Just Another Rainy Wednesday

Well, as suggested in the title of this post, the weather still hasn't improved.  I have been here two weeks now and every day has been rainy and windy with patches of sunshine where one quickly gets up the courage to venture outdoors before the next downpour.  But despite the misery that is Scottish weather, I have been really enjoying myself.  It has been a really relaxing week.  I worked Friday night as a waitress and won't work again until tomorrow when I am back on maid service.  But I enjoy waitressing, I am good at memorizing orders and am fast learning how to use the cash register's weird system.  Plus, talking with the customers is usually enjoyable.  And the people in the public bar are REALLY friendly.  I have been complimented by several men and one man went so far as to say that I was the sexiest woman he had ever seen.  To which I promptly asked him what his wife sitting next to him thought of that, but he was lucky and she just laughed.  So, it's not too bad.  However, maid service is just so boring.  We clean bathroom after bathroom and bedroom after bedroom before vacuuming and dusting the entire building.  So it's like Saturday chores for five hours.  But luckily I am done by 1 or 2 in the afternoon, so there is still a lot of time left in the day to do whatever I want. 
     But this past week when I wasn't working was quite nice.  I have now done four puzzles, which may not sound interesting or relaxing to many people, but I really enjoyed doing it.  Two had 1000 pieces and the other two had 500.  Granny finds all of this immensely impressing, but she didn't see what I did before I came out here.  Eleven 1000 piece puzzles in 10 days is much more impressive to me.  So while Katie and Granny have been working on their tapestries I have been puzzling away.  We have also had plenty of time to watch television and movies.  And nothing is better than British television.  We have gotten hooked on the British version of The Apprentice every Wednesday night.  Katie and I also watch Dr Who every Saturday.  And we have been watching the classics, too.  We watched Sense and Sensibility and are half way through Charles Dickens' "Little Dorritt" which I really like.  We have also watched a four part series called Lost in Austen which was pretty funny.  It's about a modern girl who gets stuck in the world of Pride and Prejudice and all the trouble she gets up to there.  It basically makes fun of a lot of classic Jane Austen characters and has totally ruined the book for me, but we all enjoyed it.
     Also, we have now attended the first party of the summer, to which I can honestly say Katie and I were the life of the party.  Everyone there was at least 30 or 40 years older than us, so it made for an interesting night.  The party was at Priscilla's (a family friend) new house.  Her house got burnt down last year and has just been rebuilt.  It's a  really nice cottage with a lovely garden.  So she invited all of the family and friends over to break in her new house.  It started off pretty awkwardly since Katie and I are not really their age and often don't have a lot in common.  But we made the rounds.  By the end of the night I had my introduction memorized.  "Hi, my name is Rebecca Cutler.  I'm Florence's granddaughter.  I'm 19 years old and just finished my first year at university.  I go to BYU and plan on studying international development or something related to that."  But we soon settled in the younger room with the people that were only 30 years older than us instead of 50 or 60.  The room was mostly full of different cousins and other family friends and I actually quite enjoyed myself there.
  So other than the parties we have gone shopping a few times and plan on going into Inverness to do some serious shopping within the next week or so.  Tonight we had dinner with Michael and Maureen, some sort of first cousin once removed or second cousins, I am honestly not sure, but they live next door to us and we see them quite a bit.  They were really nice and we had a lovely dinner and conversation before coming back just in time to catch the Apprentice.  So it's been nice.  And the weather is supposed to get better this weekend and for next week.  So Granny, Katie, and I are planning to go to Handar Isle to see the puffins and other sea birds at a National reserve, which will be fun.  We are also going to the opera on the 9th to see Rigoletto which should be quite good.  So it's shaping up to be a good week.
   But while here so far, I have found out my five favorite things about Scotland.

What I love about Scotland

1.   Tea time

Tea time is one of the meals in a traditional Scottish day.   It comes after lunch but before supper at approximately 4 or 4:30.  Whenever I talk about it I feel a bit like a hobbit talking about the multitude of meals we eat a day, although I never have had second breakfast or elevenses.  But tea time is my favorite.  We basically sit in the living room with a hot drink, coffee or tea for Granny and hot chocolate for Katie and me, and have cake.  What could be better?  Just when you need a pick me up in the afternoon we bring out the cake.  And it's always delicious cake, whether it's carrot cake or chocolate, or best of all, chocolate orange!  I don't know how I have survived without it in the past and I have now decided that when I get home I will institute it in our house. 

2.   The history

I love America, but one of the things I wish it had more of is history.  America is such a young country and doesn't have the extensive past of the UK or that feeling of connection with our ancestors.  I love wandering around the castles and ruins that are in Scotland and feeling connected to the history of the country.  I love the stories of hauntings and the wars and the kings and queens of old.  I can imagine the life with the royals in old palaces and in the big estates with tons of servants.  I can see the worlds of Jane Austen and the other famous writers of her day and imagine how they lived.  To me, there's an elegance and romance to their world that will never die.

3.   The romance 

Just the idea of Scotland where my Granny lives is very romantic.  It's a little coastal village that feels very disconnected to the big towns and cities.  A lot of the houses are designed in a very old-fashioned manner and the main street has ten or so shops and that's it.  Plus they have an old graveyard that's been around for centuries and an old church to go with it.  Then there's the sea.  It's such a deep blue and looks so wild a lot of the time.  And if we walk about a mile down the road we arrive at the point where the lighthouse is and where many people go to see dolphins and seals.  I just feel like a character in a novel just living here.

4.   The accents

Although often hard to understand, I love Scottish accents.  And there are so many different kinds.  There's the really thick one where the words are really hard to understand and only half the consonants are heard.  But there's also the more posh ones where everything is said very properly and sounds very elegant.  And you get the highland accent, and the more English ones, and everyone sounds so different, but so cool.  I have decided I need to learn how to at least fake it to impress all my friends at home.

5.   The landscape

The landscape of Fortrose is perfect.  First off it's right on the sea.  We can just look out the window and sea the beach.  It's a rocky beach with an ocean of deep blue water.  You can walk along the beach for miles in either direction to the harbour and lighthouse.  And just a short distance from the beach is the farmland.  Walk up the road and you can see sheep or cows or horses in their pastures.  And you can hike up the hills across the fields or pastures.  And of course there are a lot of woodsy areas you can hike through looking at the flowers and trees.  And one of my favorite places, is of course, the Fairy Glen.  It just seems like a magical place.  You go into the woods and walk along the trail right next to a river.  You can climb over fallen logs across the water and skip rocks in the pond.  But my favorite things in there are the waterfalls.  They aren't huge, but they look gorgeous with the surrounding backdrop and sound really magical in the backdrop.  I think that is one of my favorite things when we come over here, the hike through the Fairy Glen.  It brings back memories of the fairy hunting we would do and that excitement we felt whenever we saw something move out of the corner of our eye and the hope that someday we would actually see the most magical part of the glen.