All Americans are called "Bob"

John had a rugby tournament at home on Sunday morning, and he was especially excited because he finally had “kit” for the game and looked the part of a rugby player. He was ready to go by 8:30 am though the tournament didn’t start until 11. At 10, he and I headed over to the rugby fields, which are right in front of the Old Course Hotel. They are in a beautiful spot, but their location right on the ocean ensures that it’s about 10 degrees cooler on the sidelines of the pitch than pretty much anywhere else in St. Andrews. While John warmed up with his team, I did the same on the sidelines by doing the cha-cha back and forth and nodding at all the things that the other parents were saying, hoping that it looked as if I understood any of it (though I did have a breakthrough when I comprehended a woman saying in a strong Scottish accent to her child who was asking for a snack, “Da said your meal was sorted, then”…a sentence I definitely wouldn’t have picked up even a few weeks ago.)

John’s tournament included three teams, all of which played each other twice, so it took up the better part of two very cold hours. For me, at least. John enjoys every minute of rugby and has made some good friends with some of the kids on his team, most of whom have long hair and names like Fergus and Findlay. He loves that they all tease him about being American and having never seen a rugby match—even his coach (whose first name is Hendrik!) refers to him as Bob (“we call all Americans “Bob” in rugby,” he says). Despite his inexperience, though, he’s doing pretty well. Over the course of the day’s tournament, he had five “trys” (which is what they call scores or goals in rugby…forcing parents to shout out to kids who have just dropped the ball, “Nice attempt…”), though the first two were called back because he was carrying the ball with only one hand (the QB tuck-and-run from American football stuck with him, I guess), which is against the rules until a player is 12. The second time he did it, Coach Hendrik really gave it to him (a little excessively, I thought, but then a mother always does…) so he hung his head for a few plays and kind of checked out of the game. He recovered a bit later, though, and came back for three more trys towards the end of the tournament. We caught it all on tape (a mother always does…!) but the highlight film is about 20 minutes long, so definitely not post-able.

David and Emma had left the game a bit earlier to catch the church service and took the car with them, so John and I walked through town after the game. On our way to church, I asked if he wanted to stop for a juice, so we ducked into a little breakfast place where we ordered our first sausage rolls. I also got a “white coffee” which turned out to be a cross between coffee with cream in it and a latte. The sausage rolls were, predictably, delicious, though a piece of salty meat wrapped in flaky dough can’t really ever be anything but delicious, I suppose. We ran into one of John’s football mates in the shop who was carrying a big shopping bag. He came over and showed John the contents, which seemed to be mostly school supplies that he had just bought next door with his mother, and then asked a question that was completely indecipherable. I was shocked when John, who obviously had no problem figuring out what he said, answered him, and they had a two minute conversation—of which I only understood half. It made me realize that, of all of us, John seems to be the one to take to Scottish life the most easily, and also made me wonder, since he’s only seven, how much of this experience will stay with him. I know that I don’t remember much about being seven years old, but I also never had an experience like this, so perhaps this trip is significant enough to make a lasting impression on him. As long as he remembers to carry the football with only one hand when we go back to the States in the fall, of course!

Dunnotar Castle

Greyfriars Primary School hosted a carnival on Friday night, and though I kind of wanted to drive around St. Andrews looking for Kate Middleton in her red coat, the kids were keen to go. They swayed David with promises of “international food,” so I deferred, and the four of us went to their school for the evening. I was surprised at how jam-packed it was—just imagine a pub at Six Nations game time where all the patrons are wearing paper-plate-and-feather-masks and armed with glue and glitter and you’ll have it. Emma hooked up with her P1 buddy, Zoe, and John quickly found one of the Davids (his face had already been Spidermanned with face paint by the time we arrived, so I wasn’t sure which one) so that left us standing in the corner, holding a pile of coats. The promised “international food” never materialized, though there was some evidence of it on the tables in front of some parents (apparently, the evening’s schedule started with food from 6:00 pm to 6:07 pm, and we had arrived too late). So, we stayed as long as it took to be polite, and smiled through the musical performances: the group of P6 girls doing Zumba, the girl that can play the bagpipes (again), and a St. Andrews student who plays some kind of tabletop Chinese harp, though it was so delicate and quiet that I don’t think anyone in the room heard it over the squeals coming from the P2ers in the vegetable carving section.

The weekend’s weather forecast called for copious amounts of sunshine and 50+ degrees, so our plan was to head to Dunnotar Castle after John’s rugby training. The sun was indeed out, so the drive up was lovely (though we had to drive through the dreaded Dundee, home of inexplicably large and complicated roundabouts that create so much stress in our car that I think even the voice on our GPS unit swore at one point). Dunnotar Castle is about an hour and 45 minutes north of us, towards Aberdeen, and right on the coast. The year in which the castle was built is up for debate, though a previous castle on the same site was destroyed by the Vikings in the 9^th century, and William Wallace burned another version down that had been consecrated in 1276. In any case, the castle belonged to the Earls Marischal, who were one of the most powerful families in the land, and therefore hosted various dignitaries like the Marquis of Montrose, King Charles II and Mary Queen of Scots (though I have yet to visit a castle in Scotland that did not host Mary Queen of Scots. She apparently spent all of her time traveling, and clearly had one of those discount railcards…) Dunnotar is most famous for being the place where the Scottish Crown Jewels, or “Honours of Scotland” were kept and hidden from Cromwell’s army.

It’s also known for the story of the “Whig’s Vault,” a gruesome tale in which a group of Covenanters who refused to acknowledge the King’s supremacy in spiritual matters were imprisoned in the vault in 1685 for about six weeks. The vault is miniscule, and there were about 160 people trapped there, the details of which are retold in vivid words and graphic pictures. Unfortunately, we came to this room almost immediately upon arrival, and Emma found the signs first, which prompted an hours-long rant about why we insisted upon dragging her to these horrible castles where she had to see all

these horrible places where people died these horrible deaths. John, on the other hand, had found a decent-sized, sunbleached stick on the way in, and was having a ball brandishing it every time he entered another dark and moss-covered room, so Emma and I separated from the boys, and I took her to the ruins of the stables, where I was confident that the most gruesome thing we would find were the manure chutes. Both of us wandered around for a few hours, occasionally bumping into the boys, but mostly marveling at one gorgeous vista after another…the Scots certainly do know how to site a castle. There were hundreds of nesting birds on the castle cliffs, and dolphins out in the water just beyond the bay. It was a crystal clear day, and after we had seen all there was to see in the castle, we took a short walk down to the rocky beach below, and then up to the coastal path that edged the cliffs (dangerously so, actually). Just as we left, it barely started to sprinkle, and as we walked back to the car park, a full rainbow came out and arched over the castle. It was truly amazing!

For dinner, we drove to the nearby town of Stonehaven, where the kids found a huge playground complete with skatepark and zipline. As the sun went down, we drove to the Ship Inn, which is right on the harbor. The Six Nations games were on in the pub, though,

and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house, so instead we went to yet another overstaffed Indian restaurant for dinner where one waiter after another kept stopping by to rearrange the silverware in front of John (he’s quite the perfectionist,” said Emma!). Our meal was good, though John wasn’t happy until he was sitting in the car, forty-five minutes later, with a full takeaway cheese pizza on his lap for the drive home.

Link to more photos of Dunnotar Castle

Willandkatespotting...

Please feel free to cheat…scroll down to the Will and Kate video, then begin to read!

Every day, I’m learning a bit more about British culture, and in fact can now do a few things that only the British can do. Yesterday, for example, David invited the Colgate students over to our house to continue their classroom discussion from the day before. Two of the students are keeping a blog of their own on the Colgate Maroon-News website, and I read it regularly. Earlier in the week, they had posted an entry about not being able to find a tea house that served “cream tea” in St. Andrews. So, despite being American, never having had a cream tea, or never having gone to a tea house, I decided to serve a “cream tea” to the students. The first step was to go right to Wikipedia and figure out what a cream tea was. After learning that it was not tea with cream in it, but a small meal complete with dainty sandwiches cut with special cookie cutters, I started to question the wisdom of my decision.

David agreed to help, though, and we pressed on. We assembled some scones and Scottish strawberry conserves from Morrison’s and set about making some sandwiches on thin white bread. I filled half of them with egg salad, and the other half I spread with butter and paper thin slices of cucumber (after thankfully noticing that cucumbers are individually shrink wrapped here, preventing the students from having cucumber, butter and shrink wrap tea sandwiches…). Since our poorly-equipped kitchen has nothing in it that resembles a cookie cutter, I just cut the crusts off (though I did consider mashing them off with the edge of a drinking glass). The knives are incredibly dull, though, so instead of having sharp, smart looking edges, each finger sandwich looked a bit masticated, and the egg salad ones especially appeared as if we had started to digest them for the students. I piled them on a platter anyway, and hoped they wouldn’t notice. David started to work on the tea, so I moved on to dealing with the most important part of the meal: the cream.

A cream tea requires "clotted cream." Clotted cream, also called Devonshire cream, is simply unpasteurized cow's milk that has been heated with steam, then allowed to cool in a shallow pan so that the cream separates, rises to the top, and forms a thick skin of yellow "clots." I know this now, after opening the container and being appalled at the waxy yellow contents, and immediately thinking that David had neglected to check the expiry date and picked one that had gone bad. I went back to Wikipedia to double-check, and learned that indeed, it WAS supposed to look like that. So I stirred the container and put it in a serving bowl, thinking that it should instead be called “clotted artery.” I did taste a bit of the cream just before the students arrived, and wasn’t too impressed---it basically tastes like unsalted butter that has been left out on a counter all day. I’m sure that served on top of a pile of strawberry jam on a scone, it was delicious. Or at least I hoped so…though the fact that the students ate all the scones and most of the cream makes me believe it’s so!

The other thing I can now do like a Brit is seek out personal appearances of Prince William and Kate Middleton! This morning, I met up with some of the students to catch a glimpse of the “royal couple,” who are in town to mark the 600^th-ish anniversary of the University (there’s apparently some debate about when it was actually first started, which is completely understandable as even the printing press wasn’t yet invented at the time!)We met at 9:15 on North Street, which would give us plenty of time to find a spot in front of St. Salvator’s, where they were scheduled to speak at 10:30. None of our students had been invited to the event (and it was rumored that no English students were invited, either…) so we settled for standing along the barricades. We were really only interested in catching a glimpse of her outfit and hearing his accent, of course, so found a spot that gave us a reasonable chance of doing both. Since it was a bit rainy in the morning, our discussion centered on what manner of hat she would be wearing, since the “feather fascinator” she wore in Wales yesterday probably wouldn’t stand up to St. Andrews rain. The crowd was immense, and kept getting larger and larger as the event began. I was surrounded by three Koreans, two women from South Africa and a whole group of Americans. I don’t think I heard a single Scottish accent all morning, since Kate and William are old news here, though the town is now fully kitted out in royalgear. All the shops are full of plates, tea towels, and even cakes emblazoned with the CW moniker (like all Brits, I know that in a royal wedding the man’s initial is supposed to go before the woman’s, but Will and Catherine, as she’s officially known, are the first couple to reverse this and put her initial first. This is not a statement about their equality in the marriage, however, but a necessity, since the initials “WC” in Britain mean “toilet”).

Finally, around 11:30, the ceremony began, and though it was inside the St. Salvator’s Quad, they piped the audio out on the street, so we could all hear his accent. (See video below!). And around noon, they finally appeared on North Street, quite close to where I was standing, actually. Two schoolchildren gave them a bouquet of flowers, and they walked down the street to shake a few hands, then hopped into Range Rovers and zoomed off. The rumor is that they’re still in town, and staying through the Fashion Show, which is the annual event in which Kate modeled the dress that apparently caught Will’s eye. I was so incredibly cold from standing in 18 square millimeters of space for over three hours that I left, just hanging around long enough to catch a video of the tail lights of their Range Rover as they drove off!

Snowdrops and a Shoeful of Sea Water

On Sunday after church, I managed to convince the rest of the family to accompany me on a garden tour a few miles south of St. Andrews, just past the village of Kingsbarns. Cambo Estates is well-known for their snowdrops, which are in bloom in mid-February. They offer tours throughout the day, and an event at night called Snowdrops at Starlight that starts at 5pm (yes, it’s dark by then!) and features illuminated works of art along the path to the sea, in addition to the flowers. We arrived at four, with a plan to see the snowdrops along the walk to the ocean, which (in true St. Andrews fashion) also leads to a golf course. The flowers were beautiful, and the ocean was steely gray and freezing cold. That didn’t stop Emma from charging right in, and in no more than about 30 seconds, sea water had splashed up over the tops of her boots, soaking her from the knees down (see photographic evidence at left...)

So, David offered to take her back to the car (chivalrous of him to sacrifice a garden tour, I know…) and let John and me press on. We made it back down the path, away from the sea, which was a tad bit warmer, and into the garden itself. In addition to the flowers and other plants, there were several “art installations” along the path…things like a series of slate tiles hanging from the branch of a tree in staggered sizes, and miniature television screens mounted to the tree trunks and showing a video of piglets on a loop. On the way out, David had proclaimed it a bit too “Blair-Witch-project” for him, and as the North Sea wind whipped through the slate tiles and made an eerie tinkling noise, I had to agree with him. John tumbled right down the path, not noticing any of the art, once he saw the first arrow that pointed out how to find the pigs. We found them at the end of the path, and the estate had a huge bin of potatoes out next to the pin which you could use to feed the pigs. We spent a fair amount of time there, but once the Snowdrops at Starlight event started, with a blast of rock music and spotlights and strobes flashing through the garden, he was enthralled. He raced back across the garden from installation to installation, and it was hard to convince me to go back to the car once it started to get dark.

We were near Anstruther, so I used the promise of yet another cheese pizza as enticement to get him back in the car, and it worked well. David didn't need much convincing to swing by a chippy shop for dinner, of course, so we went to the Anstruther Fish and Chips shop again, this time for take-away that we were actually going to take home. The kids polished off their pizza in the back seat well before we made it home, and just a few minutes after David and I started on our pieces of haddock, which were served over a pile of chips and covered with salt and vinegar (and possibly one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten, by the way!) John wormed his way into my lap, spotted the big plate of chips with a "What's this, then" in his newly-discovered Scottish accent, and started to work his way through my dinner. I was resigned to share, since I guess it was a small price to pay for having such a willing escort through a garden/art park!

Never Visit a Science Museum with a Philosopher!

We spent the last day of “half-term” doing very little. I spent the day catching up with work-related stuff, so David took the kids into town for lunch at a noodle place (he came home with a distended stomach and an exclamation about how satisfying it is to “tuck into” a big bowl of noodles!). We had grand plans for the afternoon, but I never managed to catch up on work, and the weather wasn’t cooperating—I thought “white cloud” was just a brand of toilet tissue before living in Scotland, but I now know that it’s an incredibly accurate term used to describe Scottish weather—so we just stayed in. The kids seemed relieved to have a chance to just hang out, and put in a few good hours of Playmobil together. At one point, I overheard John say to Emma, “I know this is changing the subject, but I really like how socks work. You just put them on when you have cold feet, and your feet just warm right up!”

The rain came on Saturday, and it looked as if it was going to last all day, so we packed up and headed to Dundee. Our first trip to the city, which is about twenty-five minutes north of us (just across the Firth of Tay) had been a bust, but this time we were armed with guidebooks and a GPS, so we went into it more confidently. We started at the Dundee science center, which is called Sensation and focuses on the five senses. The museum is fabulous (brilliant, as they would say here…) and though we intended to stay for only a few hours, we stayed through mid-afternoon as there was so much to do. There were many, many interactive displays, each more entertaining than the next. One area called “Mind Wars” had two people sit against each other to see who could relax the most, and create the least brain activity, and a small ball moved between them as their brain activity rose or fell. There was a planetarium inside, a game that tested reaction time, a whole section on robots, and a display on balance that all of us failed. See the video below for some of the things we did!

When planning the visit, I had neglected to realize that there are inherent risks associated with visiting a museum on the senses with a philosopher! David is the guy that, when asked if a tree makes a sound when it falls in an unpopulated forest, says that it all depends on one’s definition

of sound. A few minutes after our arrival, he ushers me over to a display on eyesight, which seems to imply that the way eyesight works is this: one eye sees one flat image, and the other eye sees a different flat image, and the brain combines them together to trick you into thinking you are seeing a three-dimensional world. “Well, it IS a three-dimensional world!” he says, shaking his head. During the planetarium show, I heard him chuckle as the narrator of the film confidently asserted that “as soon as life was possible on Earth, it began.” “It was always POSSIBLE,” he whispered. When the film began to discuss “other worlds besides Earth,” I felt another argument coming, so I just moved further away! I did feel as if I got my revenge a bit later when, in a display about viewing colors, we discovered that David is colorblind!

We had lunch in the museum then made the mistake of going back to the Overgate Shopping Center for a white tshirt for John’s school uniform. We squeezed through the parking garage again, and though we didn’t hit anything this time, were all on edge after just barely making it into a parking space that was mere millimeters larger than our car. That one was my fault, actually, after insisting that David was going to run into yet another concrete post in the middle of the garage, then convincing him to turn the wrong way, right into an oncoming car! It seemed that everyone else within an hour of Dundee had made the same decision to go to the mall as well, and after fighting the crowds for almost two hours, we were all incredibly grouchy and decided to leave, vowing NEVER to go back there again.

Next, we went to the Olympia Leisure Center, which is right on the river and beckons with several water slides that twist in and out of the building over the river. “Leisure Centers” are pretty common here, and most decent size town have one—they combine a fitness center with some combination of swimming pools that allow users to do laps and pools that can be used just for horsing around. The latter is usually “zero-depth” meaning you walk into it gradually, like walking into the ocean, but is of course much warmer. The one in Dundee is just a hair cooler than a hot tub, which does make me hope that it’s heated and not just warmed up from kid pee! This one also has a “lazy river” kind of pool, where a current takes you around the pool in a big circle. All four of us spent a good bit of time in this pool yesterday, and stayed in a line at the edge of the pool, where the current goes so fast that one feels like Apolo Ohno whipping around an oval speed-skating track. The pool also has four huge water slides, one of which is possibly the most terrifying water slide I have ever seen. It starts at the very top of the building (maybe five stories high?) then winds around outside the building, until it stops over a huge pool at the same height as a high dive. The slide ends, and the slider just free-falls the rest of the way into the pool. And in true Scottish fashion, they just let anybody use it anyway you want and there are no size restrictions on it or anything. So of course John and David did it, and I looked up in time to see John shoot out of the bottom of the thing like a bullet. They said it was great fun, but I did notice that neither of them chose to go on it a second time!

An American Birthday in Scotland

Yesterday, Emma turned 11. Greyfriars Primary is on “half-term” for the second part of the week, so her main birthday present was no school! We knew this was going to be an unusual birthday celebration for her, since we don’t know the kids in her class well enough to host a sleepover (dodged a bullet on that one!). And since this isn’t really our house, we didn’t think we should invite a classroom full of kids over either. So we went with a low-key celebration instead, and took her out to lunch at the restaurant of her choice, then spent the afternoon making a cake. She chose a New York style cheesecake which, predictably, was a bit difficult to make here. The first difficulty was navigating the grocery store, where I spent about ten minutes in the dairy aisle, trying to figure out how many grams of cream cheese equaled one American-sized brick (for future reference, you need 1 1/8 containers of the UK size Philadelphia brand, but ¾ of a container of the store brand size…). Then we spent another ten minutes looking for a suitable substitute for graham crackers (ginger biscuits or McVities?) and searching for vanilla extract (with no luck…). We also struck out in our search for a pie plate and ended up with a glass tart pan, but did find a hand mixer for £9, which I’m sure we’ll use at least once or twice again while we’re here. I also managed to find decent representations of the groceries I would usually use at home to make a cheese lasagna (thought the “ricotta cheese” packet was alarmingly small and I was torn between choosing the “egg lasagna noodles” or the “original lasagna noodles.” (Doesn’t all pasta have egg in it?)

After our shopping trip, we headed home and I started baking. The cheesecake turned out reasonably well, thought the sugar I bought was much more densely-granulated than what we buy in the U.S. (I think I needed “castor” or “fruit” sugar, not “table” sugar). Since the eggs here are most often free range and larger than they are in the U.S., I probably didn’t need two of them. Also, McVities makes a horrible substitute for graham crackers! Otherwise, it was a passable concoction fairly reminiscent of New York cheesecake. The lasagna turned out nicely, as well, though I neglected to remember that while it’s quite possible to buy enough small containers of ricotta cheese to make a 9x13 pan of lasagna, it is virtually impossible to fit a 9x13 pan of leftovers in a British-size refrigerator, especially one that has a half-eaten cheesecake in it already!

Emma’s presents were also downsized this year, since we will eventually have to cram everything we own here into eight duffel bags for the return trip to the States. She ended up with two iTunes gift certificates (thanks Amy and Grandma!), a bouquet of “lollies,” a cupcake kit, and a Scottish cookbook for kids called “Maw Broon’s Cooking with Bairns” that is full of step-by-step instructions on how to make Scotch broth, chicken stovies, and grilled herring with oatmeal (every kid’s favorite!). Since she’s a vegetarian, I was afraid the book wouldn’t go over well but she was pleased with the “Pudding” section, which lists recipes for cranachan with berries and wee clootie! Of course, once we get it back to the States, we’ll have to figure out how to decide how much 125 grams of sultanas is, or where on earth to find black treacle and golden syrup in Hamilton, New York!

You try stuffing a full-size lasagna into that thing!

Why My Scottish Kids are So Great...

It turns out that the Scottish versions of my kids are better than the American versions. First of all, though we have only been here for a month, they both sound much more refined, now that they are slowly picking up a Scottish accent and using Scottish colloquialisms. John’s accent is the most pronounced, and he now affects just the right up-and-down inflection at the end of all of his sentences: the word “juice” at the end of “Mum, may I have some juice?” has about three syllables when he says it (and never mind about the use of the “may I,” which definitely didn’t happen in the States!) He now calls Band-Aids “plasters” and erasers “rubbers” (though I still have some difficulty responding to that one with a straight face…), and constantly reminds us to ask him to change his “trousers” rather than “pants,” which are underwear here. Emma’s accent is no different yet, though she has started to describe things as “lovely” and “brilliant” more often than “cool” or “awesome.” Much better!

Second, they are both really absorbed in the things they are learning at school. Aside from his thrice-daily football games (once before school, and once during each “playtime”) which he of course loves, he’s starting to enjoy learning quite a bit about different cultures, and about their histories. He has somehow wrapped his head around the whole Stuart dynasty thing, and actually has a bit of a handle on the various King James and how they are related to the various Robert the Bruces. His class is now talking about the Romans and their influence on Scotland and England, which is a pretty heavy lesson for kids in P3, I think. Of course, since he came home and said he had learned about “Jessica Caesar,” it looks like the class still has a bit of work to do there.

Emma’s class has been doing a piece on Scottish Opera with the other kids in P5 and P6, and their teachers have been helping them with several pieces of music. Yesterday, the folks from the Scottish Opera, which is the national opera company based in Glasgow, came to the school and, in a matter of two hours, put together an incredibly professional performance with ALL the kids in the upper grades. David and I went to see the performance, and were both taken aback at how good it was. They had really coached the kids to belt the songs out, and though there wasn’t a lot of movement around the stage to choreograph, it was still quite a feat, especially since it included so many kids of so many different temperaments (even Naughty Charlie was up there!) I was a little nonplussed to see the other parents in the audience react so mildly to the performance, so it looks as if the school regularly churns out school productions of such quality. No wonder American schools are falling behind…

The biggest reason the kids are so much better here, of course, has actually nothing to do with the schools, and has a lot more to do with the experience of leaving home for an extended period of time. Our whole family has really embraced the less-is-more lifestyle that living in a rental house across an ocean from most of the stuff that we own requires. David and I have about two drawers-ful of clothes with us (and yet are STILL wearing only about 30% of them…!), and the kids have about ten Playmobil figures each, and that’s about it. And yet, they are playing with that small amount of toys much, much more than they ever did in the States. They are playing with each other much more often, and with us as well. And they are really getting creative with building more toys for themselves—last night, they were making bunk beds for their Playmobil people out of raspberry cartons, invisible tape and tissues. It turns out that all they really need to survive is a pair of cleats, a library card, and an iPod Touch loaded with a Whoo! Button and the Glee version of” Empire State of Mind” on it.

Now, as long as all this Irn Bru doesn’t rot their teeth before we leave…

Below is a video of the Scottish Opera performance. Emma's in the green dress in front, and some of the lyrics are below.

Land of the purple heather

Fine folk but mingin' weather

We love a wee blether:

Scotland the Brave

Land o' the rolling sea haars

Kids keeping bees in jam jars

Land o' the deep-fried Mars bars:

Scotland the Brave.

We are a people cut from granite;

that's what makes us strong!

We long to tramp our hills and braes

For that's where we belong.

With the tang of the sea and the high rocky ben

and the scream of the hawk sounding over the glen:

We are a people born to tell their story with a song.

Here are tales of roving Reivers and of Viking hordes.

In this wee country we've invented Tarmac roads,

Sweet marmalade and Macintosh's coats

Haggis and neeps and champit tatties and

Bagpipes and shortbread and golf.

Think of Alexander Graham Bell:

His invention serves us well,

Show your gratitude to Scotland each time you call home!

This, the home of Strethspeys and jigs and Highland reels

Steam engines and Chris Hoy upon two wheels.

Birthplace of Treasure Island, Robert Burns,

Napier and Aly and Phil.

Scottish Valentines

Our Valentine's Day began with a few bumps--John growling at me for waking him up by tickling him (he said, "Get out of my yawn, Mommy!) and then throwing Emma's faintly-heart-shaped rock down a storm drain on the way to the bus stop (she said, "But I had been kicking that rock to school for days!" to which I said, "But Emma, it's Monday," to which she said, "and it looked like a heart and it's Valentine's Day and..." before being overcome with full-body sobs...). We made a recovery in the afternoon, though, when we went to the church's Valentine's Day Dance, held at the parish hall. It was a collection of the oldest and the youngest parishioners, with the former following dutifully the instructions being parceled out by the dance professionals, and the latter engaged in a contest to see who could slide the farthest across the parquet wood floor in their bare socks. John and Emma put up a good showing, until Emma was waylaid by Summerland, the pastor's very young son, who was looking for someone to engage him in a good round of "washing machine." John and his newfound friends then deserted Emma, and seized the opportunity to display their skills at air guitar!

Castle Campbell

Since the upcoming week is a short one for the kids, we decided to stick close to home for the weekend and save our bigger travels for the end of next week. On Saturday, we ventured about 45 minutes away to Castle Campbell, a 14^th century fortress high up in the mountains above Stirling. It was an imposing structure, and about half of it was in ruins while the other half

(mostly the tower) was still intact, though empty…a great place for the kids to spend a few hours running around. The whole thing was perched precariously in between two huge hills, and there were some great hiking trails around the bottom. It is snowdrop and aconite season here, so after a quick tour of the castle, we hiked along a waterfall and across a few suspension footbridges at the foot of the castle to check out the flowers. It was a bit muddy, but since John’s enjoyment level increases as the muck on his boots gets higher and higher, he was having a ball. Though it does get cold here, Scotland’s climate is a temperate one, so the crevices and rocks and forest floor were covered in moss and lichen, and all kinds of tropical-type plants. It was really beautiful, and none of us were in a hurry to leave.

To get to the castle, we had to go through some incredibly narrow roads (and in some spots, the use of the word “road” is pretty generous.) A few weeks ago, we bought an in-car GPS unit, and we were all laughing hysterically as the voice on the GPS repeatedly told us to turn into more and more precarious spots. At one point, we were driving through a sheep pasture (and all the sheep were calmly looking at us as if to say, “Poor suckers…”) on a road so narrow that the rear view mirrors were scraping the stone walls on either side. After about a quarter-mile, we came upon a huge puddle in the road. The water was black, so we had absolutely no idea how deep it was and figured it was a really bad idea to drive through. Of course, since it was a really, really bad idea to back up, we just closed our eyes and proceeded. It was quite deep in the end, but not catastrophically deep, and for the rest of the ride, the kids just kept saying, “Can we go through that puddle again?”

After our hike and castle tour, we got back in the car and drove back down the hill to Stirling. Emma’s birthday is on Wednesday, so we stopped at a shopping center to look for some gifts. She couldn’t find anything that she really “fancied,” so we hit the Thornton’s store (a big UK chocolate company) and left. We kept going into Stirling and drove past the William Wallace monument, which was lit from inside and quite stunning with the sunset as a backdrop. In the village, we stopped for dinner at an Indian restaurant. David and Emma had the buffet, which was puzzlingly still served in two courses…the starter buffet and the main buffet. John and I ordered off the menu, and about four waiters kept stopping by to check on us. John was looking around at the red-velvet tufted booths, and kept saying, “This is a really nice restaurant, and they sure do look after you here!” I guess we should take him out to dinner more often! Towards the end of the dinner, the waiters kept bringing out sizzling dishes of spicy food, and as they walked through the restaurant spreading spicy smoke, they created a fit of coughing and gagging among the other diners. It was like watching a wave go through a baseball stadium, and the four of us were really giggling, in between our own hacking fits!

Sunday was quite rainy, and since our church doesn’t start until noon, we decided to go for a morning hike. There’s a county park about a mile and a half up the road from our house that has a pond with boat rentals, an island, a small train and a playground. It doesn’t open until April 1 so the gates are locked, but there’s a walking trail from our house that goes right there, so I wanted to see if we could get in before it officially opens. I told everyone to dress appropriately, and stated clearly that once we left the house there would be no complaining about being cold or wet. Someone in our family didn’t wear good shoes, though, and slipped in the mud about ten minutes into the walk. We pressed on, but after thirty minutes, this person was too miserable, and wanted to turn back. So, I let him, but sent John with him back to the house as a chaperone (and to listen to him mutter the whole way back about how silly it was to go for a walk in the pouring rain!) Emma and I continued, and after crossing a golf course (it is St. Andrews after all!) we got there. The park was surrounded by barbed wire, and though the fence was broken in one spot and I let Emma squeeze through to try “the playground of her dreams!” as she called it upon first sight, we only stayed a few minutes since we were clearly breaking the rules. We made it home as well, though a bit soggier and muddier than I had intended, and just made it to church in time. In the afternoon, we went back to the leisure center for the Aqua Zone session, where the kids go through a big inflatable obstacle course on top of the pool. Emma was disappointed that Naughty Charlie was there as well, but happy when he was promptly kicked out for bad behavior (surprise!). John had met up with one of his rugby chums at church and went to the leisure center with him, so they spent the whole hour wrestling in the shallow end of the pool, while Emma raced some other kids across the obstacle course, pretending not to know who David was as he shouted in his American accent, “Goooo, Emma, gooooo! You can take that kid….gooooo!”

What a Difference a School Day Makes...

My favorite part of the day here in Scotland (after the morning cup of coffee, of course!) is walking to the school bus to meet the kids, and asking them about their days. They don’t bother to tell me about all the things they have learned, of course, but they do tell me a lot about their friends. John’s top friends are Everett, who is another American, Matthew, two Davids (“the one with the freckles and the one with the ears,” he says) and Norbert (yep, that’s the name.) Most of his stories, though, are about a boy named Athen, who is apparently about as naughty as they come. Athen got in trouble the other day when he decided that the long hair of the girl sitting in front of him was in his way and needed to be cut, so he took his scissors out of his desk and clipped a big section out of the back. At first, John said that his punishment was not to be able to go to lunch (can you imagine that happening in the U.S.?), but then he said that the teachers changed their minds and sent him up to P7 instead to be supervised by the older kids. I asked Emma about that, since she’s in P7, and she confirmed it, but added “They cleared the room of all the scissors first…”

Emma’s stories center mostly on an English kid named Charlie, and though she says he’s more annoying than naughty, her stories make him sound like the kind of kid that no one would want in class. They spend a lot of their class time divided into reading groups, and each group takes on a different novel. The kids get to pick which group they want to be in, but sometimes one of the books sounds much more appealing than the others, and too many kids choose that group, so they have to negotiate. One of the newest books is “Shark Island,” which six kids chose, but each group is capped at five. Emma said that Charlie was one of the six, and really, really, really wanted to be in the group. After pitching a fit, he was allowed to be in the group when a girl named Rebecca finally agreed to choose another group. But he forgot to bring his book for three days in a row, so the discussion wasn’t moving very far. Finally Miss Vaughey (the P7 teacher) lost her patience and asked him to give her two reasons why she shouldn’t kick him out of the group. “It’s good for my education,” he said, “and that should be a good enough reason for both.”

Aside from the naughty classmates, Emma’s class seems pretty interesting to me. The “reading group” concept is a great one, and she comes home every few days with a new book to discuss. Their homework is to read a good chunk of the book every night, and then they are all tasked with different jobs during the discussion the next day. Some of the jobs are Discussion Director, Word Wizard, and Literary Luminary. The last one is my favorite, and the one that Emma always seems to get. She has a chart to fill out every night after she reads in which she quotes a few of her “top passages,” then lists why they stuck out to her, and how she will encourage the other kids in the group to interpret them. The books are quite good, too, though neither of us have heard of many of them because they are put out by British publishing companies. Her current book is the Thirteenth Orphan, which is about Scottish myths and legends, and a part of the series they are doing on Scottish history. John’s class works on reading as a group rather than breaking up into smaller groups. They do a new book every few days or so, and read about a quarter of it at school (with each kid reading aloud in turn for a page or so), then read about 25 pages more at home as homework. He also comes home with big spelling lists, and has a test on them every Friday. The words are pretty hard for a second grader, I think, and in addition, some of them have different spellings (favourite and gipsy were on the list this week), so I hope that doesn’t prove to be confusing to him later in life!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see a lot of this first-hand, as I agreed to volunteer at the school for “Friday Activities.” These are hour-long co-curricular series that last six weeks, and are mostly taught by parents. The kids can choose between several sports (John does football, of course…), art, Chinese language, drama, baking, etc…whatever parents choose to lead. I agreed to fill in for an absent parent in the baking class, figuring that would be relatively easy. Wrong! The other parent divided the kids into two groups and took one, then sent about 10 kids with me (including, of course, the aforementioned Naughty Charlie!) to the kitchen to get ingredients to make “Rocky Road.” The recipe was essentially this: take 250g Stork and cut into 10 pieces, then melt with 50g chocolate. Add 75g crushed Malteasers, 75g digestives, and 50g marshmallows, then stir in 50g golden syrup. Of course, I had to begin the class by asking all the kids to define and find each of the ingredients, since I had no idea what most of them were. I did manage to hide my metric-system ignorance by deflecting all questions right back at the kids in a math-teacher-type voice: Well, how much do YOU think 250g would be? And after the recipe was all mixed together and divided into 10 little tins for the kids to take home, one of the little girls asked if she was supposed to bake it when she got home, to which I said, “Uh, I think your mother will know. Ask her…” She replied, “Oh, darn, I’m not going home after school. We’re going to the airport.” So I naively asked, “Oh, where are you going from the airport?.” To this, she said, “Skiing. In France.” So, I’m assuming that her mother won’t be too jazzed to see raw cookie dough in her carry-on bag at the Edinburgh airport!

By the way, David’s friend passed on this hilarious video, which gives some idea of what we’re up against with the Scottish accent:

The One Month Mark

Today is the last day of our first month in Scotland, and to mark the occasion, I’m thinking about all the things that I have come to appreciate about living here. Rather than dwelling on the things I miss about the States (Ziploc bags, mostly, but also the ability to buy painkillers in quantities of more than eight at a time…) I’m going to think about the things I do like. Also, my friend and former classmate at Notre Dame Julia Harris has nominated me for a “Stylish Blogger” award (Thanks Julia!), and while I don’t believe it’s a contest (or at least am hoping it is not, since my little travelogue can in no way compare to her well-considered, pithy and oft-updated Mirrored Images blog), it does present a few requirements, one of which is to present seven things about yourself. So, in that spirit, I’m presenting:

Seven Things I Now Appreciate About Scotland:

1. It’s always “time for tea” here. Apparently, lunch is still often called “dinner,” so dinner is sometimes referred to as teatime. As far as I can tell, though, people are “stopping for a spot of tea” anytime from about ten a.m. until just before bedtime. And most of the sugary-sweet snacks at the grocery store carry some kind of product advert on the packaging that mentions how the product is the perfect accompaniment to tea. So, “tea time” officially seems to be code around here for “taking a break,” especially a high-caloric one. And who can find fault with a country that endorses that?

2. It’s acceptable to end a conversation with a “cheerio” here. And you are expected to do it with a straight face.

3. The weather here is great. It’s warmer here every day than it has been in southern cities like Atlanta and Tulsa this winter. And yes, Scotland gets a bit of rain, but they get a whole lot of sun every day too. I now realize that the Brits are just pretending that their weather is horrible so the entire East Coast of the United States doesn’t suddenly decide to winter here.

4. Roundabouts make a whole lot of sense once you get used to them, and they are actually quite simple. Here’s the deal: approach, look to the right, and if a car is not within ten feet of you to the right, then speed right on through. No muss, no fuss, and certainly no waiting--and never any red lights. This town of over 15,000 people has, as far as I can tell, three traffic lights, and they are ALL for pedestrians. As a result, I have spent zero time idling in my car at a red light in the last month. Of course, since it costs about $100 to fill up the tank on our sub-compact car, that’s probably a really good thing…

5. Squash. No, it’s not a vegetable. It’s a completely sugar-free, additive-laced, brightly colored fake syrupy substance sold by the litre bottle that comes in flavors like “marshmallow” and “tropical fruit,” that, once added to water, makes it completely drinkable. Plus, it leaves a wicked fruit-punch smile-shaped stain on the lips, making it very difficult for someone who has just taken a big swig to try to intimidate with that British accent!

6. Channel 4. Like the BBC, Channel 4 is apparently “a public service broadcaster.” Their definition of public service, then, is a bit different than mine. When I first came upon it, I was quite shocked by many of its “oh no they didn’t” programs. The adverts for the programs make them seem more shocking than they really are, however. “Beauty and the Beast” is billed as an unscripted clash between a person who is addicted to cosmetically enhancing themselves in some way and a person who is facially disfigured. Phew. In actuality, it’s a poignant portrayal of how the first group of people (wait for it…) aren’t nearly as happy with their appearance as the second group. I must admit that I am currently addicted to “Big Fat Gypsy Wedding,” which bills itself as a “documentary” about the extravagant celebrations of the traveller community in the UK, yet is really about the way that girls in the community are both revered and mistreated. Some of their other (and to me, less appealing) shows include “I Was Bin Laden’s Bodyguard,” “The Joy of Teen Sex” and finally “Booze: A Young Person’s Guide.” Public service indeed!

7. The firm belief shared by all Brits that “if it’s broke, Jamie Oliver can fix it.” Americans remember this guy as the “Naked Chef.” Here in Britain, he’s Rachel Ray, Michelle Obama and Ty Pennington all mixed into one ubiquitous television personality. He’s single-handedly remaking the British school dinner system by removing the sugar and refined flour and adding in veg and whole grains, while whipping up delicious 30 minute dinners in front of TV viewers across the land. He has apparently convinced the British Prime Minister to pledge £280 million to improve school dinners in the UK, and Morrison’s to devote 75% of every magazine rack to his publications. His shows include (and this is not an exhaustive list…) Jamie’s Kitchen, Jamie’s Food Revolution, Jamie Does, Jamie’s American Road Trip, Jamie Cooks Christmas, Jamie Saves Our Bacon, Jamie’s School Dinners, Jamie’s Return to School Dinners…you get the idea. And now, he’s tackling the school system itself with Dream School, a documentary (on Channel 4 of course!) where a handful of teenagers who have just dropped out of high school return to learn from an American-reality-show-worthy collection of figures: Olympic athletes, TV personalities, Simon Callow, and the guy that invented in vitro fertilization.

So, there’s my list…my seven reasons why it’s not too bad to live in Scotland. Now, if they would only start to sell Hidden Valley Ranch instead of all this “salad cream”…

Day Two of Edinburgh

So, where were we?

Ah, yes, in a very noisy hostel. Thankfully, the noise had nothing to do with the Colgate students...unless they speak Polish...

In any case, my memory of the trip picks up again at about 9:09 am on Sunday, when I finally made it downstairs to a cup of coffee. We had ordered a "full Scottish breakfast" for our group and went into the dining room in the hostel together, where we had our choice of eggs, Irish

sausage, Scottish bacon (which is twice as wide as American bacon, for some reason...), grilled tomatoes, and a few various fried products which neither David nor I could ever quite place. The kids stuck to their usual when we're eating out: white bread with several pats of foil-wrapped butter.

The first item on our agenda was the Museum of Scotland. David had arranged, through our pastor in Hamilton, for the group to meet a professor of art history at the University of Edinburgh for a lecture on Celtic art. We entered the museum as a group, but Emma and John and I quickly separated from them and I ushered the kids over to some of the Discovery Zone areas, where they could dress up as Vikings and princesses...assuming that would hold their attention more than Celtic art would. The museum was excellent: on the bottom floors, the exhibits began with the formation of the British Isles through glaciers, volcanoes, and land movement, then covered the Romans and the Picts. Upper floors covered the Stuart monarchs and the Reformers, the whole Bonnie Prince Charlie era, and the "Highland Clearances" (the forced displacement of the Scottish Highlanders to the sea coasts, the lowlands, and other continents like North America). At the top, there were exhibits on the industrial revolution and the tenements of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and several films about Scottish life at the turn of the century, and Scottish communities around the globe. It's a very well done museum, and does a good job of holding the attention of all kinds of audiences, especially kids (and it's full of them for that reason...and because it's free!) Emma was especially taken with the exhibits on the upper floors about life in the tenements, and wanted to stay at the museum long

after the three of us were ready to leave for lunch.

We finally managed to pry her away by promising to take her to see the Greyfriars Bobby statue, which is just across the street. The statue is of a Skye terrier who belonged to an Edinburgh policeman in the 19th century in Edinburgh. When the policeman died of tuberculosis, he was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and the dog apparently sat on his grave for the next 14 years. Rather than serving as an inspiration, though, the statue made both kids start to whine about our dog, who is back home in the States. So, we moved on quickly. Next, we stopped at the nearby Elephant House, which is one of the spots where J.K. Rowling said she wrote some of the early Harry Potter books, overlooking Edinburgh Castle. This fact has apparently made the Elephant House the second most visited site in Edinburgh, judging from the crowd, which made me skeptical that anyone could get anything written here (where would they sit, for one?). A few people were trying to gather inspiration from Rowling, and several were sitting at the window table where she had sat with blank notebooks spread out in front of them, while other people were snapping pictures around them of the castle through the window. One bespectacled pre-teen boy was just wandering around the whole time, his mouth agape, as if he were expecting Ron Weasley pop out from under a table at any moment.

We went against the advice of a few former Edinburgh visitors and had lunch at the cafe, but were pleasantly surprised that the food was pretty good after all. Of course, John was just relieved to have finally found a hot dog, and my panini was a combination of salty meat, melted cheese and a jammy mango concoction, so how can one find fault with that? Emma was displeased that her vegetarian chili contained so many vegetables, but her mood was reversed when we went to the bathroom and she discovered that a list was being formed on the back of the door of visitors who considered themselves part of "Dumbledore's Army." I wordlessly handed her a pen, and just as she added "Emma D." as the 243rd member of the Army, she turned to me said, "You know, I don't usually write on bathroom walls, Mommy..."

After lunch, we walked back up the Royal Mile, and stopped in at the Museum of Childhood, which has five floors devoted to toys from yesteryear. It was a well-done museum too (and also free!), and while Emma had a fabulous time reading through each and every display, the rest of us were nearing the end of our energy supply. David and John retreated to a corner window to play games on his Blackberry (yes, amidst a ROOM full of TOYS!) while Emma painstakingly matched up the dolls from around the world with their country of origin according to the various placards, then rating them on a scale of one to ten on their creepiness. At about four pm, David started to hint that one of the BBC channels might be carrying the Superbowl, so we walked back to the hostel to get our luggage, then to the train station, followed by two very unhappy kids who were desperately recounting the story of the previously promised, yet never delivered upon, post-lunch pastry. Eventually, we made our way back to St. Andrews on a train so packed full of people that that the four of us managed to share one and a half seats for the whole ride home. By the time we got "home" (exclaiming how strange it was to be so relieved to be back to a house that didn't belong to us...), our plans to stay up for the Superbowl had been dashed, and we all went to bed straightaway...an act that David considers so un-American that he’s afraid we’ll have our passports revoked. I assured him that after Christina Aguilera apparently messed up the National Anthem so badly, we’re probably safe!

Day One of our Edinburgh Weekend

We’re just back from a weekend in Edinburgh, and though we are all completely exhausted, we had a fabulous experience. All of the Colgate students arrived safely in the middle of the week last week (just ahead of the big storm and all the flight cancellations, fortunately), and spent the rest of the week going through St. Andrew’s international student orientation. They registered for classes at the end of the week and will begin their regular schedule on Monday. So we took the opportunity to use their first weekend in Scotland as a chance to take our first group trip.

We left on Saturday morning and took the train to Edinburgh. The ride is beautiful, and crosses the Firth of Forth (say that five times fast!) before arriving into the bustling Waverly Station in the middle of town. Our group stayed in the Edinburgh Central Youth Hostel, which was only a six or seven minute walk from the train station (but feels much longer when carrying heavy luggage and managing a seven year old who insists upon digging through it for a third piece of gum), and we went right there to drop off our stuff. As a Midwesterner, I don’t have too much experience with riding trains or staying in youth hostels, so I was a bit wide-eyed at the whole process, but it went quite smoothly (the hostel goofed our reservation and had us all mixed up in various dorms, but we managed to sort it out, with only a bit of rearranging of people and beds, etc…). We then turned the students loose for a few hours, with plans to meet up at the Edinburgh Castle mid-afternoon.

The four of us and six students headed to the Royal Mile, and planned to walk down the hill to begin with a tour of Holyrood Palace, which is the official residence of the monarchy in Scotland. The queen is in residence each summer for a week or two, but since she wasn’t in town, a good bit of the palace is open for tours. The tours are quite well-done, as each visitor picks up a small audio device at the entrance, which are available in various languages, and for various types of visitors. The four of us chose a “family guide” which contains the same kind of information (skipping some of the details about the murder of Mary Queen of Scots personal secretary in her bed chamber, thankfully) but focuses more on the ways in which some of the tapestries or trompe l’oeil were created. Emma was quite taken by the Palace, since she has been reading a few books on Scottish history and knows more about all the various Marys and James than any of us do, but John struggled a bit more with finding something of interest in one empty room after another. I hustled him between the tapestries and the paintings, looking for any war or sword imagery I could find. He was pretty impressed with the king’s bedchamber, though his favorite part of the tour was the courtyard just outside the Abbey, where he could run around in peace and pretend to recoil in horror every time he found another gargoyle.

After the tour, we walked up the Royal Mile, which is incredibly picturesque. I had read various descriptions of the walk in guidebooks and could point out the Cathedral and the Parliament building (Emma’s favorite because it’s incredibly modern). Along the way, we looked down each of the alleys, called closes, which illustrate how the city was built right on top of itself over the centuries, until it was so overcrowded with people that everyone pretty much moved out and build a new town a few blocks away. Now, the Royal Mile is in an area referred to as “Old Town” while “New Town” is to the side of the castle, though many of its buildings date to the early nineteenth century. As a result, Old Town does attract a bigger share of tourists, and in between some of the historic sites are plenty of shops selling rugby wear, cashmere, tartan and kid size Highlander getup. Though it’s winter and not officially the tourist season yet, there were also a few street artists and people advertising one of the various ghost tours that are offered in the closes. It was certainly bustling, and made for a fun afternoon walk (except for David, who had to walk up the hill with John on his back…).

We met the students for a tour of Edinburgh Castle at 3:30. The castle is built on volcanic rock, and has been the site of various military attacks over the years, as well as a royal residence. It dominated the skyline of the city, and is its most distinctive feature (and it’s the most visited site in Scotland). It’s really more of a fortress, than a castle, and a few of the buildings in the complex date to the 12^th century. The Scottish crown jewels (crown, sword and scepter) are kept there, which are also called the “honours” and were used in the coronation of kings and queens from Mary Queen of Scots to Charles II. The Stone of Destiny is there as well, and though it was interesting to see them (between the heads of the rows and rows of tourists in front of us, naturally…) I was a little disappointed that the display didn’t include more information about the Stone. Most of what I know about the stone comes from Emma’s school books (as does pretty much everything else I know about Scottish history at this point…), but the stories include

details about how the stone was taken by Edward I from Scotland to Westminster Abbey and used for coronations (sometimes incorrectly, according to some sources), how it was part of a terrorist attack in the 1920s and a theft by a group of Scottish students in the 1950s, and how it’s still considered by some to be a fake (with the real stone still safely hidden in Perth, just up the road from us.) In any case, our tour of the castle was well-done, though most of the students were freezing at this point in the afternoon and hopping up and down to keep warm. Emma and John had a great time in the castle (Emma loved the little cemetery just below St. Margaret’s chapel that was for the dogs of various military officers, and John never got past all the big cannons lining the fortress walls) but were also more than ready to go after the tour, so we left the castle and went into a café before dinner for hot chocolate and scones. This, of course, is the part of the trip about which they are still talking!

Our whole group had dinner out together, at a North African and French restaurant called La Maison Bleue that was just off the Royal Mile and near the castle. Previous study groups had gone there before and loved it, so we went with the known. The restaurant was in a beautifully restored building on Victoria Street, which is a steeply sloping cobblestone street, and our group took up most of the top floor. David and I had been in touch with the owner a few times, so he came up to meet us, and while he had put together a menu for the students which included starters like calamari, haggis tempura or mussels in white wine and ginger, and mains like steak au poivre, venison, and duck confit, he made some grilled camembert toast and pommes frites for the kids. He also put on a big show of shaking John’s hand and pretending that John’s grip had done some serious damage, which John found mildly amusing (though after he left, John whispered, “There, I shook his hand, NOW can we go back to the dorm?”). The meal was fantastic (though, really, what meal served among medieval walls in candlelight by a charming Frenchman isn’t?) and Emma was flattered that one of the students was asking her all kinds of questions about how she was finding school. By the end of the meal, though, both kids looked completely deflated, so we walked back through Old Town and down the hill again to the hostel for an early bedtime…or at least early by Edinburgh standards!

The Weather Report

Yesterday, I had an appointment at a hair salon to get a trim. I figured I would start with a quick haircut to see if I liked the place that had been recommended by previous study group directors, and then make a later appointment for highlights. So I showed up and met Addy the salon owner, sat in her chair and explained in great detail what I wanted: an inch or so off the overall length, long layers on the top, maybe a little bit shorter on the bangs but not too short as I wear very long bangs, if any at all. I tried to say in as many ways as possible that I wanted to make sure it was long enough everywhere to be worn in a ponytail when I go for a run. She studied me as I explained, saying nothing. When I finally stopped talking, she nodded her head and said, “Okay, ya joost want a wee fringe then?” I shrugged and nodded, wondering what a “fringe” could possibly mean. She, of course, proceeded to give me the exact same haircut that she and the other three women in the salon had, which in no way resembled what I had asked for. It turns out that the “fringe” is not a bad haircut—just not what I would want if I had a say. Which, apparently I do not. And since two of them had pink hair, I was just grateful that I decided to hold off on the highlights! And, incidentally, a “fringe” includes very short bangs, which will certainly not make it into a ponytail.

As always, going to the salon is not just an opportunity to get a haircut—it’s also a chance to learn a lot about a community. This trip was no different. I learned that none of the women lived in St. Andrews as none of them could afford it. They all lived in Cupar, which is about nine miles inland. They, like most Scots, spent a lot of time talking about the weather, and one of them was convinced that it was especially windy that day because of the cyclone in Australia (I doubt it!). They had heard that a big snowstorm had hit “America” (very few people here use the term “United States” for some reason), and one of them commented on how much more dramatic the weather was in America than it was here. They are right, of course, and I still think it’s strange that the BBC weather reports cover the whole country, and that the whole country has pretty much the same weather forecast every day (that includes England, Wales, Scotland and northern Ireland, of course). It’s often a few degrees warmer on the east side of the country than on the west, or a bit colder in the very northernmost Scottish islands than it is in the south of England, but for the most part, it’s the same. A forecast for London is pretty applicable in most of Scotland too. And it’s usually the same forecast day after day as well…a little fog, a little cloud, a little sun and a little rain—all wrapped into one day. After watching it for a few weeks, I started to wonder why they even have a weather report at all here!

Only one of the women had been to America before, and said “I drove through for about an hour one time.” I asked how on earth one manages to drive through the US for only an hour, but she said she had been to a conference in Canada and a group of the conference goers wanted to see the country so they crossed the border and drove around a bit. After an hour of driving, though, they all decided that it was terrible— and terribly unsafe— and returned to Canada as soon as possible. I was quite surprised, as I assumed she was near Toronto for a conference, and was either driving through Niagara Falls or Alexandria Bay in New York State, both of which are quite nice (or at least I think so!). I asked and she said, “I think the name of the town was Flint, maybe? Have you heard of it?” “Aha,” I said, then added, “you know, that part of the country has kind of suffered in recent years from substantial economic decline. It’s a pretty big country, after all, and not all of it is like Flint.” She nodded, but said nothing, and it was pretty clear that she wasn’t buying it!

It’s always interesting to me to hear what Brits think of the U.S. when we meet. When we first arrived, we told people we were from “New York,” but quickly learned that they all naturally assume we’re from the city when we say that. Then we started to say “New York State…but not New York City,” which then makes them think we live by Niagara Falls. The other day, I told someone I lived in the middle of New York State, about four hours from the city and four hours from Niagara Falls. He was quite surprised by this, and said he had no idea the state was that large. I think that in one way the British know that the US is a huge country, but in another way, don’t understand that at all. They may know that we have a few states that are larger than their entire country, yet they are surprised when they hear about driving distances—that it would take about 40 hours of straight driving to get to California from New York. Imagine how surprised the women in the salon would be to see that in the US, weather reports aren’t given for the whole country—they can’t even be given for one whole state!

Lunch in St. Andrews

Yesterday, David and I walked into town for lunch at one of the student spots that we have been reading about in the various guides that we found in the house. The St. Andrews students are still “on holiday” so the town is a bit quieter than normal, and we decided to take the chance to enjoy lunch in one of the tiny, tiny sandwich shops when they weren’t packed elbow-to-elbow with students. We chose Cherries on South Street, which is one of the larger ones as it actually has two tables inside, and each table has four seats. There’s also a strip of cork mounted about table-height in front of the window that can serve as another table in a pinch, and that’s where we sat.

There was a queue of customers out the door the whole time we were there, and most of them were holding big wicker baskets full of drinks and disposable silverware, so I assumed they were probably the unlucky mates who drew sandwich-gathering duty for their office that day. The sandwiches at Cherries are excellent, and it looks as if the word has gotten out. There’s a big board on the wall that lists all the things you can put in a sandwich, and though I was prepared for some strange combinations (given the ubiquitousness of the baked potato topped with tuna and corn here…), most of the sandwiches sounded quite good. There was the turkey with cranberries and brie cheese, the ham with Swiss and chutney, the smoked salmon with capers and cream cheese…all quite straightforward and yummy sounding. I chose a less yummy sounding prawn, avocado and rocket (shrimp with avocado and arugula) baguette. The sandwich maker thankfully asked if I wanted butter on the bread before he started, so I had a chance to say no, as most sandwiches in the UK just come standard with a healthy spread of butter and thick slices of cucumber. David fared less well in the sandwich-ordering process, and ended up with chunks of ham, grated cheese and dried apricots between two slices of bread. But…no butter! We took a pass on the Irn Bru, but did pick out a bag of crisps to share and went with the Honey Roast Ham and Cranberry flavor (among our other options were Ludlow Sausage, Beef and Horseradish, or Turkey and Chestnut Stuffing…essentially a Thanksgiving dinner wrapped up in a foil bag!)

After lunch, we took a walk through town and stopped in a few of the charity shops that are everywhere in town. Most of them are filled with glassware, men’s shoes and cassette tapes of REO Speedwagon…things you would find in your parents’ basements. They are definitely worth a stop, however, because there is the treasure-hunt aspect to them—the possibility that you’ll find something you never really knew you needed for an incredibly small amount of money. I ended up with a necklace for £2 and David bought a kids DVD that won’t play on any DVD machines except those sold in the UK (and our house has only a VCR player, by the way...). We also went into a fabulous shop that pledges to outfit you in head-to-toe lightweight, packable, waterproof yet breathable, hi-tech syntheticwear…I’m not kidding when I say their slogan is actually something like, “Technology masquerading as clothing.” No mention of the flammability rating anywhere in the store, however.

Finally we ended up in possibly the world’s most fabulous housewares store. Most of its fabulousness, of course, was related to its Britishness. If you can only say one thing about these Brits, it’s this: they really do know how to go about creating a good hot beverage, and they have thoroughly thought through the entire coffee and tea-making process to enhance it with various fabulous products at every step. There’s the electric tea kettle found in every home, school and hair salon used to almost instantly boil water (everyone knows that the water cannot be merely HEATED…the horror!), the tea balls that hold the tea at the bottom of a proper ceramic tea kettle, to which you would add the water (NEVER the other way around!), the little ceramic trivet that protects your kitchen counter from the hot tea kettle, and the padded tea cozies that go over and around the full kettle of tea once it’s made to keep it hot. And for coffee, there’s the full-size coffee press (I learned the hard way that those are NOT called French presses here…), the mini-size coffee press, the to-go-travel-mug-coffee-press. The store was filled with hot beverage making implements, and I spent about 20 minutes browsing through all of them, thinking about how ironic it was that three weeks ago when we arrived and I saw some of these things on the counter of our new kitchen, I couldn’t imagine how we were supposed to use them. And yet now I can’t imagine a proper kitchen without any of them!

More on Driving (or "Moron Driving" in my case...)

Out of necessity and a bit of practice, I may have finally mastered the art of driving in Scotland. I do say “art” rather than “science” on purpose, of course, because several rules of the road do seem to be a bit subjective here. The rules regarding the roundabout seem to be set in stone—one yields to anyone coming from the right. There are a few instances where this seems counterintuitive, of course, such as the situation where you come upon a very small roundabout in the middle of the road and intend to go straight, and just a split second ahead of you, someone comes upon the same roundabout headed in the opposite direction and wants to turn right. That person, being on your right in the roundabout, would officially have the right of way, and would therefore turn right in front of you. That definitely seems odd the first few times it happens (and certainly the first few times you have to turn in front of oncoming traffic!) but it seems to work just fine.

It has taken a few weeks for me to get completely comfortable, of course, and at first I would only drive if one of the kids would promise to sit in the front passenger seat and chant “Stay to the left, mommy, stay to the left.” I was convinced early on that rental car companies in the UK should only be permitted to give cars to Americans after they had preset all the radio stations to classical music and issued a prescription for Xanax along with the rental papers. To me, it was ironic that, in my first few days of driving, about 10% of the other cars I saw on the road had some sort of “School of Motoring “placard on the roof or door and were filled with young native Brits who understood perfectly well the rules of the road here and yet hadn’t been licensed, while I was careening about like a passenger on “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” having no idea what any of the cryptic street signs meant!

Now, though, I feel as if I have cracked the code. In doing so, I realize that the code itself is sometimes completely baffling. For instance, it seems at first to be a hard and fast rule that one drives on the left. And yet, the roads here are so narrow in spots (and almost always lined with either a hedge or a stone wall…or both!) that drivers often have to stay all the way to the right to get around parked cars. In fact, there are several roads in St. Andrews that are essentially one lane—only wide enough for one car at a time. These types of roads seem to be governed by their own “you-then-me” policy, as long as they are short enough to allow one driver to see that another is oncoming at the other end in time to prevent a “head-on crack-up.” There’s actually one spot near the harbor where you enter a medieval-era “toll booth” (now, obviously, not used to collect taxes…) that was apparently constructed to allow a horse and rider to pass through and not much more, and drive through it on a road not much wider than a car for about 20 yards, then make a sharp left just on the other side, drive for about another hundred yards, then a sharp right. It’s (incredibly) not a one-way street and I have no idea how oncoming cars (who cannot see each other) would ever be able to get around each other if they met in the middle, nor how anyone would back up out of it. So, for the time being, I’m going to deal with that part of driving in the town in one way: complete avoidance!

So, the rules for driving are sort of easy to understand, but the rules for parking, however, are quite different, and in fact, I have yet to figure out if there are any parking rules at all! Some people park on the left, headed in the same direction as traffic, while others cross traffic to park on the right. Some people put one side of the car up on the “pavements” while others park their cars snug to the curb (and yet others seem to just stop in the middle of lane and leave the car there with a “right, then…good enough, eh?”). Since the roads are so narrow to begin with, a parked car tends to clog up traffic a bit, and most drivers will slow way down before going around a parked car, or stop completely and wait for oncoming traffic to clear before going around. I do say “most drivers” because there are still several who will just swerve into oncoming traffic anyway to get around the parked car. When this happens, I can’t help but instinctively jump and pull in my shoulders and elbows—as if that will retract my side-view mirrors, which are undoubtedly about to get clipped…)

I am proud of myself that I have figured out driving for the most part. I’m sure I’m still driving much more slowly that most drivers and taking too much time in the roundabouts, but I figure that I’m not too worried about what other drivers think. They probably just shrug and assume I’m a “pensioner” who won’t be out on the roads much longer. Now, if only I could stop signaling my ineptitude to my fellow drivers by CONSISTENTLY getting in the car on the left, realizing there is no steering wheel there, getting out and walking AROUND the car to get back in on the right.