This is my first blog post in a year and a half. As we all know, 2020 was a doozy. After going through some personal challenges that I wasn’t willing to share (the advice “write from scars, not open wounds” comes to mind), I sit here from my couch in Asheville—a sentence I never once … More If There’s One Thing I Know: The Quarter-life Crisis
All right. It’s time. We need to discuss coffee. It’s important to note before I go any further that I love this country. The landscape, the light, the relaxed atmosphere that would make even a crazy mother-in-law, awaiting to become a grandmother if only her daughter-in-law would stop working so darn much and just get … More Long Blacks and Dinky Cups: Coffee in Oz
One could automatically deduce that being in a country where everyone speaks English would be relatively simple for a foreigner who also happens to speak English. Most of my conversations with people, which have been in, well, English, have gone something like this: Person: Hello how are gobble dee goolly lah? Me: *Smiles* I’m sorry, … More Me Know English Good, I Thought
If you take a look at my Instagram (without reading the captions), it looks as if I have spent the last 3 months in a mystical fairyland where nothing could ever go wrong. The sun is always shining, the birds always chirping, and I wake up on a pink cloud surrounded by dancing palm trees … More Boredom Abroad: 3 Months Down Undah
This is my first post in a month, the last having been April’s Favorite Things list. My head has been in a million different directions, which I will share in time, but I couldn’t let May go by without sharing SOMETHING. So, from my Airbnb in Trinity Beach, Queensland, my new town of residence, here … More My Favorite Things May 2019
It’s a gorgeous day Down Undah and made even more gorgeous by this new series I deem “My Favorite Things”. It’s a free-for-all over here, where I name some of the books, words, places, clothes (am I a fashion blogger now? God save us.), anything my little heart desires in hopes that something will pique … More My Favorite Things: April 2019
I awoke the morning of May 19th, 2017 groggy and sleep deprived. This didn’t matter though, because I was waking up with the sun in order to experience a dream of mine that was finally about to come to fruition. On this beautiful May morning, four out of five McFarlands headed out at the crack of … More The Scotland Series: Conquering Ben Arthur or Something Like That
I’ve been living in a foreign country now for 35 days. The language barrier, the stark cultural differences, my inability to blend into the crowd… all things I do not really deal with that much. I’m in Australia, our English-speaking neighbors who couldn’t live farther away if they tried. “Doesn’t that mean they’re not neighbors?” … More 1 Month Down (Under)
Next year I turn 30. If you had told teenage me that I would be nearing the end of my third decade of life without a clue as to what I’m going to be, I believe the words “loser” or “bum” or “poo for brains”* would have come to mind. Who doesn’t know what they … More What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do… I Think
With our muscles nice and loose after climbing around Stirling, we were warmed up and ready to make a grand McFarland return to where it all began: Loch Lomond, located in southern Scotland, about an hour north of Glasgow. The MacFarlane clan claimed an island in the middle of the lake as their own and … More The Scotland Series: Return to the Loch Day 1
