MOVING

home is home is home

WE ARE MOVING! I've never like ACTUALLY moved ~permanently~ in my entire life. I did the live-at-college thing and moved around 3 or 4 times there, but I've always had the same home base. The past few weeks I've been reminiscing on living here and I know that I'll miss seeing the familiar things - places where old friends used to live, people I know walking along the streets, old jobs and hangout spots.. the comfort and familiarity of this place is something I never considered that I would miss before I knew I'd be leaving for sure. Don't know what you've got until it's gone! All that being said, I am really excited to build bridges and make new memories in brand new places. It's all so exciting! And in the end, I'm just adding one more place in the list to call home.

FLORIDA

Ginny and all her kids (YEAH)

I'm in Florida this week! My parents and I drove down from Iowa and stopped in Tupelo, Mississippi overnight. Ben flew in from California (could you imagine THAT drive?! no thanks) and we picked him up at the Pensacola airport and then drove to Seacrest, where some of our family own houses. It's been crazy hot down here but so so good to be around family.

My great aunt's birthday was at the beginning of this week, which is why we came here! She is officially....drum roll please...90 YEARS OLD NOW. Her name is Ginny, full name Virginia May (Mae?) Wirka, and she is one of the most delightful people I know. The amazing thing is that anyone who knows her will tell you that. And damn, she's 90. That's a lot of time to piss people off, yknow? I've been sick a lot of this week and have just stayed inside a lot, sleeping, but it's been so fun to see people when I can. I'm so glad I was able to come down here and see everyone. Feeling very lucky and privileged. Here's to living a life as full of love and fun as Ginny!

December 30, day 9

splendid

savory pies

Today we slept in and took it really easy. Our one planned thing to do today was to go to Sapporo Teppanyaki which is sooo good. We went to go get some brunch and found our landlord upstairs, she was getting the room across from us ready for a new tenant but also the front door had been strangely locked. She had to wait at the front door to see if anyone was coming in or going out to let people through and said she hadn't had any food yet today other than a banana hours and hours ago. We got her a sandwich while we were getting food - cereal and fries. After eating and watching some TV, we practiced some Ceilidh dancing. Darren is a good dancing teacher! There are a ton of different dances and a lot of them involve spinning. I'm excited for tomorrow night, our ceilidh dance / hogmanay / new years party! After we practiced dancing, I worked out and then we got ready for dinner.

delayed trains

At the restaurant, we were seated with a family that was ginger and celebrating Christmas still. We both ordered chicken teriyaki and it was so good. I've been wanting sushi for so long and Darren likes it too, so we ordered a roll that had a variety of them but they all had "flying fish roe" on them and we're pretty sure that's fish eggs. I wasn't really happy with the sushi and neither was Darren so we're planning on getting sushi from a shop around the corner before everything closes tomorrow for New Year's Eve! I can't wait for NYE!

model boy

December 29, day 8

Scott Monument with the fair 

We decided that today would be Edinburgh day, with the main goals of eating at Mary's Milk Bar and walking through Christmas markets. We meant to get up at 915 but ended up sleeping through it until about 950. We stayed up late last night watching a movie called The Scandalous Lady W. It's a tough movie to watch at times but also so good - the main character is Natalie Dormer. Anyway we ended up getting to Edinburgh and started walking through the markets. There were big amusement park rides scattered through the market and it was a lot of fun. We got a cheeseburger and chips for lunch and the guy didn't charge us... So later we also got mulled cider (way too sickly sweet) and sort of disappointing fudge.

After eating and getting cider (we were charged £2 extra to be served it in a little Edinburgh markets mug, we were refunded £2 when we returned the mug) we went into the Scottish National Galleries. Not sure if that's the actual name but it was fun to walk through. Lots of different styles of art, and the Scottish art they had was sort of impressionistic with muted colors. I'm glad that Darren enjoys going through museums too.

I got a polish brat after the museum and we went up the Scott Monument. The stairs are incredibly narrow and steep. If you came across someone going the other way in the stairs, you had to squeeze by them or wait until they did. It was scary since I don't like small enclosed spaces or heights but I still enjoyed it. The views were fabulous and it was sort of fun to struggle in the stairs haha. 

disappointing fudge

Since I was still full from the sausage I'd eaten, we didn't go to the ice cream place yet. We went to another Christmas market and I bought two red rings. One is sort of tear drop shaped with a ruby and the other has a thinner band with dyed red turquoise. I loved both and couldn't decide which I wanted so I just got both, they were a good price. After walking around there for a bit more, we sought out Marys Milk Bar. It always seems like it's in a weird part of town and we ALWAYS get lost trying to find it AND leaving from it. Mary's must be cursed but it's SO worth it. Darren got milk flavored along with tea and crumpets (he said his tastebuds were confused because of how much it tasted like hot tea) and I got peanut & cinnamon with dark chocolate. I love Mary's and would get it so often if it was by me. Such a cute little indie retro place. 

We searched for a bar Darren found online after Mary's but after looking for maybe an hour or hour and a half we gave up and went down another street closer to the station. Every single pub was completely full. Eventually we went back to the start of the street and found one table open so we sat and both had some strongbow before going to the train. While waiting for the train, a woman pushed in front of us and ran in the car before us. We still got the best seats. 

got somebody to take a photo of us in the monument

We are about to go to dinner at Tony Macaroni's with Darren's family to celebrate his moms birthday, which was the 26th. We didn't go out that first night because it didn't work out with everyone's schedule but now it seems like they're all catching something! I'm glad that we're not staying with them because of that but otherwise it would have been fun to see them more. Can't wait to eat some Italian food!

Day 4, 5, 6, 7!

Christmas at the Campbell's!

deer friends

We had a really chill Christmas and basically slept in really late, opened presents, went over to Darren's, opened more presents, ate, and watched TV. I also got to Skype my parents! Such a good Christmas!

The day after was Boxing Day and it was pretty much the same as Christmas, everything goes on sale though so we went out and looked around at shops. Boxing Day is also Darren's mom's birthday so we went back to their house for dinner. Christine opened presents, we had chinese food, and watched a TV quiz gameshow. It's been great to get to hang out with Darren's family more, I really like them.

The 27th we walked to town for the first time and it took about 15 minutes. We got some donuts from Gregg's and walked around city center until lunch at Topolobamba. We decided to go there because they had margaritas and it was a good choice! They forgot Darren's food so they gave it to us for free. YAaaaa free food! We both got burritos, but I got a veggie and he got chicken. Since mine came first I shared it with him, we decided that would've been enough to eat for the both of us...but we had the other free burrito coming too so we ate way too much. We also had to order chips and queso (gasp) but they were worth it! We walked around town more afterwards. That night we went to an American place for dinner and had burgers. The waiter was from North Carolina so we talked a little bit about America. His mom is Scottish so he could get a UK passport and now he's just decided to live here. Darren's sister said something like "you guys like your restaurants" and I was like yeah I guess, but actually we really do just plan our day around eating.

Today was completely a lazy day. We slept in (jetlag is so tough seriously), looked around our neighborhood, walked to town, got fries for lunch at Whetherspoon's, looked at more shops, came back on the train, and made pasta for dinner. There are a few cats here and as Darren was taking the pasta dishes back up, he told me that they were outside our room. I went out and accidentally shut the door...the door locked behind me. I was only wearing a hoodie and shorts because I was doing laundry, Darren texted our landlord and she said that she had a bucket of keys in the living room. I went up and got the bucket of keys and another guy came out of the kitchen to tell us that he had gotten locked out of his room, too. I split the keys with him and went downstairs to try to find ours. It only took a few minutes but the cat tried to play with the keys a few times and knocked the modem down. Whoops. I brought the keys back up to the other guy and he kept struggling with them. I'm sure he got in to his room by now, haha.

Christmas Eve (Day 3)

eatin' cereal caught offguard

Today we woke up again at 11. I'm thinking this is going to be a normal thing, to sleep in. I mentioned to Darren that we should wake up earlier and he goes, why?! it's break! Haha teacher life. We have been having trouble locking our door so today when we left we locked it and couldn't open it. The woman who is renting the rooms came down and asked us if we had a window open that she could go through to open our door... Nope. We were about to go get some breakfast from the grocery store anyway so we just left in hopes that they'd figure out our door by the time we came back. 

pup loves butt scratches

werkin'

At Tesco we bought cereal & cookie ingredients! I wanted to make cookies for Darren's moms birthday, which is the 26th. We decided on chocolate chip cookies but while we were shopping we couldn't find any chocolate chips. I found some buttons, which are fairly big discs of chocolate, and decided we'll just chop up those for chips. Another thing that we couldn't find at Tesco or Sainburys was baking soda! Instead we found something called bicarbonate of soda which I made Darren Google. Google said that's the same thing so we went ahead with it and went back to eat our cereal. While we were at Sainsburys we got a call that our door was opened finally and that they had actually given us the wrong key for our door. When we got back to the flat we found out they hadn't given us the house key to hold on to, so we were locked out. Thankfully we knocked and the landlord was in, she let us in and apologized profusely. We ate our cereal and then I worked out while Darren worked. After my shower I came out and Darren was still working so I fell asleep for a while. After a while it was an acceptable time for dinner so we went upstairs to make cheese quesadillas. There were new people staying at our place, an older couple with a service dog. The dog was panting so hard and the guy who owned it wasn't quite sure what to say to us other than they'd just come from West Jersey and up from Liverpool that day. We wondered if it was USA Jersey or UK Jersey... We'll never know.

quesadillas and tattoo shows

penne and paper crowns

We started watching a show about coverup tattoos and then went out to a Christmas market that was from 11 am - 6 pm. It was about 5 when we walked in and everything was shut down already. Whoops. We hung out in the area and decided to get Italian for dinner. After dinner we walked around and decided to come back after the weather started getting worse. James and the Giant Peach was an option for movies on our TV so we watched that and went to sleep.

breathing heavy

Day2 Scotland

wrapping diligently

square selfie

Today we slept in until about 11 (whoops) since I couldn't sleep during the night. We went to a place called Old Salty's that said it was a traditional chippy shop that serves breakfast all day. We both got full Scottish breakfasts, but Darren got the traditional one and I got the veggie one. I don't like black pudding and the traditional one has it.

After we ate, we went back to the Campbell's house and wrapped presents for a while, generally just chilled out. I could have definitely fallen asleep... Darren's dad drove us back to our flat so we could drop some stuff off and then we went to the Merchant Square area to look for a Christmas market that was advertised online. After going where the map told us and walking all around the area without seeing it, we decided to just go to George Square. George Square has a ton of decorations and fair rides up like a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and one of those swing things that fling you around. They also set up an ice rink! The perimeter of the square was lined from above with lines of lights shaped as bells and mistletoe and there were loads of strings of lights everywhere. It was so festive and we were glad to see something after not finding the first market. We got some selfies by a huge tree - I saw a family struggling to take a selfie so I offered to take one for them if they'd take a photo for us and they said no...hahaha awkward. They kept struggling for a few minutes after I'd asked. Later a younger couple asked us if we'd take a photo of them so we switched with them.

After walking around the fair, we were on the search for food. We walked down a street as it was raining, saw a mall, and decided to see if there was a food court (also to just get out of the rain. ugh). After not finding a food court we emerged from the mall, still hungry but a bit more dry and warm than before. We saw a sign for a buffet that was 12 pounds per person and just down the street so we decided to go there. Both of us ate way too much and almost immediately regretted it. We came back to the flat afterwards and I've done some work but we've mostly been vegging because of our food babies. It's 9 pm so we won't go out again today but we have a HUGE tv in our room, a living room upstairs, and a few shelves of books...plus wifi (hallelujah for wifi).

skating rink in Georges Square

Non-selfie