Back from Glasgow.  It was nice.  More than nice.  A welcome respite from the ugh of living in the US.  In addition, as one fellow teacher put it after the end of his time abroad the past two weeks, it broke my post-school year depression.  When I am in Europe, I notice the things I like better over there.  Small cars.  No bumper stickers proclaiming your hates and loves.  A respect for privacy.  Courtesy that is respectful, not ass-kissing.  Great coffee.  Great vegetarian food.  History.  Gardens.  Architecture that makes me swoon.  Seriously.  Get me into a medieval building and I get light-headed.  Even if the weather is meh, I am happy.  And I forget about the fact that I have no social life to speak of because there is so much to do and I am content with doing it alone.

The things I do not like are the fact that it is not hot in a lot of the places we go.  I need the heat.  Mother's home town and environs are perfect in that respect, but I speak no Italian and can understand every few words and you have moved on to the next sentence before I have translated in my head.  Not conducive to making friends.  In addition, many places are moving right wing.  But heck, is it really worse than here?  Don't know.

So now I am back home.  I slogged through the last week getting acclimated to being back, perusing the 500+ shots I took,  I will develop the three rolls of film (one 35mm, two 120mm) at some point, and will upload the ones from the new fangled used phone as well.  But now I am reading.  Someone referred to the summer being nearly over and I wanted to scream.  First of all, I have gone on no adventures.  I love doing things alone in Europe, but I feel lonely when I do things I used to do with people over here.  Going into abandoned sites isn't much fun when you prefer to be with others.  I thought I liked it, but it's silly laughing to yourself while hiding from the landscapers in an abandoned house.  I'd like to reach out to that fellow teacher to go on an adventure, but the last time I reached out to a person to go for coffee and talk photo, it never materialized.  Rejection is hard.  So I sit at home with my best friends, Fritz and Spooky.

I took hubby out to dinner last night for his birthday.  There was a couple at another table.  They talked together for a bit.  Then stopped.  They were both on their respective phones.  When I am in Europe, the only times I see people on the phone is if they are alone, for the most part.  They are not texting when in the company of others.  They seem to value face to face conversation and company more.  Then I see an article online about the poor grades of those students who rely on using cellphones in the classroom.  I guess I am just dying for real human interaction and tired of all this screen to screen stuff.  While tons of people might "like" what you say online, what the heck kind of interaction is that?