I am back to Scotland in three days.

Finally.

I have my visa, some money to put into my bank account, and on Friday, I will ship some more of my boxes to my new address. The last two weeks have been a flurry of worry and trying to get everything squared away, packed, and ready for my return. I haven’t written anything, have barely looked at the work I need to do, and have skipped an awful lot of yoga.

That is why it is important to get back to the gratitude challenge and keep myself in positive thoughts. That way, when I make it home, I will get back to doing yoga, not eating cheese, and making headway with both my job and my dissertation.

Week 29 is all about my favorite memory. I have a lot of memories that qualify as favorites, but I think one that I really enjoy is one of my first trips to the hospital….at least that I remember. I was 7 or 8 and my mom, brother, sister, and I were in Palm Springs visiting my grandparents. When my parents got divorced, mom took us and my dad took the money, so my grandparents used to have us come down and they would treat us to a weekend of swimming and eating out and movies. On this trip, after a day of swimming, my ear hurt really bad. After a few hours I couldn’t take the pain anymore, so we went to the ER to try and figure out how to make the pain stop. While we were waiting to be seen by a doctor, I was worried about what was going to happen to me when they called me back. My  grandma assured me that everything would be fine. She said she would draw me a picture, and I was sure to love it. When she was done, she proudly held up the picture. It showed a very scared looking me bent over with my little butt in the air, and a doctor with a giant needle about to give me a shot. I cried when I saw it, and the first thing I asked the doctor when we went back was whether or not I was going to get a shot. The doctor did a lot of poking around in my ear, and after a little bit of digging, the doctor was able to get wax, and a lot of water out of my ear.

While this doesn’t seem like it should be a memory that I would love, it is one of the few that I can remember of my grandma. She was killed in a car crash a year later. It has been almost 20 years since that happened. I’ve spent more time without her than I did with her, so I hold dear any memory that involves her. When I tell that story to people who knew her, they always laugh and say “That sounds like Frannie alright. Always trying to make people laugh.”Although I wasn’t laughing then, I always laugh about it now. I know that if she was still alive, she would have drawn some possibly offensive pictures while I was getting expelled. It makes me smile to think about what she would have said during that time.

Week 30 is all about my favorite thing about my age. This is an easy one. I think 28 is a pretty great age. I’m old enough to be a proper adult, but young enough to still do crazy things like getting tattooed in Estonia and packing up and moving to Scotland to start my life as an official expat. I am really stoked about being 28 because it means I am that much closer to being 30. I’ve decided that by the time that I am 30 I am going to have my shit together. My best friend and I have a saying that I repeated over and over and over again in the last year: We just have to make it to 30.” My 30s are going to be the best years of my life, and I have still have two years to get everything in order and running smoothly. 28 is playing a big part in making that happen. I found out I got the job in Scotland on my 28th birthday, I jumped out of an airplane, had all kinds of adventures, and still have a lot of time left as a 28 year old. 28 will end with me being an aunt, so short of winning the lottery and being able to pay off all of my loans, I cannot see how it can get any better.

I know that it is technically almost the end of week 31, the week is not over so there is still time for me to stay up-to-date on the challenge. I’m also excited that I will finally be living up to the title of this blog and be writing abroad.