For just a couple of weeks in spring, all the cherry blossom trees bloom and the streets and parks are filled with a floral fragrance. The blossom trees aren’t very noticeable the rest of the year, but in April they become filled with white and pink flowers.

Cherry blossoms (and apple blossoms) are one of my favorite flowers. Last year, when I first began to attend school in Edinburgh, the neighborhood the school was in had tons of these blossom trees and they were in bloom when I started going, and just a week later the petals began to fall to the ground. It made my walk to the bus stop a lot more enjoyable, even though the flowers were only there for such a short time. This year, I was really looking forward to seeing the trees bloom and then getting to watch the flowers and their petals progressively float off the trees. However, that plan was a bit disrupted due to the lockdown and school closure, but that still didn’t stop my determination to see the trees in the school’s neighborhood.

My family had recently purchased bikes so we could do something besides walking outside. My school is four miles away from where I live, which isn’t too far, but being new to biking on the roads made it harder than I thought. Roundabouts were scary to go on and there are a lot of them in Edinburgh. Intersections were also quite confusing and frightening since I had to figure out which lane to go into (I went in the wrong one many times). Fortunately, there weren’t many cars on the roads since you’re only allowed to leave your house for exercise or something essential. It took my 45 minutes to get to the neighborhood near the school, though it was supposed to only be a 30-minute ride. I eventually made it to school, the sight of it being closed and empty was a bit sad. I spent the remainder of the day biking around the neighborhood looking for cherry blossom trees, which I did find. The trees were not in their full bloom yet, so I made plans to come back a week later and look at them too.

Luckily, since I live in Alaska half the year and I’m homeschooled there, isolation was not too different from the way we lived back home. My days are usually spent lounging around the house and shifting between watching shows, working on the art projects I started before quarantine but couldn’t finish due to a busy schedule, going out on walks or a bike ride, just sitting somewhere and the very occasional school. There is quite a lot to do, it’s just mostly about finding the motivation or inspiration to actually do it.

However, I do miss my friends from school a lot. The main reason I was so excited about coming over to Scotland this year was because of them, so its really unfortunate that I can’t see them due to the social distancing laws. I miss getting up and going to school, too. It provided a really nice rhythm to the day, and without having the social perspective or the active one, school has become quite boring.

Something else that’s changed is that I can’t just pop into a store to buy a snack or a drink while I’m out and about (exercising, of course). There are now queues to get into the shops with each person six feet apart. The first time I saw one of the lines outside a grocery store, it looked like a bunch of people just standing there, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was the queue to get in.

Overall, being quarantined during this pandemic is definitely not that fun and it has impacted the general way of life for everyone. Although it will probably be several months until this happens, I hope that a way to deal with the virus is figured out and that I can see my friends again.

How I woke up was by my mom yelling about something that was currently going on, and it turned out some guy slipped and possibly broke (we don’t really know) his leg which in my opinion seems really lame not just because your leg is broken but because the guy seemed to have skis with him which indicated he was there for a ski trip, and how unlucky it would be to break your leg right before.

The campsite we stayed at had this thing where you can order bread and other such bakery stuff in the evening and have it delivered to you in the morning. That was pretty neat because I do like croissants which they had. The plan was that we were going to go up Augulle du Midi, where you could get a good view of Mount Blanc. The ride up the mountain side was in crowded cable cars, that were pretty fast. The mountain was about 12,500 feet tall, which made me a little lightheaded when we got to the top. It was really sunny out, and even though the town below got cloudy, the mountain was higher than the clouds so it wasn’t affected. It was 3°F on the top of the mountain, which was a lot colder. The views were amazing.

There we snow tunnels you walked through to get to different parts.

There was also a cafeteria with extremely expensive food, but then again they did have to haul it all up the mountain somehow. We still bought French fries; not everyone gets to eat French fries on the Alps, why risk the opportunity?

We stayed about 2 hours, exploring, seeing all the views and warming up inside the cafeteria. The ride down felt more crowded, but it was more fun. At one point the cable cars route suddenly took an abrupt turn downhill, and it gave everyone that falling feeling which made half the car scream (I was one of them).

We wanted to take the cable cars to Italy, but apparently the one to Italy was closed due to being broken by a recent storm. Bummer.

We accidentally got on the wrong bus home which made that journey three times as long, but over all I’d rate this a grade-A experience.

I visited the Van Gogh Musuem and the Rijks museum. I, personally, love art, especially Vincent van Gogh. The Van Gogh Musuem is the largest collection of his paintings, drawings and letters in the world. Walking through it was like walking through his life, and I found it really interesting. We had to wait about 45 minutes in line to get in, because we didn’t buy the tickets online. But it was worth the wait. I recommend going.

The Rijks museum was also enjoyable. There were lots of different art from different time periods. We saw some of the Dutch masters’ work, and a lot more. It took a while to walk through the museum because it’s pretty big. Over all, I liked it.

Renting bikes in Amsterdam is fairly easy, and the bike paths are just like roads (that is if you’re not biking on the actual road). There are ferries that lead out of central station and across the canals, that are for foot passengers and bikes. And better yet, they’re free. I do think you need to bring gloves, because my hands got really cold while I was biking. At one point, Max and I split up from the group and explored Amsterdam a bit ourselves.

We didn’t go anywhere specific, but we did get pretty lost at one point. Afterwards we got these really good donuts so it ended up being all okay. We hung out with my aunt a lot and she gave us a general tour of Amsterdam too, which was nice.

I didn’t do everything there is to do in Amsterdam, so hopefully I’ll return there sooner or later. But until then, Amsterdam was a very pretty city.

When you’re preparing to leave the country or state, you should do a lot of research into your destination. For example; when I first went to South America, I knew nothing about it. I thought it would like it was in the movies, but it was a lot different. People spoke another language, and I only knew how to say hello. So, I felt a bit alienated and it was hot there. When I went to the UK, I spoke the same language but the environment  was very different compared to the environment in the U.S, also it was raining almost every day.

Currently, I’m preparing to leave to Mexico, then to Scotland, which is a little confusing to pack for. Of course, I have a suitcase for Mexico and a suitcase for Scotland, but I occasionally ask myself if I need this thing for Mexico, or Mexico and Scotland, or just Scotland, which makes me think a lot. It’s a bit hard preparing for somewhere warm, then going to somewhere cold. Before I go to Mexico, I go to Florida for a week. Since I’ve been to all these places before, I know what to expect, which is good because I know what to pack. It’s always good to make sure you have everything you need, because what you don’t want is to get to your destination and realize you forgot something important.

Preparing to leave isn’t just packing though, cleaning out everything so it’ll be nice when we come back from the trip is also a big step. In my opinion, I dislike cleaning, which of course, almost everyone does. Since I have a large family, there are a large amount of messes to clean, including the messes I made, but it’s what you have to do.

When you’re about to leave, you’ll feel excited because you’re going to a new place, but some people will also feel sad, due to leaving their friends, pets, and their home. Leaving is bittersweet but you’ll see everything again eventually. Just live in the moment and the excitement of seeing new things, meeting new people, and just having a good time in general.

If you’re going to a different time zone, that can be hard, especially if it’s something like a nine-hour time difference, the UK is nine hours ahead of Alaska, which makes me have extreme jetlag, and makes it hard to communicate with people at home. Eventually you’ll find a way to communicate, for me it was I messaged and/or talked to them when it was early morning in Alaska and the late afternoon in the UK.

Have a fun time traveling to everyone who reads this, and good luck!

In  Annalong Max, Sylvia and I met two girls named Kora and Alex. We talked a lot and hung out at a park. Annalong  was fun, until when we were trying to watch a movie but were interrupted by a group of young people throwing rocks at us, my parents kept going outside and screaming at them, then once they didn’t stop my mom called the cops. Pretty intense. We left that town the next morning.

Finally we went into the Republic of Ireland, but of course the sim cards stopped working because we weren’t in the UK anymore, so we raced all the way to a phone store to buy sim cards.

After a bit of driving we got to Dublin! We decided to stay in the Harbour in Howth, but even better, we were gonna be in Dublin for the St. Patricks Day Parade! And my friend Heidi was coming to visit with her mom and brother, and there was gonna be a Prawn Festival on the weekend!
The first time we went into Dublin it was alright, we went to Temple Bar and went into a shop and bought a ton of St. Patricks Day stuff, I got a headband,  a hoodie, and face paint!
When it was St. Patricks Day we went into Dublin around 9:00am even though the parade started at noon, we had to get good seats.

It was awesome! Everyone was all dressed up and had face paint on and makeup, and Heidi was coming at 2:00pm.
When the parade started I was so excited, there were like 12 marching bands and so many other things! But I was tired of standing by the time it ended. Then we had to go find Heidi at the bus station! That was fun.

When she came we lazed around in the hotel room quite a bit, but she also came to Howth and we went around the Prawn Festival. We also went to a zoo, which had more things than I expected it to.

It was fun, I hope the other parts of Ireland are as much cool as this.

The outfit for Highland Dancing is a kilt, hose, a white blouse, a jacket, leather dance shoes that are called ghillies, for the national dances you have to wear a white blouse, a circle skirt that has a tartan on it, a plaid which is a fabric that hangs over your shoulder which is the same color of the skirt, ghillies, white ankle or knee socks, and a vest. The outfits are weirdly expensive.

The music in Highland Dancing is usually bagpipes, I’m not exactly sure what the names for the dance songs are but the Sword Dance’s song is called Ghillie Callum.
I can’t wait to I get back because I’ll be able to practice a lot more.

So far I like Scotland the best even though I can’t understand what people saying half the time because of their accents.
I can’t wait until we go to Ireland!

And the London Eye

I totally started freaking out.
A ton of police and ambulance cars drove past, apparently a bus accident happened, I saw it… it looked pretty bad.
We kinda lost Ryan, so dad went to go find him, and mom, Max, Sylvia and I just stood there. Then it started raining after about like. . . An hour.  So we started walking.  Then we met up with dad and for some reason he was all angry.
We walked to Buckingham Palace and saw the guards. . . It must be extremely boring to just stand there for two days.
A little bit later Ryan or someone, I think it was Ryan,  said we should go out to eat for Indian food! So we found a good restaurant and we went in.
I got butter chicken,  I don’t know what everyone else got.
We spent around three hours there, when we got back to the camper, it was midnight. That was a great day.

The next morning was kinda rushed. We were out of the camper by eleven, we were going to the British Museum today!
When we got there Jack, Sylvia and I went upstairs. But mom totally stopped us. She said we needed to listen to the Rick Steves audio tour, it was supposedly really good. It was actually pretty cool. It took me around the museum and told me all the cool details of stuff. There was a dead body from.. I kinda forgot how old it was but it looked really weird!

There was also the Rosetta Stone there too!

It was really cool.
After that Jack and Jennah went off to see Panic At The Disco. Mom, dad, Max, Sylvia, Ryan and I went to go see the musical Wicked! It was really really good! Of course after it we got a text from Jennah saying that Jack was really drunk. So we all went to get him and help him get back to the camper.
He kept saying I’m sorry guys but I’m really really drunk.
Once we got back I just passed out.  That was an interesting yet weird day.

The next day  we walked around a this kinda weird market, it was cool but yet really weird. I tried a sample of this really good chicken thing. Then we went to a grocery store and got pizza for Jennah, Max, Sylvia and I. Jack, Ryan, mom and dad were going gin tasting or something like that. We kinda burnt the pizzas but that’s okay they were still good. We all just chilled and ate pizza. When they got back it was about 1am, then I fell asleep.
London was pretty awesome.  I loved it actually.  Hope we spend more time there!

I had to go on that.
Anyway we walked around a while and then came to a square where a different Christmas fair was.
Sylvia and Jack went ice skating.  It started raining so bad and it got cold.
We went back to the camper.

The next day Ryan came. We went to a camper park early in the morning and we were gonna spend Christmas there. Jack, Jennah, Max, Sylvia and I stayed in the camper most of the day. But then dad came back and told everyone to get ready because he was taking us to town. Then he realized he left mom’s phone in the bus and totally freaked out. But everything was okay we found the phone but we had to wait til tomorrow to get it. Dad stayed behind at the camper and we left on the bus.
When we got to town we met up with mom and Ryan. Ryan was tired so he went back to the camper.
It was a perfect night to ride the swings but dad wasn’t there so we didn’t.
We bought some presents and went back to the camper. The next day was Christmas eve. We stayed in the camper all day. At night mom put some sort of “sleepy thing” in my tea… I prefer to look at it like she drugged my tea. Anyway I fell asleep and got woken up by Sylvia. After opening presents we went for a walk. That was ny whole Christmas day.
The next day we went to town. AND YESSS I FINALLY GOT TO RIDE THE SWINGS!!! I went with Max and my dad. It was awesome.  Except when Max kept talking about how we could die. But otherwise it was the best!
When we got off we took a bus home. Edinburgh is so great I loved it at Christmas!