Glasgow

I can’t believe I have been home now for just over 2 weeks! The time has flown. We have had the visit from Leo’s parents where they finally got to meet mine and it went REALLY well (if anyone knows me you would know that I have been mildly freaking out for months). Both set’s of parents seemed to really like each other and overall despite lost luggage, the torrential Scottish weather and the language barrier, we had a BLAST.
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Leo also left nearly 10 days ago to head to his Vipassana meditation retreat – a 10 day silent meditation retreat where he cannot use eye contact, speech, writing or reading, essentially no outside influence whatsoever…and consequently no contact with me at all, which has successfully triggered a weird separation anxiety in myself which I felt for the first few days. I can only try and convince myself that it is totally normal as we have literally spent every waking moment together for the past 7 months, so I am actively pursuing enjoying this time and hoping it is entirely normal!
Back to Vipassana - In short, the idea of a Vipassana retreat (often colloquially referred to as a “sit”) is that you sit around all day long and learn to sharpen your awareness of what’s actually going on inside your body at the level of sensations. Over the 10 days you train yourself to stop reacting to the vicissitudes of life.

If you want to understand more (as I have been asked a lot) then I have added how it works below:

• 4:00am: Wake-up Bell
• 4:30am — 6:30am: Meditate
• 6:30am — 8:00am: Breakfast
• 8:00am — 11:00am: Meditate
• 11:00am — 1:00pm: Lunch
• 1:00pm — 5:00pm: Meditate
• 5:00pm — 6:00pm: Tea
• 6:00pm — 7:00pm: Meditate
• 7:00pm — 8:15pm: Lecture
• 8:30pm — 9:00pm: Meditate
• 10:00pm: Lights Out

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It sounds truly wonderful but since I suffer from high functioning anxiety as is, then we discussed me joining this retreat would actually not do any good, in fact it would probably make my already overactive monkey mind freak out even more. If you are interested and want to learn more or even try a course out then all the info can be found here.
Back to Scotland, I wanted to write about Glasgow – which I will do over 2 blog posts as I have already rambled on about meditation and me missing Leo… 

​So, we went to Glasgow for a day to show my in-laws where I am from and to show them the real ‘Scottish’ experience. I have to admit, I bloody loved it. Very rarely do I get the opportunity to be a tourist in the city where I was born. The appearance of Glasgow’s buildings are so striking, they have been used as the backdrop in many Hollywood movies including World War Z, Fast & Furious 6 and Cloud Atlas. The architecture is also simply stunning and the best tip I can give you is LOOK UP – most of the most amazing architecture is above eye level! Read on in blog 2…