Playing a little catch-up...

So I haven’t updated in quite a while. Okay, that is a bit of an understatement, but so much has happened that I got a little backlogged with all the adventures I had to write about. So I will give you the lowdown to catch y’all up. Brittany’s blog: backissue edition if you will.   

Photo Credit: Mara Livezey

Jacobite Express aka The Hogwarts Express. Hannah, Mara, and I took this red steam engine train ride through the Highlands in October. The journey started in Fort William and ended in Mallaig. The tagline for the journey was “Follow in the footsteps of Harry Potter.” The reason for this, besides the fact that some of the cars of the train were actually used in the movies (!) was that it crossed the Glenfinnen Viaduct. For those of you who don’t know what that it, consult the film version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and see the scene where the Hogwarts Express crosses that giant stone bridge. Yep, we actually were on the route to Hogwarts. Besides the Harry Potter connection, which was enough in itself, the train ride was absolutely gorgeous. The highlands are truly amazing. There were little waterfalls hidden amongst giant hills. Lakes, forests, and other flora provided us with the most amazing landscape to look out our windows at. The highlands themselves were magical enough. It was also on this train ride that I realized it is a small world after all. On the way back, I was sitting with a family consisting of a mother, father, and their ten-year old daughter whom they took this train ride because of her love of Harry Potter (She and I ended up playing quite a few rounds of Harry Potter Go-Fish). The mother was Italian, and the father Scottish. We began talking and they asked me where in Scotland I was studying and when I told them Aberdeen, they said that was the same university they both attended. Not only that, but they also stayed at Hillhead Halls of Residence. This was all coincidental enough as it was, but it was about to get even weirder when I told them I was from Michigan. The father’s first question for me after this fact was whether or not I had heard of a place called Kalamazoo. What?!?!? Whenever I tell people I go to Kalamazoo College, they look at me like I made up the craziest name I could think of, a name that shouldn’t belong to an actual college or city, but rather in the world of Dr. Seuss.  And yet here in the highlands of Scotland, on the Harry Potter train, are people who are bringing up the name Kalamazoo to me. Turns out, an old school mate of theirs fell in love with a girl from Kalamazoo. They lived together for a while but she missed the States and her family and so they broke up. A tragic romance, but an excellent story. And on that train, I realized that all those annoying animatronic dolls at Disney World have it right: “it’s a small world, after all.”