Birthday and the rest of the week

Forgive me for not writing for the past week.  Last Monday, July 21st, was my birthday.  It was my first birthday as a married woman!  And Rupert did a wonderful 

job.  I had breakfast in bed and a wonderful trip to St. Andrews.  St. Andrews is known for several things... 1. the University (where Prince William and Rupert's sister Victoria went) 2. The golf course that is often the site of the British Open 3. The beach where Chariots of Fire was filmed and

 4. The city where the Scottish Reformation started.  Interestingly enough, the foremost opponent of the Scottish Reformation was a man by the name of Cardinal Beaton!  This man ordered the execution of numbers of 

protestants and even had John Knox jailed as a galley slave.  

What a wonderful heritage I have!  Haha!  But it's fun to think that (possibly) one of this man's relatives has come back as exactly the kind of person he would have executed!

Well, anyway, this past week has been full of more gardening, cleaning, organizing, and spending time with people from the church.  Nothing too exciting has happened... well, other than getting a FANTASTIC  coffee maker.  Yay!  

Ok, well here are some pics from St. Andrews.  When something more thrilling occurs, I'll be sure to let you know!

Traditional Scottish Games

Sometime, back in 450AD, a 

Scotsman came upon a stone and thought, "I wonder how far I could throw this... I bet I could throw it farther than Angus!"  So he called his buddy Angus over and said, "Angus, what would you give me if I could throw this stone farther than you?"  And of course Angus replied, "There's no way you could throw this stone farther than me!  Ha! 

 I'll bet you my best cow!"  But of course no good Scotsman is sufficed by the competition in something so silly as stone throwing.  Next came throwing a hammer.  Then a tree.  But it didn't stop there.  They wrestled, raced each other, tried to pull each other over a line, all to prove the manliness of one Scotsman to another.  

Ah, but today we are civilized.  Today a Scotsman has more sophisticated means of displaying his manly achievements.  What do they do today?  They compete... for a trophy instead of a cow.

Rupert took me to my first-ever highland games on Saturday.  I had a blast and of course had to share it with you all!

Settling in

There have been a lot of blessings these last two days.  I am in a waiting period.  I am (was) waiting for our marriage license so I can apply for my marriage visa.  For those who don't know, I arrived here in May on a fiance visa.  It is a six month visa that allows me basically to live and get married.  Now that we are married (yay!) I can apply for a "Further Leave to Remain due to Marriage" visa.  This grants me another two years here in the country and the ability to study and to work.  But until I have said visa in my hands, I am chillin at home.  Not much to do except clean, cook, decorate, write thank you notes (which I really need to get cracking on...), and garden.  A regular miss suzy homemaker.  And for those who know me quite well... the idea of this might be a bit ludicrous!  But here I am, doing the house wife thing; and learning to love the idea that I can make things at home comfortable so I can relax with Rup when he gets home from work.  (Rupert's work will have to work for another post)

Anyway, I digress.  I was going to tell you about the blessings!  On Wednesday, I received a phone call from our church office with them asking if I could come in for a bit to help out.  And then I had lunch with a new friend Caroline.  She will be marrying Kieran (the photographer from our wedding and one of Rup's best friends) in December.  So of course we chatted about weddings.  Continuing on in the blessings, yesterday our marriage license arrived.  Now I can apply for the marriage visa.  Please pray that it goes smoothly as we both would like me to be working, and soon.  Yesterday morning I eagerly awaited the arrival of (drum roll please) my shipment from the States.  I now have all of my worldly goods (minus three boxes remaining at mom and dad's) with me.  Which provides another means of entertainment as I organize them all.  All of these things are helping me to settle in here.

 

    This picture is just to remind me of the beauty of Corsica.  Currently I'm looking out my window at the picture of a typical balmy Glasgow day (60 degree and rain).  I love this city! :)

But their wives do!

As my husband and I basked in the warm Mediterranean sun on our honeymoon (which, by the way, was only a week and a half ago), I decided to broach the subject of a blog.  This was a delicate thing to discuss with my husband as I had quite an idea of how he was going to respond.  Here I am, your stereotypical military-brat american girl.  And there he is, your posh, boarding school englishman.  So any subject of online journaling, I knew, was going to be a bit tricky.  

You see, just the other day we had a "discussion" of what kind of bread to buy with our hotdogs for a cookout.  I, of course, went straight to the traditional white bun that any good ol' american would.  My husband's (at that time my fiance) face turned whiter than the bread itself, aghast at the idea that I would choose anything so refined, so disgusting, that would "sit like a rock in the pit of your stomach."  He himself went for the heaviest, nuttiest, how-many-grains-can-we-fit-into-a-loaf bread.  

So you see, there's a bit of difference in taste at times.   And I had a funny feeling that this was going to be one of those times.  I was completely justified in my feeling.  His response to my question, "honey, what would you think of me starting an online blog, so my family and friends can keep up with our happenings and see pictures and stuff" (you can tell I was quite eloquent in my request...) was a mere look of disbelief/you've-got-to-be-kidding-me/oh no.  

I quickly changed tactics and asked him if he had a blog, what would he name it?  Something witty, something ironic, something rupert-ish.  And thus came about the name for this blog: Englishmen don't blog.  It took me quite a while to get used to the idea of it... but I feel now like it is the perfect name for this American/British couple who can't agree on what kind of bread to buy.  (We have solved that problem now by making our own bread... praise the Lord for bread machines!)

So, this blog is for friends and family who wish to take a peek into our daily lives here in Glasgow as we figure out what in the world is in store for us.  Thankfully God knows that, and at this point, that is a major point of comfort for us!  

Goodbye for now... we'll talk again soon!