gilana

I leave tomorrow. Twenty-four hours from now I will be sitting in an airport; too many hours and times zones after that I will be arriving in Scotland, G-d willing. I find myself vacillating between excited and nervous. I'm pretty clear on the excited part, but I can't quite figure out what I'm so nervous about. Granted, this is the first time I'm taking a trip of this distance and duration alone, but I have no question that I am capable of dealing with anything that comes up. There's nothing I could forget to pack that would be that disastrous, no way I could get lost beyond all redeeming in a strange city, no faux pas I can imagine myself making that would ruin the trip that badly. I guess I'm just afraid of the unknown, of a new experience that might change who I am just the little bit more.

I'm also a little nervous about my plans for shabbos there. I arrive on Friday morning, and shabbos comes pretty early these days. So when I found that there was a synagogue half a mile from my B&B, I emailed the rabbi, and he offered to host me for dinner on Friday. My plan is to go to services to meet him and then go to dinner.

Part of me is excited; it should be interesting to see what synagogue is like in another part of the world, and it will be a nice way to meet people (maybe even a cute Scots boy who is actually Jewish!) and get to see the non-tourist side of Edinburgh.

But I haven't been to services in an Orthodox shul in a very long time. My past experiences have left me with pretty strong negative feelings about it, and I can't help feeling like "real" Orthodox Jews can tell that I'm not actually one of them, and judge me as a bad Jew. I have a tendency to get a wee bit defensive about what I imagine they're thinking, whether they actually are or not. All this emotional baggage on top of the fact that I expect I will be pretty overtired by that point, and that generally means I'll start crying at the drop of a hat.

Of course, I've heard nothing but good things about the hospitality of Scots, and I know that lots of Orthodox Jews are not, in fact, closed-minded and judgmental. My sister's community in Harrisburgh is pretty open, in part because there's such a small Jewish community there that they can't really afford division. I'm hoping that Edinburgh is much the same. And I'll have plenty of time for a nap before services, and it could be a really great experience. So I'm trying really hard not to stick the jack up my ass.

In fact, in general I have a tendency to plan out every last bit of a trip months beforehand -- to make lists and sub-lists and meta-lists, to pack weeks beforehand, and have every detail under iron control before I go so that I won't be at a loss for a single moment. This time, I'm trying to leave myself more open. I have a guide book, and I've printed out some web pages of places I might like to go, tours I might like to take, but I'm mostly going to try to live in the moment and take each day as it comes. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, time to finish packing. Do I *really* need clean underwear every day? ;)