American Scottish
Chips = Crisps
Shoes = Sheeds
French Fries = Chips
Dollars = Pounds or Quid
Ten Dollars = Tenner
Soda Pop = Lemonade
Cookies = Biscuits
So there are controversies over the last two. I asked for a drink of lemonade at the pub. Wanting good old fashioned lemonade. I got sprite. Confused, I asked the people I was with and they couldn't figure out what I wanted. I explained what lemonade is and they came to the consensus that it would be called Lemon Juice. Which is another problem because that could be straight lemon juice or the drink lemonade. So they don't really drink lemonade and I promised I would make it for them and they ask me regularly for it. So if anyone wants to send me some lemonade mix everyone over here would be delighted.
As for cookies, I was wondering if they were called biscuits. Liz told me that cakes and biscuits are taxed differently here and that people have gone to court to debate whether their product is a biscuit or a cake and that maybe I didn't want to get into that one. So I'm leaving it. Biscuits are complicated.
LESSON 2- Fire Alarms
As we have learned from living in the dorms, it is an obligation to have fire alarms in the wee hours of the morning. So last night was the first (of many, I'm sure). What we have learned from Scottish fire alarms is that, whereas in Colorado is was genius to come out of the building still in your blankets, it is a necessity here. Luckily the girls remembered shoes. The boys did not, but they did have their dressing gowns (not robes, of course). Robert stood in the gravel and shouted in his brogue about being Scottish and that this was nothing. He's a Scotsman for crying out loud. He walks on glass! Aidan is not a Scotsman unfortunately, so he was upset and cold. There was discussion of warming up in the empty firetruck. Maybe next time...
LESSON 3- The City
This is the Queen's Hall Theater down the street.
I unfortunately don't know what most of these buildings are, I just think they're pretty. So this lesson is more of visual information. You won't be tested on this...
This is the picture (as promised) of the old University. Yeah... if I had only been a medicine student... I could have had classes here...
This is the Hispanic church down the road from me and the rocky crags I climbed the other day behind it.
Yet another church near my school. I told you... One on every block. You thought I was kidding...LESSON 4- Mountaineering
Before I begin this lesson, I have to make a small correction to a previous post. At the time I thought I was climbing Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park. I was in fact in the crag section and had not climbed to Arthur's Seat until today. My apologies.
I was over where the brown rock is... Arthur's Seat is a wee bit higher than that...
Robert, Aidan and Liz. Can you see the path up behind them? Grueling is a word that comes to mind. They felt it the most efficient of the other, not steep at all, paths we could have taken.
This is what we refer to as crag climbing. It is never ending. You are weak if you don't do it. Liz and I are weak. Very weak.
This is what we call Mountain Running with POWER LEGS. There is also a lot of screaming involved and attempted jumps and spins in the air. Yes, we are seven years old.
Robert and Aidan trying to find their way across the Seat to the Check Point.
On top of Arthur's Seat. Liz, me and Robert with the Check Point. Check. We made it.
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