First Week in Glasgow

I’ve been in Glasgow for officially one week now. I know, I know, I’ve been a terrible blogger for not updating sooner, but it’s been a very busy past few weeks for me. I actually left the US about three weeks ago with my girlfriend Rachael. We had a lovely time traveling through Iceland, England, and Scotland and got to see so many wonderful things. You can see some of those things if you pop over to my photoblog.

Iceland was like nothing I have ever seen before, almost an alien landscape. Imagine barren and rocky hills with clouds of steam rising out of the earth every few miles. The people were very trusting as well, which to be frank was a bit unexpected. I tend to think that the further north you go, the less trusting people become—something about being cold and dark for the majority of the year has a negative effect on humans I think—but Iceland proved to be the exception. There was a time when we lost our very expensive bus tickets and they simply gave us new ones without hardly asking a question. Their trusting nature may also explain why they got robbed blind during the financial meltdown of ’08.

Iceland’s bizarre Blue Lagoon

Iceland’s steamy and barren landscape

After a few days in Iceland, we continued onward to the UK. We spent about 10 days traveling from London to Glasgow, stopping in Oxford, Bath, the Lake District, Edinburgh, Inverness, and the Isle of Skye. We both feel so blessed to have been able to make such a great trip and see so much! My favorite place was probably the Isle of Skye or the Lake District. Both were incredibly beautiful and scenic, although in different ways. The Lake District is very orderly and pretty, whereas the Isle of Skye is rugged and windswept, in many ways reminiscent of Iceland.

View from Hawkshead Hill, the Lake District

The Quiraing, Isle of Skye

And so, finally, after many weeks on the road, we arrived in Glasgow. I’ve only been here a week, but I am already kind of in love with the place I think. First off, my school—it looks like something out of Harry Potter. In many ways, I think it is prettier than Oxford, which is high praise coming from me since I spent a summer there a few years back.

View from the quad at the “uni”

Furthermore, Glasgow itself has got quite an interesting history. During the early part of the 20th century, about a third of the world’s ships were built in Glasgow’s shipyards on the River Clyde. During the 60s and 70s, however, the shipping industry crashed and the city began to sort of fall apart. The city has made dramatic improvements since that time period, but even today the city is still frequently listed as both the knife and murder capital of Europe. Perhaps most interesting is the particularly violent rivalry between the city’s two football clubs, Celtic and Rangers. The teams’ fans breakdown along religious lines, with Catholics supporting Celtic and Protestants for the Rangers. Knife fights between fans of opposing teams are fairly common, leading to a public outcry to stop the violence.

But despite the bleak crime statistics, the city has been busy over the past few decades, and in many ways has resurrected itself as a city of friendly people and high style. It’s downtown shopping district is vast and rivals that of London, and the trendy West End (where Glasgow Uni is located) is cheery and commercial, full of shops, restaurants, and pubs. The city’s eponymous architectural style, the Glasgow Style, is beautiful and distinctive, and draws heavily from the Art Nouveau. And the people are so friendly and unpretentious. Glasgwegians are loud, witty, have incomprehensible accents, and seem incredibly willing to talk to strangers. It seems that no matter where I go, as soon as someone overhears my American accent a local wants to say hello!

I’ve been busy the last week with international orientation, which has been a nice enough way to get acclimated to the area. The program seems more geared towards towards incoming undergraduates, which has made me feel quite old. The big question on everyone’s lips is which student union to join. The unions are sort of like very large co-ed fraternities that have night clubs instead of frat houses. My dorm room, unfortunately, has left much to be desired. I was expecting something along the lines of North Village, but it is more reminiscent of Penland, I am afraid. My flatmates are quite nice though, and they are from all over (Canada, Malaysia, Pakistan, and India). Even though my flatmates are really great, I will probably be moving out into a private flat sometime this week because they are less expensive, closer to campus, and have more space.

Well, this has been quite long, and I could go on, but I won’t. I start class in one week (yikes!). More to come, soon.

htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lagoon_%28geothermal_spa%29

We Are Headed North

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know
We are headed north
–  The Avett Brothers, “I and Love and You”

So. Two days. I am getting excited. And I am getting sad. Probably too many good-byes/listening to too much moody music. I’ve left for long trips before plenty of times before, but this is probably the toughest that I can remember, just because I’ll be gone for so long. And the Atlantic Ocean is pretty daunting too.

I have to keep reminding myself though that the world is much smaller than it once was. I was hanging out with my grandparents this afternoon, and we got to looking through some of their old scrap books from the war years. My grandmother saved every postcard, letter, telegram, and newspaper clipping Daddy Keith sent her from his six months in England. No email, no skype, hardly even telephone calls. That’s pretty amazing.

Last fall, my friend Josh Carney over at UBC gave this great sermon on the Parable of the Talents. He talked about how the master had entrusted each of his slaves with talents, and how one of the slaves simply buried his talent out of fear of his master’s wrath if he were to lose it. And although he was able to return to the master what was his, the master was still angry because he had wasted the opportunity to make something more of them. God sometimes puts things in our laps, like a year abroad, and he wants us to make the most of those opportunities. He doesn’t want us to turn our back on these moments because we are afraid to try. These opportunities are not gifts, but investments for which He demands repayment with interest. I hope that I am up to the task.

READY? LET’S GO.

Yes, it is almost time for me to leave. First things first, a bit about what is happening: I am going to Scotland. The University of Glasgow, to be specific. I will be gone for one year. I will be studying economic development. The University of Glasgow was established in 1451, making it the fourth-oldest university in the English speaking world, and also older than America.

I am going because the Rotary Foundation selected me as an Ambassadorial Scholar. They told me to pick a university that was not in the USA. Glasgow has one of the best economic development programs in the world, so it was my first choice. Plus, Scotland sounds like a pretty great place to spend a year, what with the tartans and tweed and sheep and scotch whisky (not to be confused with whiskey, which is the incorrect Irish spelling of the word).

Now. A bit about Rotary International: Did you know that Rotary is almost single-handedly responsible for eradicating polio? Did you also know that Bill Gates has donated about $350 million to Rotary to help in their Polio campaign? Did you know that their motto is “Service Above Self?” I am very excited to be involved with an organization that puts Jesus’s message of loving “the least of these” into action (Matt 25:40).

So. I leave in two weeks. But I am not going straight to Scotland from Dallas. I am taking The Long Way to Glasgow, via Boston, Iceland, London, Bath, the Lake District, Edinburgh, Inverness, and the Isle of Skye. My super awesome girlfriend Rachael Chambers is coming too, but only for the journey there. Once we get to Glasgow, she sadly has to go back to Boston to finish school. I know that some of you are worried about us being in Iceland, but don’t worry. She and I will be on the lookout of that volcano that was causing such a stir last spring.

Looking for pictures?

Surprise! You probably came here looking for pictures, didn’t you? Well, I’ve moved the photoblog to a new address: robertkentphotography.wordpress.com. And I’ve changed the address of my old blog, bikesandguitars.wordpress.com to the address that you are at right now. I know it’s a little confusing, for that I am truly sorry. But it was time to move on from the “bikesandguitars” days—no one ever understood what bikes and guitars had in common, or why they were the title of my blog. But to my credit, from the very beginning I warned my readers that the blog would have very little to do with bikes or guitars—although both of those items did get mentioned here and there.

But wait, there is more. I think it’s about time to start blogging again. What with my trip to Scotland coming up and all there are things that I want to write about and share with my tens of readers.

And I am rambling now. In summary: my new regular blog address is robertbkent.wordpress.com and my new photoblog address is robertkentphotography.wordpress.com. Enjoy.