Blog from Alanna T
Hello to everyone who is reading this latitudes blog post!
While most students have their group semester in the fall and their latitudes semester in the spring, I decided to have my group semester in India in the Spring and head of on my own in the fall. It took me a really long time to decide where to go and what organization to be with, on my list of considerations was Guatemala, Morroco, Zambia, Italy, I even considered going back to India.. every once in awhile I find myself wondering,.. how did I end up in Scotland of all places? It wasn’t a country offered on the list of latitudes locations.. and life here isn’t much different than life in the USA. Sometimes I feel like I’ve chosen the least challenging location possible, at least it might look that way on the surface. I’ve been moving around consistently for what feels like a very long time. When I was fifteen I moved to San Francisco where I lived with my sister and went to art school, from there I went to Grass Valley, CA, then North Carolina, then Germany for a year, Costa Rica for a year, Taiwan, India, Thailand, India again, then to Bosnia and Herzegovina over the summer. It’s been over four years since I’ve lived in the United States full time, and I don’t find it easy to go back, a lot of the time I feel more foreign there than I do abroad. This coming Spring however, I’ll be returning back to the US for almost a full year, and I feel like Scotland has been a great stepping stone towards easing myself back into my own culture.
What brought me to Scotland in the first place? Two things. The first, a large and very successful intentional community called the Findhorn Foundation. The second, the fact that my ancestors were Scotish. Over the past (almost) three months, I’ve been a part of three week-long workshops that helped me to understand the ways of Findhorn, I worked and lived at a smaller community called the Newbold Trust, which is just down the road from Findhorn, cooking, gardening, doing home care, and interning with their education Department, and finally I’ve spent the last month doing “Love in Action” service work at the community cafe. I had high expectations coming into the Findhorn Community, as far as intentional communities go, worldwide Findhorn is known for being one of the best, It’s a really magical place, with new wonderful, international and local people coming through it every day and walking away with changed perspectives on how they communicate and live in and with our world. Findhorn is a place where it’s okay to burst into tears at the dinner table after learning who America chose to be our next president, and be consoled by people from other countries who have no understanding of our political system, but are compassionate and hear you anyway. Findhorn is a place where circle dance celebrations and grieving ceremonies happen weekly, sometimes simultaneously. Findhorn is a beautiful community and it’s taught me a lot about how I want to live in the world.
As for the second reason I came, I only discovered recently that I’ve been living about a twenty minute bus ride away from where my great great great great grandfather lived, before he immigrated to Canada in the 1850’s, which if nothing but coincidence, is pretty magical.
If you’re thinking of going abroad, do it, and do it boldly. I am incapable of explaining all of the things I’ve learned from living out of my country, but they are priceless life lessons that have shaped me as a person in a way that conventional schooling never could have. Be brave, challenge yourself, and take care of our world as best you can.
peace,
-Alanna Tenney