Glasgow to New Glasgow

It may seem hard to believe, but until I was driven past a sign indicating New Glasgow on the way back from the Halifax airport on Monday evening, I had never realized that New Glasgow is the "new" version of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. I'd never separated the two words when hearing of New Glasgow in Nova Scotia, or the one on PEI either.

Arriving on Monday was like landing in an oddly familiar foreign land. It was cold, the cars drove on the wrong side, the people spoke differently, the bank notes were smaller and the coins were thinner, land that once seemed hilly was flat.

All that seemed unfamiliar was only strange to my conscious mind - my subconscious never forgot the place. Once I started driving, muscle memory, or whatever you want to call it, took over and I have no problems so long as I don't think about which side of the road I should be on too much.

The accents don't catch my attention anymore (I picked up my own old one straight away), and I'm now appreciating the subtlety of the landscape once more (it sure seems like a hill once you rollerblade up it against the wind - I finally got to skate for the first time in over a year!).

My nephew was the biggest change I saw coming back - he was 21 months old when I left, and now he's a month shy of 3 years old. He's gone from a baby to a talkative little boy. I was introduced to him as "Megan, Daddy's sister", to which he kept asking "what one?" I don't think he has the concept of sister down yet. After some initial shyness of a few minutes we were playing cars, so I've been accepted into the flock and now have the role of re-building the train tracks when they get knocked apart.