Things are really starting to move here at Dalkeith house. I can’t believe how quickly the time flies. The weather here in Scotland has certainly been keeping us on our toes. I remember telling Drew that it rarely snows in Scotland and, when it does, it doesn’t actually stay on the ground long before melting. Apparently, I was wrong. This winter has been the snowiest UK winter in the last 23 years. I was watching the news and they were reporting on the snowstorms…the UK is definitely not used to this much snow and it’s evident in the fact that there have been over 50,000 calls into law enforcement agencies to report people throwing snowballs! Also, the UK has run out of salt for the roadways so it has been forced to dip into the salt supply at the table salt company, British Salt. The snow has cleared up now, except for on the hilltops, and the temperature has actually started to rise. We’ll see how long it lasts but we’re enjoying it for now! This past Friday we had our first house trip with the students. We spent the day in St. Andrews which is one of my favorite places in the whole world. St. Andrews is notoriously windy but, amazingly enough, we were blessed with a sunny, calm and warm day. On a personal level it was a great day…Drew and I had fun climbing the 158 spiral steps to the top of Rules Tower at St. Andrews Cathedral and climbing through the abandoned mines of St. Andrews Castle. We also spent some time at the Old Course but mainly we spent our day on the shores of the North Sea, either rock climbing or just relaxing. On a professional level the day was also a success. It was my first official trip with the students and they all enjoyed themselves a great deal. It was so rewarding to hear how much fun they had and I was happy that they enjoyed St. Andrews as much as I do.
On Saturday Drew and I got out of the house and enjoyed the day together. It was a nice, relaxed evening in Edinburgh and we went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which just came out here. As we waited for the last bus back to Dalkeith from Edinburgh we were greeted by a large group of lively students from the program who were out celebrating Saturday night in their own way. Needless to say our bus ride back was full of entertainment! What a romantic Valentine’s Day…
Drew and I got our first extended weekend (at the end of February) booked and we are pretty excited about it. We’re going to Sweden (where our hostel is a boat!) and Denmark but you’ll hear all about that when we get back.
Drew and I are taking cooking classes here at the house. Last week we made shortbread and bannocks, last night we made pastry and sponge cake and next week we’ll move on to casseroles and stews. We definitely get a lot of food out of the deal (we made four pies last night) so I imagine we’ll become pretty popular around the house because we’ve been giving most of it away. It has been fun so far but Drew is definitely threatened by my presence in the kitchen. My pies turned out much nicer than Drew’s which is unfortunate for him as he has enjoyed the last few years of endlessly picking on my less than stellar kitchen skills. As for me, I’ll celebrate my kitchen victories when I can and blog about it so the whole world can know!!!
Tonight I’ll be heading in to Edinburgh to see the Vagina Monologues with some students from the program. I’ve heard good reviews of the show so I’m excited to see it. I invited Drew to attend with us and the suggestion alone was too disturbing…he will be doing something manly tonight!
Well, that’s it for now, hope everything is going well back in the states…we miss you all!
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