others who were published, especially those whose letters I remember putting on the website myself. The other editorial moderators and I reconnected, and there’s already talk of a reunion come May when I’m back for my next launch—the Bath Spa Writing for Young People anthology!
On my last day in England, I caught a train back to Bath for the Bath Film Festival’s screening of Song of the Sea. Becca and Sarah from my course went with me, and we had a lot of fun. It was a bit bittersweet, though, and hard to leave.
Amy and I flew IcelandAir out of England, which has a special deal where you can stopover in Iceland for up to a week. We stopped for two days, but I already want to go back. The landscape is beautiful, and more than a little like stumbling into Middle Earth. (You can see for yourself on my post with some highlights of my photography.) We went on a day tour of the Golden Circle, which included some spectacular highlights like the biggest waterfall in Europe and the Continental Drift. I ran by the Saga Museum, which was full of somewhat terrifying wax figures from Icelandic legend/history. We also saw the Reykjavík Cathedral, which was obviously pretty cool.
We flew into DC, where Mom picked us up, and the next day we finally made it to our parents’ house in southern Virginia.
It has been an insane month, and I’m looking forward to being still for a little while.
