Last week in Kyleakin

I'm leaving Kyleakin tomorrow, taking the bus to Glasgow airport and then flying from there to London Gatwick airport, where I'll be spending the night before flying to Halifax on Monday morning (on flight 111 - it sounds suspiciously like a flight number that could crash off of Peggy's Cove and have a made-for-TV movie done about it). Sounds like fun, I know. So a travel-weary Megan will be arriving on the Island sometime Monday afternoon.

This past week I've been doing some extra work doing deep-cleaning of the hostel with Alysha. And then there's been a succession of small parties and just hanging out with folks.

Jamie, Alysha, and I went up to Broadford on Tuesday evening to join Rob and Caroline from the Uig hostel, and Gareth and Tina from the Aberdeen hostel (who were visiting) at the Broadford Hotel for their pub quiz. We had to split into two teams, and the boys decided that it would be boys against girls, despite our protests that all of us girls being foreign would give us a disadvantage on a Scotland-based quiz (Caroline is from France and Tina is from Switzerland). So we named our team "Rob, Gareth, and Jamie Suck" (Tina's idea). I believe that their team was named The Knights, refering to the Monty Python Holy Grail film. Anyway, we ended up with 21.5/39, whereas the boys had 28/39 I believe. Us girls may not have beaten the boys, but their reactions when the team names were all read out with scores at the end was quite funny when the entire pub heard the words "Rob, Gareth, and Jamie suck".

After the quiz we had intended to stay in the Broadford Hostel, but we got Gareth to drive us all back to Kyleakin (in two trips) where there was more booze. We spent the rest of the night talking and playing games on Jamie's Nintendo Wii (it has a cool controller that has motion sensing, so if you're playing bowling, for example, you move your hand as though you were throwing a bowling ball).

Halloween was Wednesday, and the official day of our end of season party, which basically ended up involving all the above-mentioned people (minus Tina, who had to go back to Aberdeen) plus our manager Pat, since none of the other hostels that we invited could make it. So instead of sticking at the hostel entirely for it, we went to the King Haakon bar first, after having gotten dressed up, where we found that we were the most in-costume people there. Alysha was a ghost, using an old hostel sleep sheet, Caroline was some sort of monster involving wearing cling film on her head, Rob was sporting a leather gimp mask and borrowed leather jacket and gloves, Jamie had a Scary-Movie-stoned-guy-from-Scream mask (the best I can describe it) and a pair of handcuffs for some reason, Gareth had a hat that makes him look like Pete Docherty, and I was painted green and in a dress with homemade wings attached to look like a woodland fairy. So needless to say, some of us attracted attention. We later headed to Saucy Mary's, where at least the staff were all in costume, and some other people as well.

Thursday and Friday were just sort of hang-out days, doing some cleaning to finish up the hostel. Gareth headed out, and Jamie packed up all his stuff and got picked up by his dad. I went up to Uig with Rob last night and chatted with him and Caroline until the wee hours. Caroline headed off to her new job in Argyll today, and I came back to finish up my packing in preparation for leaving tomorrow. Alysha's planning to be away to visit folks in Aberdeen tomorrow as well, so that's all of us staff save Pat away (who is still on managing groups who rent the hostel until January).

So that's my Kyleakin phase to an end. I'd have to say it's been fun. I've liked my job, and the people that I've worked with, and I've certainly made some friends out of them. I've gotten to see some more of Skye, though still not as much as I'd like. All in all, it's been a good few months, and far too quick.