Phew! So much has happened since I last wrote. As of yesterday, we've been in Glasgow for 8 weeks, and we have 2 more to go. There have been so many phases of our journey during our time here that I almost don't know where to start, but I'll try to go chronologically and break things up into those different phases. Here we go --
Loving Life as a Housewife
When we first settled in, I got super into volunteering and Tori has been joking that I'm thriving as a housewife lol. While she was working full time and I was very much not, I did all of the cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, etc. and joined a bunch of clubs populated with retirees and students.
The volunteering was so so fun. I tried two different garden clubs, a running club, a queer writing club, and a book club. Some ended up sticking and some didn't -- here's the (very detailed) rundown:
The first club I went to is located at the Botanic Garden here. By the way, the garden itself is totally free to the public which is amazing. Tori and I took a walking tour of the garden (completely unrelated to the volunteer club -- pics of Tori on the tour below) and passed by a group of people working in the flower garden. There was a sign that said that it's a volunteer group and to email them to join.
When I got home from that walking tour I emailed the group, and have since volunteered with them twice. Turns out there's a whole area of the garden that's volunteer run. There have been a ton of budget cuts for the Botanic Garden so there's less and less that they can maintain on their own. The club is totally independent from the Botanic Garden though -- it's just located there. The club mostly grows flowers, and they sell the flower bouquets (which they call "bunches") and then donate the proceeds to charity. They meet about twice a week but I think their meetings will be ending soon for the winter and start up again in the spring.
It's really fun, though I did get laughed at for putting away a tool wrong (I guess I'm still bitter -- how was I supposed to know how to put it away!?). And I haven't really felt like I mesh socially with the middle aged Scottish women, and I find it kind of hard to understand some of the things they're saying too. I've actually started a note on my phone with the different British words I've learned and it is VERY long. Some fun and/or useful ones:
- Courgette = zucchini
- Hob = stovetop
- Litter pick = trash clean up
- Diary = calendar
- Made redundant = laid off
- Aubergine = eggplant
- Car park = parking lot
- Timetable = schedule
- What's on = happenings
- Jumper = sweater
- Brambles = blackberries
- Sessional = temp/contracted
- Till point = check out counter
- Pram = stroller
- Scheme = program
- Stone = pit (like that you would find in a fruit)
- Gig = concert
- Dungarees = overalls
- Cavolo nero = dinosaur kale
Some of these are very specific, so you can probably tell that I've been spending my time cooking, in gardens, and telling people I've been laid off 😆
And some pics of me in the garden!
I also joined a gay running club called Glasgow FrontRunners. The vibe is very much middle aged white cis gay men lol. I tried out the club our very first week in Glasgow. They meet three times a week at a local university and split up for different distances and paces of runs throughout the city (typically 5k, 7.5k, and various paces of 10k). They also organize social events and participation at different races throughout the country and beyond. FrontRunners is an international gay running club and this Glasgow-based group is one of only 10 groups globally that have more than 250 members!
The first time I went, it was a Thursday evening and I joined the 5k group. Socially, it was intimidating at first, but once I started talking to folks I met friendly people and had a nice time chatting while running. This was actually the first club I joined, so I was super eager to meet and talk to people. I was also pumped about getting into a regular running practice. Thursday is their most popular run day and I'd say there were at least 50 people there total. Within that, my 5k group was about 12 or so. And probably 10-15% of those 50 people were women.
I am not in the practice of running regularly so I thought the 5k would feel like a stretch, but they went super slow and I was like "this is so easy!!" I eagerly went back for their next session on Sunday morning (where there was just one other woman and a much smaller overall crew) and did the 7.5k group. That week Tori and I had also gone to two very intense indoor spin classes and I think the combination of all of the new increased activity and a badly-adjusted-to-me spin bike just did not sit well with my body because my knee did NOT like that run. I got intense pain for the following few days which I've self-diagnosed as IT Band syndrome so have been DIY physical therapizing myself with various at-home strength-building exercises since then. I sadly have not gone back to Glasgow FrontRunners for fear of over-exerting my knee.
Here is a very awkward pic of my Sunday morning 7.5k group.
I also attended the September meetup of a monthly book club held at the shop. We read the book "Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar. Super interesting book with so much to discuss! That being said, I wasn't that impressed with the book club. I felt like we weren't able to get into a fulfilling discussion and I came away frustrated that I didn't get to explore any of the themes that interested me. The club was only an hour which felt way too short, and it was only the same three-ish people talking the whole time. It could have used more structured facilitation to help guide the conversation. I don't plan on going back, but I'm glad I tried it out.
Tori didn't join me for these events but I did drag her to the store another time and we purchsed some souvenirs and books. Always happy to support rad queer and trans-owned businesses! This one is founded and owned by a sweet trans couple (they call themselves wusband & wusband) and is located in Glasgow's Southside which we've since learned is home to the queers and the queer Jews! Not super close to where we are staying near the West End of the city but we've gone out there a few times to enjoy the shops and bakeries and restaurants and beautiful Queen's Park which is just a couple blocks away from Category Is.
It's pretty different from the club that meets at the Botanic Garden. First of all, the space here is bigger and more diverse in terms of the types of plants they grow. The garden was built on a vacant lot in a residential neighborhood in 2010. It is mostly made up of individual plots that are maintained by local community members. The communally-cultivated elements of the garden includes the compost and fruit trees.
I've helped with weeding, raking the small lawn, and digging out bulbs that we'll replant elsewhere. We always break for tea and coffee about an hour into the two-hour session (the other garden club does this too actually! would never happen in America lol) and sometimes people will bring biscuits or homemade treats. Woodlands does employ a handful of staff members but they all work part-time. There is a paid coordinator who helps assign tasks and lead the volunteer time. I love getting outside and enjoying the beauty of a green space within the city, and getting my hands in the dirt. It's been a great way to meet people I wouldn't have met otherwise, and the tasks give you something to do while making conversation.
High Holidays
I attended a general volunteer orientation for the Woodlands organization as a whole (the garden is part of the Woodlands umbrella) and also really loved that -- I got to learn about the different programs that they run.
And I've recently started volunteering at Woodlands's Warm Welcome Cafe, which takes place on Sundays from noon to 4pm. They have a paid part-time staff member who does the cooking, and volunteers serve the food and coffee and tea, help with set-up and clean-up, and chat with the patrons. It's completely pay-what-you-can with no minimum cost requirement, with many people eating for free. I've now volunteered twice, and Tori joined me for the session today. We both plan on going back next week during our final weekend in Glasgow.
Many who eat at the cafe are older, though there are young people and families with small children who come by too. On average, the cafe sees around 40 or so people each Sunday, and when Woodlands has other events going on that day, that amount can double, or more. Two weeks ago when I volunteered for the first time there was a Diwali celebration happening at the garden (just a couple blocks away from the cafe space) and a ton of folks stopped by the cafe afterwards. It was super crowded and busy -- around 120 people came through! We had to bring in a bunch of extra chairs and could only accommodate takeaway (what they say here instead of "takeout") orders for many folks.
It feels like a great way to give back to the community here, since being transient digital nomads is definitely not without its ethical dilemmas, and it's important to us to find small ways to practice generosity to the locals who've shown us so much kindness. It's also been really pleasant to just chat and work alongside the other volunteers, and get to know the cafe's patrons. It's sweet to feel part of a community and start to see the same people week to week, to gather a network of loose connections and acquaintances in addition to friends. Some pics of the garden are below.
The Jewish High Holidays began on October 2nd and went basically until the end of the month, and have given us a taste for Jewish happenings and community here. I'm honestly so grateful for the Jewish community here -- we have found friends and a sense of belonging which has helped make Glasgow feel more like home.
Our connections began with Tori's coworker who connected us with someone she knows who lives in Glasgow. We met up with her and her two friends - a couple (one from Australia, and another from London) who also live in Glasgow. We had such a great time with them and they've also helped to connect us to other Jewish community happenings. We actually haven't met up with them again since we've been here but have stayed connected over WhatsApp and hope to see them one more time before we leave.
Through those friends we were connected with a Canadian around our age now living in Glasgow who runs Jewish nature-themed, seasonally-oriented events for young-ish adults (used very broadly, for people anywhere from their twenties to forties and beyond). She actually invited us to her home for Rosh Hashanah dinner which was super sweet considering we hadn't actually met in person before the dinner.
We went to her house and I promptly came down with food poisoning during the course of the dinner fml. I basically went to the bathroom and did not return and Tori came to check on me and then we uber-ed home. The first pic below is us at the bus stop on the way to her house and the following pic is me outside of her bathroom in the midst of food poisoning teehee. That was Erev Rosh Hashanah (the first night), and we ended up spending the next day at home while I recovered. We did join some lovely virtual services via a UK-based group called Abraham and Sarah's tent.
The next day I was sort of roped into volunteering at children's services for a local synagogue, via the friend whose house we were at for Erev Rosh Hashanah. She works as a Jewish educator and helps to coordinate the children's services at a local Orthodox synagogue (though not so local to us -- about a forty minutes to an hour away via two buses). The synagogue was super traditional -- the women sit in a fully separate balcony above the men. It was very much not my vibe. The children were extremely chaotic and there were like 30-40 of them! Would not go back but it was an experience nonetheless, and I did get a taste for an element of the local Jewish community.
That night we joined a pre-Shabbat tashlich (High Holiday ritual) run through a very informal "group" that is for Queer Jews based on the Southside. I say group in quotation marks because it's nothing connected to any kind of organization -- it's very much just an extended, grassroots-kinda community of folks. The tashlich was super lovely. It was on a gorgeous river in Linn Park. Afterwards, we went to a pub with a few people from the group. It very much felt like these were our people and we had great conversation that felt natural and connected -- definitely people we could be friends with, and who felt like would be our community if we lived here. Super grateful to have been connected with this network. And we're now in their WhatsApp group -- score! They haven't organized anything since then but we've seen some of those folks at other events run by our Rosh Hashanah dinner host.
Something interesting about the Jewish community here is that most people are not from Glasgow, let alone Scottish. Many are from London and elsewhere in England. One of the people we met and her husband had the first Jewish wedding in Glasgow of two Jewish people who grew up in Glasgow (called Glaswegians) in decades.
The Jewish community is also super tiny and leans pretty Orthodox. There are I believe 3 or 4 synagogues in Glasgow. We were interested in attending one for services during the High Holidays but actually attending a service meant getting past an INCREDIBLY detailed and gate-kept process. If we wanted to attend, we had to fill out a super detailed form with questions like:
- What is your address & how long have you lived there
- If less than five years at current address, list previous addresses
- If not born in the UK, when did you move here and why
- Please provide contact information for a character reference
- If you converted to Judaism - what rabbi did you convert under and when
- Who is your employer
- Please provide a recommendation from an employer
- Provide a copy of your passport or other ID
- What is your date of birth and place of birth
- And more!
Needless to say, we felt very unwelcome and overwhelmed by the extent of this background check which made us very much NOT want to attend those synagogues. Instead, we decided to go to a synagogue in Edinburgh which is the one place that did not require an extensive form.
Edinburgh is only an hour away by train, so very doable for a day visit. Plus, this gave us an excuse to visit the city for the first time! We went to Sukkat Shalom for Kol Nidre (the start of Yom Kippur, which is 10 days post-Rosh Hashanah) and spent the day exploring the city before services. Below are some photos from our visit. Beautiful city (super different from Glasgow) and we couldn't wait to go back. We did a walking tour of the city, had a deliciously bougie vegetarian Scottish breakfast (traditionally a Scottish breakfast is very meat and carb-heavy and not really up my alley in terms of flavors but this one was very much geared towards me with a lot of veggies and amazing house-made bread -- mmm).
To Be Continued
I'm realizing at this point that I'm getting extremely over-ambitious with how detailed this post has been (though it does feel great to share all of this -- I miss deep conversations IRL with my people!). I will share more about our weekend trip to Skye, Jewish events we've gone to, and our subsequent trip to Edinburgh in my next post.
Also, my housewife era has pretty much ended because I got a temp/contracted job designing a website for an acupuncture clinic in San Diego (shoutout to my friend Ella who works there and referred me to them!) so haven't been able to garden and volunteer quite as much. We've been settling into regular rhythms of life here, and it very much feels like we're living here instead of traveling and being tourists. I'll share more about that soon. XOXOXOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Here is a sneak preview of our Skye trip via photos of the incredible landscape (Skye is an island in the Highlands, about a 4 hour drive north of Glasgow).
And a fun pic of Tori after going down a very steep slide and getting extremely wet cus why not.
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