One Week to Go...

Though we haven't yet finished unpacking from Paris, we have started the long and arduous process of sorting through all of our things here in the house, figuring out what belongs to us and what belongs to the house, in preparation for packing it all up and sending it back to the States. We learned yesterday that, while checking one bag in excess of our baggage allowance on Continental Airlines will run us $200 PER BAG (after paying for the bags we are "allowed" of course!), we can actually ship some things of our own much more cheaply. We already have to pay to ship David's boxes of books back, and so if we add two more boxes to the shipment (especially light boxes) it only adds about 20 pounds to the overall fee. So now I'm trying to figure out what we'll bring back with us, and what we can afford to live without for a few weeks as they take a slow shipping boat across the Atlantic.

We're also packing suitcases again for one last weekend trip. We'll take a ferry to the Isle of Mull on the western coast of Scotland, then will drive across Mull and leave our car, then take another ferry to the Isle of Iona, where we'll stay for a few days. I have seriously questioned the wisdom of taking yet another weekend away when we have so much to do here, but I also see the value in getting out of this disaster of a house, and just leaving it all for the last 48 hours, when I'll just stay up as late as I need to in order to get it all into bags and boxes in time for our departure next Friday morning.

As our last few days in St. Andrews wind down, we're taking advantage of being here as much as possible. Yesterday we took the kids to the beach so they could play on the rocks they love, which overlook the town and the first tee of the Old Course. It's a lovely spot, and they were content to stay for over an hour just scrambling up and down the rocks, and poking the various organisms in the rock pools with sticks, while David and I sat on benches and read. It's certainly high on my list of places I will miss greatly when we leave, along with the Lade Braes, South Street in town, the sea wall along the harbour, St. Rule's tower...

But I have decided that I'm not going to think about what I'm going to miss about St. Andrews in the next few days. Instead, I'll make myself feel better by starting a list of things I will be more than happy to leave! First on the list is the necessity of talking on the phone to people who speak with a thick Scottish accent. I really, really struggle to understand them without seeing them and using their gestures or expressions or surroundings as context. Every time the phone rings, I hope it's just a telemarketer, and not the school secretary or the woman from the car rental company or someone else who will begin by asking, as they always do here to start a phone call, "Is that Mrs. Dudrick then?" I am also greatly looking forward to never, never seeing again the menacing face of the next door neighbor, "Miss Manners," glaring out her window at us to make sure that our feet don't brush against any blades of grass on her lawn. David jokes that, as we drive away for the last time, he's going to drive right across her lawn and burn out a huge patch of her grass by spinning the tires, then shouting, "Oh, so sorry! We didn't want to walk on the lawn!" And I certainly won't miss the fact that the sun comes up at about 3:15 in the morning here, and yet every morning what wakes me up is not that, but the sound of gunshot coming from the sheep farm down the road. And that's all I'll say about that!