Hi all,
First, a general announcement: the UK's Daylight Savings Time ended last night, so currently I have fallen back and you haven't, and the time difference between me and MS is temporarily 5 hours; between me and Atl. it is 4 hours. Next Sunday (Nov. 7) you'll fall back, and we'll be on the usual 6 hr/5 hr lag again.
That having been said, I need to apologize for my remissness in updating this blog--I know this is the only way I have to keep in touch with a lot of people, esp. at church, and I haven't been doing a very good job of it. So, first things first, I'm going to start downloading the pictures for that town tour I promised you, what, a month ago?
Part of my slowness in updating is that not a lot is happening. Despite the exotic location (made more exotic by those palm trees...), I am, in fact, at school, and 90% of what I do is classes, lab, and homework. This is almost exactly the halfway point of my semester (can you believe it?!), so while we don't have midterms (about 90% of my grade in each class is the final exam), I do have graded homework assignments, labs, essays, and a talk to prepare over Reading Week, the "vacation" week that starts Nov. 8. I am under no illusions that this week will be a vacation.
The weekend before, however, will be, because my flatmates and I are going on a tour of the western highlands! We'll be making a loop from Edinburgh northwest to the coast near the Isle of Skye and then back (Google "Eilean Donan Castle" if you want to see the part I'm really excited about). I'm looking forward to it, though I hope that in the future I'll be able to take more self-guided trips rather than bus tours. But still. FUN! Pictures will be taken, though whether I'll ever get around to posting them here remains to be seen...
...Photobucket is working on the other albums...I still have an hour before I have to get ready for church; maybe they'll be downloaded by then...
But anyways. As for how I'm doing here, I think I'm alright. I go through days/moments where I feel really stressed with work and just generally not having time for anything, and then times when I feel like it's all manageable, but that's just typical school, I think. I also go through random spurts of homesickness, usually focused on a craving for something mundane like looseleaf paper (they don't sell it here!) or a muffin from Broadstreet. Or less mundane things like Jason cookouts, my family, the barn, RUF or Hapkido. Skype is a Godsend; I think without it I'd be a lot worse off as far as homesickness is concerned.
A lot of the trouble I am having (if you can call it "trouble") is in trying to find my place here, so to speak, to figure out what I can do and how I can contribute. Part of what frustrates me is that I've stopped taking the Aikido class. I don't like dropping things; I like being committed and working hard to improve at things that I find difficult. But when I realized that I was having to convince myself to get up and go to each and every class, I realized it was probably not something I ought to be devoting my time to, even if I wanted myself to want to go. Instead, I run to get some physical activity. Those of you at Tech, especially in my Hapkido class, are gaping right now because you know how passionately I HATE running. Well...I'll just say it's different when you have cool weather and a place like this to run in. I NEED to take some pictures of the Lade Braes walking trail for you all. It's beautiful, and it at least provides a reliable distraction from the utter misery of running itself.
But more than that, I've been struggling to figure out how to participate at my church and the Christian Union. I don't like being just an "attender" in my church or ministry; I like to be a contributing member of the community, and I've been thinking and praying a lot about how I can do that when I'm here for so little time. I had a great conversation with the leader of my small group about this. What she said and some of the other things I've been thinking about have kind of changed the focus of my thoughts from "creating a role for myself," which is hard when you won't be here to carry out any responsibilities, to doing things that put the community in a position to grow even after I've left, which I can do. And rather than give all of you a blow-by-blow of everything that goes on in my head on this topic, I'll stop here and go get ready for (appropriately enough) church, which starts at noon.
Photobucket had to start over and my faith in its ability to finish in the next half hour is small, so I'll be posting links to the various albums as they come available. But please, e-mail me if you would like and tell me how you're doing! I can guarantee that I'll read e-mails, while I may miss a comment on one of my posts. I'd love to hear from everyone, so please do write! Bye for now!
Sunday 31 October 2010
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Weird Stuff
The good, the bad, the funny, and the irritating of being in the country, town, school and building that I am.
1. Tea time during lab. I love that I'm living in the midst of an entire culture that enshrines my enjoyment of afternoon tea. If we don't take a tea break, our instructor takes one without us. This is the same man who took a "wee shufti" at my optical setup to make sure it was aligned correctly.
2. Digestive biscuits. A digestive biscuit is the British answer to a graham cracker, only slightly more fibrous. They are mildly sweet and generally crushed up to make pie and cheesecake crusts. The name, however, is not good marketing, at least in my opinion.
3. Palm trees. I realize we're at the beach and all, but does Arctic Circle count for nothing?
4. Waiting in line to enter the gym. I have to say, I was a fan of the CRC and its, what, 100-person training floor?
5. Listening to an Englishman and a Scot talk football. They were very good-natured about it, but it was still hilarious.
6. $3 dental floss. Thanks for breaking my flossing habit for me, Scotland.
7. Real mugs in coffee shops. The ladies at church even serve the after-service coffee and tea in real china teacups.
8. The lesser-known Britishisms. For example, I learned today that to Brits, "pants" are underwear. The denim things on my legs are trousers. Soft drinks are "fizzy juice."
9. Chinese lessons. This isn't a Scotland thing; it's a "my flatmates are awesome" thing. We've been giving each other nightly language lessons (during tea time...have I mentioned that I love this custom?), and B. has been teaching us helpful Chinese phrases such as "Thank you," "Good morning," and "I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese." We requested that last one.
10. People who don't move on the sidewalk. When you're walking with a big group that takes up the whole sidewalk and someone comes up in the other direction, what do you do? You all shuffle around and make room for that person to pass so they don't have to tempt fate running in the street, right? Because it's rude to take up an entire public walkway. This is apparently not the custom in Scotland, and it's beginning to be quite irritating.
1. Tea time during lab. I love that I'm living in the midst of an entire culture that enshrines my enjoyment of afternoon tea. If we don't take a tea break, our instructor takes one without us. This is the same man who took a "wee shufti" at my optical setup to make sure it was aligned correctly.
2. Digestive biscuits. A digestive biscuit is the British answer to a graham cracker, only slightly more fibrous. They are mildly sweet and generally crushed up to make pie and cheesecake crusts. The name, however, is not good marketing, at least in my opinion.
3. Palm trees. I realize we're at the beach and all, but does Arctic Circle count for nothing?
4. Waiting in line to enter the gym. I have to say, I was a fan of the CRC and its, what, 100-person training floor?
5. Listening to an Englishman and a Scot talk football. They were very good-natured about it, but it was still hilarious.
6. $3 dental floss. Thanks for breaking my flossing habit for me, Scotland.
7. Real mugs in coffee shops. The ladies at church even serve the after-service coffee and tea in real china teacups.
8. The lesser-known Britishisms. For example, I learned today that to Brits, "pants" are underwear. The denim things on my legs are trousers. Soft drinks are "fizzy juice."
9. Chinese lessons. This isn't a Scotland thing; it's a "my flatmates are awesome" thing. We've been giving each other nightly language lessons (during tea time...have I mentioned that I love this custom?), and B. has been teaching us helpful Chinese phrases such as "Thank you," "Good morning," and "I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese." We requested that last one.
10. People who don't move on the sidewalk. When you're walking with a big group that takes up the whole sidewalk and someone comes up in the other direction, what do you do? You all shuffle around and make room for that person to pass so they don't have to tempt fate running in the street, right? Because it's rude to take up an entire public walkway. This is apparently not the custom in Scotland, and it's beginning to be quite irritating.
Saturday 9 October 2010
Look-Alikes
Just for fun, anytime I see someone who looks enough like somebody I know that I do a double-take, I'm putting their name on this list here. (I always do this...I see MS people in Atl. and Atl. people in MS all the time.) So far I've seen doubles of:
Dorothy Felker
Biz Felker
Emily Heine
Jennifer Gordon
Peter Scheidt
Matt Mullininx--this guy is really uncanny. I keep seeing him and I double-take every time.
Ms. Ursula
Dorothy Felker
Biz Felker
Emily Heine
Jennifer Gordon
Peter Scheidt
Matt Mullininx--this guy is really uncanny. I keep seeing him and I double-take every time.
Ms. Ursula
Scottish soap is nice...if you like smelling like tea and roast lamb
Well, the scent of my bath soap is "thyme and bergamot," thyme being one of the herbs you typically put on lamb, and bergamot being the main spice in Earl Grey tea, so yes, my soap does, in fact, smell stereotypically Scottish. Lamb and tea. Sarah (roommate from Tech, for those who don't know) warned me that European soaps smell weird. Observation verified.
In other news, I have a fourth roommate! May I introduce A., who is an Art History PhD student from Cyprus, meaning I now have two roommates who speak Greek. She just arrived yesterday evening, and K. and I were royally confused when we realized the voice we heard speaking Greek on a phone was NOT coming from I's room but from the (supposedly) unoccupied Room 4. It turns out that her advisor gave her a few extra weeks' vacation, and since she has no need to be here for classes, she just stayed home a little longer. Makes sense. But it puts our theory that the room was actually inhabited by a glimmery Stephanie-Meyer-esque vampire to a rather anticlimactic end.
In OTHER other news, I realize I haven't given you the promised St. Andrews walkthrough yet. My roommates and Annie are not surprised by this; everyone else, welcome to the way I do the internet: eventually. Really, though, last Sunday I walked half the town before church taking pictures; I plan to cover the second half and the beach tomorrow so I can give you a completed walkthrough tomorrow night.
I've been going out of my way to get my work done on Friday and Saturday so I can have all of Sunday to rest and worship. It's something I never tried very hard to do at Tech, but I'm really making an effort this year (at least so far this year), and I have to say I enjoyed closing my books at about 2 this afternoon and being done with school for the rest of the weekend. I'm going to enjoy not having all that hanging over my head Sundays. I plan to spend a lot of tomorrow out walking on the beach, to which I haven't been yet. (Yes, the camera is coming with me.) Oh! And I have to indulge a romanticized mental image momentarily. I've picked up an instrument that is slightly more portable than the piano. It's the tin whistle, aka the penny whistle. If you're familiar with Lord of the Rings, this is the instrument that opens the piece "Concerning Hobbits" at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. If you don't know it, just google...ah, heck, this is a blog, I'll just attach the link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1cTuUwZILg
Yay, technology. Anyways. Picture, if you will, a windswept beach; waves breaking against an iron-grey sky; and me, in a tartan skirt if you wish, playing rustic Celtic melodies in the open air. *sigh* I love Scotland. And now it's time for me to go drink some tea. I bet I smell more like bergamot than it does.
In other news, I have a fourth roommate! May I introduce A., who is an Art History PhD student from Cyprus, meaning I now have two roommates who speak Greek. She just arrived yesterday evening, and K. and I were royally confused when we realized the voice we heard speaking Greek on a phone was NOT coming from I's room but from the (supposedly) unoccupied Room 4. It turns out that her advisor gave her a few extra weeks' vacation, and since she has no need to be here for classes, she just stayed home a little longer. Makes sense. But it puts our theory that the room was actually inhabited by a glimmery Stephanie-Meyer-esque vampire to a rather anticlimactic end.
In OTHER other news, I realize I haven't given you the promised St. Andrews walkthrough yet. My roommates and Annie are not surprised by this; everyone else, welcome to the way I do the internet: eventually. Really, though, last Sunday I walked half the town before church taking pictures; I plan to cover the second half and the beach tomorrow so I can give you a completed walkthrough tomorrow night.
I've been going out of my way to get my work done on Friday and Saturday so I can have all of Sunday to rest and worship. It's something I never tried very hard to do at Tech, but I'm really making an effort this year (at least so far this year), and I have to say I enjoyed closing my books at about 2 this afternoon and being done with school for the rest of the weekend. I'm going to enjoy not having all that hanging over my head Sundays. I plan to spend a lot of tomorrow out walking on the beach, to which I haven't been yet. (Yes, the camera is coming with me.) Oh! And I have to indulge a romanticized mental image momentarily. I've picked up an instrument that is slightly more portable than the piano. It's the tin whistle, aka the penny whistle. If you're familiar with Lord of the Rings, this is the instrument that opens the piece "Concerning Hobbits" at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. If you don't know it, just google...ah, heck, this is a blog, I'll just attach the link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1cTuUwZILg
Yay, technology. Anyways. Picture, if you will, a windswept beach; waves breaking against an iron-grey sky; and me, in a tartan skirt if you wish, playing rustic Celtic melodies in the open air. *sigh* I love Scotland. And now it's time for me to go drink some tea. I bet I smell more like bergamot than it does.
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