By Laura Harrison |
This week Pubs and Publications turns three! In that time we have had 301 posts from 128 contributors, and 117,516 overall views. We have done a fair amount of celebratory posts in the past including our 2017 roundup, our 200th post, and our first anniversary post. To mark this occasion, I decided to visit my very first pubs and pubs post – one of five we posted on our first day 1089 days ago.
The post was ‘Five Insights of an International Student’ and includes things I still stand by, including that my friends and family back home think my life is far more interesting and exotic than it actually is. Three years on as an expat and a PhD student I’ve decided to give some more insights into my life as an international student.
You miss random foods
The phenomenon of wanting something because you can’t have it is so real. Recently I woke up with an inexplicable need for goldfish crackers. I never really ate spinach dip with any regularity when I lived in Canada, but now I crave it at least once a month. I nearly cried when I went to Tim Hortons in Glasgow for the first time. I recently spoke to someone who craved Triscuit crackers for their entire year living in the UK but has not eaten them once since moving back to Canada. We all want what we can’t have.
Relationships are complicated
One day you may meet a nice, tall human with an excellent accent and you suddenly can’t imagine your life without them. Fast forward four years when you are very used to their accent and are now trying to figure out citizenship and visas and how your families are going to feel when you move halfway around the world. Remember that lurking behind that cute accent is years of bureaucratic red tape…
You will accumulate a lot of stuff
Nearly five years after hopping off the plane with a large suitcase and a 60 gallon backpack, I now have enough stuff to fill about five times that. Not only have I gained things by buying them here, I also have brought things back with me every time I went back, so I have been slowly moving here for five years. I shudder to think what would happen if I ever have to leave the UK but I know it will involve a lot of donations and ebay auctions.
The state of affairs last time I moved
Weird things will make you homesick
Today I was watching a clip from the Olympics and the Canadian announcers voice made me incredibly homesick. As I’ve already said, food often makes me homesick. Some of my friends will say they are meeting up for dinner and I want to immediately jump on a flight. The homesickness hits at weird times. The flip side of that is the times I randomly feel so thankful to live where I do, such as when I go look at something at the archives with amazing ease or I pass a castle on my way to do so.
Laura Harrison is finishing up her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which looks at commemorations of the Scottish Wars of Independence. She is a co-founder and currently a Publicity Editor for Pubs and Publications. You can find her on Twitter @laurasharrison.
Image 1: flikr, Images 2 and 3: author; Image 4: geograph
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