Poker and Pints

Today Knoxie and I had to get up at the ass crack of dawn to drive into Carnwath for the beginning of his sister Pamela's wedding festivities. I was a tad worried, since this was the first time I was meeting his family and they would ALL be there, but I had already agreed to go and it was too late to back out now (plus I had a new dress that I was dying to wear, and what better occassion than a wedding?).

Once we were safely delivered to Carnwath by trusty old Chester, we dropped our stuff off at Pamela's house, where we were staying, and headed to the church for the rehearsal. And cue the introductions...I met all of the Knox siblings, the parents of Pamela and her soon-to-be-husband, and the rest of the wedding party. I was also jokingly informed that I couldn't call my boyfriend "Knoxie" while I was there, since this happened to be the nickname of more than one person in the family, and I needed to start calling him Callum to avoid confusion. I made the mental note and soon the rehearsal began.

Since I was the only person there who wasn't in the wedding or related to someone who was, I sat quietly in my chair and tried to run through everyone's names in my head again. The church was FUH-reezing because they were undergoing some renovations and the electricity (which included heating) wasn't working, so pretty soon into it I was dying to go outside into the warm-ish Scottish sun.

After the rehearsal was finished, we all headed over to Charlie's house (Cal's older brother) to hang out. Most of the girls in the wedding party had appointments to get spray-tanned in the garage and they asked me if I wanted in, but I decided to keep my pasty whiteness and politely declined. Instead I cracked a beer and started chatting with the guys. I never did venture out into the garage, but I imagine it looked something like this.

The plan for the rest of the night was: the girls get brown and head back to Pamela's house to work on the centerpiece for the church, and the guys stay at Charlie's for a night of beer and who knows what else. After a bit the guys headed into the dining room and started playing poker, and since there wasn't much else going on I soon followed behind.

Fast forward 4 beers and two hours later....Charlie's girlfriend Lisa comes into the dining room and says, "Melissa, weren't you supposed to be at Pamela's house? All the girls left half an hour ago." Turns out the girl that was supposed to be giving me a ride forgot about me and I was gonna be stuck at Charlie's house for the night. I think everyone thought that I was gonna be upset, but I was actually relieved to be staying with the guys because I was having a good time and I suck at doing all that girly stuff anyway. "No worries," I said to Lisa, "as long as I have a place to sleep I'm good!" and that was that.

We all knew that it was gonna be an early-ish night since we had to be up the next morning for the wedding, but we had started drinking so early that by about 10pm I was heavily buzzing. Add not eating to the 8 beers that I had consumed, and I was definitely feeling good by 11. I was also insistent on playing poker even though I know nothing about the rules, only that a flush is a good hand (and I suck at lying, so this game is definitely not my forte) and the guys obliged, but not without laughing at me and taunting me in their Scottish accents that I was too drunk or slow to understand. So mostly I just giggled and kept drinking since I had no idea what was going on, either in the game or in the conversations.

Eventually the guys ordered a munchy box of doner kebabs (Scotland's version of drunk food) but it looked like three week old Chinese food when it arrived, so I opted for a bag of Dorito's instead. I made it a point to let everyone know that I had 11 beers by the end of the night and that I was still standing (and talking). Even in my drunken haze I knew it was a personal achievement!

Luckily the guys liked me (I think anyway) and they put up with my drunk stupid ass, and I had a really great time! We called it a night around 1am and Cal and I headed to our air mattress, where I was told later that I was drunk-gibbering for another 30 minutes or so. I don't even want to know what I said, but it must not have been too bad since Cal hasn't dumped me yet.

Flat Party

Today started out brilliantly, mostly because my new bed arrived! The one that was in my room was a shitty single bed that had obviously been there since the building was erected in 1897, so Liz and I went in half-sies on a new one a few weeks ago. We weren't counting on it being delivered in pieces though, so we spent most of the morning putting it together and re-arranging the house afterwards. Since my bed now takes up half my room, I had to jack some furniture from the living room to squeeze into my room. In my genius, I took a bookcase and removed the glass doors from the front, and am now using it as some open-faced shelving for at least 30 lbs. worth of clothes. After all that unnecessary exercise, we showered and I took a little nap on my new bed to break it in a bit.

Later we got prettied up and walked over to Chris and Paul's for their flat-warming party. Their place is kinda small, but there was food, alcohol, music, and people to chat with so no one was complaining. Liz wasn't supposed to be drinking because she was taking some kind of medicine that the box claimed would make her "violently ill" if she mixed it with alcohol. I had to keep my eye on her though, because she thinks she is sneaky, and I could just spidey-sense that she was gonna try to get in a few while I wasn't looking. Luckily I caught her mid-sip and quickly overruled her by taking the drink and downing it myself, to which I got whines and bitchy looks. So I said, "If you think I'm gonna clean up after you projectile vomit all over the place, you're seriously confused!" and I didn't get any more lip after that. But I'm sure she sneaked a pint or two in the bathroom or something anyway!! Luckily she wasn't violently ill, so the night went on without any vomit in sight.

A few hours went by and Knoxie arrived from Aberdeen. He chit chatted with everyone for a bit and then we headed home, because the food was gone, we were hungry, and me and Knoxie had to get up early the next morning to head to Carnwath (his hometown). Once we got home, he whipped us up some "chef-tastic" roasted potatoes (as Liz calls them) and we stuffed our faces until it was gone, and then it was time for bed.

Semi-First Day of School

Today was our first-ish day of class. We had a meeting scheduled at 10 with our professors and classmates, and Liz and I were excited to meet all the people we would be suffering with over the next year. After about twenty minutes we were surrounded by 35 Asians, 2 Greeks, one girl from Scotland, and one girl from Norway. I started having flashbacks to Davis, California, where the Asians had also taken over, and it made me yearn for some sunshine, which unfortunately won't be available to those of us in the UK for another 6 months or so. Anyway soon after all the students had trickled in, our professors walked in, and I was glad to find that I wasn't intimidated at all (yet).

Jacquie introduced herself as the department head in a cool British/French accent, and her untamed, crazy curly hair and dress clothes that she had paired with tennis shoes indicated to me that she was the most intense form of academic. You know the type - only has 5 outfits and wears them on the same day of every week, doesn't really fix their hair or wear makeup, and they are always INSANELY brilliant. But Jacquie seemed pretty relatable so I couldn't complain.

Next up was Derek, a mid-50's Scottish man with a PhD in Biochemistry (or some other ridiculously hard science degree), and I'm sure the question on everyone's mind was the same - "What the hell are you doing teaching PR?". Unfortunately he never addressed that question and all of us were too scared to bring it up, since Derek seemed like the type that wouldn't find that amusing. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but for some reason Derek reminded me of Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace - old and grumpy, but with a big ol' heart hiding in there somewhere! We'll see how accurate that impression is soon enough...

Our last professor was Julia, a younger, soft-spoken and very chill hippie type with long brown hair. We were informed that Julia was in charge of a related program called Public Communications Management and that we wouldn't see much of her, so I didn't really bother trying to figure her out and moved my attention to our program syllabus, which was about 50 pages long. And the intimidation began.

First off, our University's grading system is unlike anything I've ever seen. There's stars and smiley faces and half-moons and like 24 possible grades (ok there's no smiley faces or half-moons, but there really are stars!). Derek asked the class, "What would you all think if you got a grade of 80%?" and after about 30 seconds it was apparent that no one else was gonna answer, so Liz said, "I'd be really happy!" and I said, "I'd be upset, I can do better than that." To which Derek replied, "Well, get used to it, because we don't hand out grades better than that. You will never get an A." Ok....what was I supposed to say to that? Intimidation continues.

After half-explaining the alien grading scale to us, they moved on to the section on plagairism. It all seemed pretty standard, stuff about referencing styles and how to not jack other people's ideas without saying that it isn't your own, blah blah blah. Then Derek said that they had plagairism-detecting software that they were going to run every one of our assignments through, and that if we failed to properly reference on two seperate occasions (I'm talkin little stuff, like not including page numbers!), we were going to fail the program. Considering that there were people in our class who had never even written a bibliography, it all seemed pretty harsh.

So after they finished going through the syllabus and scaring the shit out of everyone there (especially the Asians, I'm not even sure that they all understood what was going on), we all had little sandwiches and sparkling water (how posh, I know) and chit chatted with each other. We met another American, from North Carolina of all places. How small is the world? He said his name was Andrew Breedlove, and I informed him that I would now be calling him Breedlove so I hoped he was ok with that. He looked like he minded, but I didn't care (I bet he secretly likes it anyway). There was a supermodel-looking chick from Norway who had a funny accent and an even funnier name - Marte Semb Aasmundsen, yea you read that right. I wish I could attach a sound-clip of me doing my impression of her, it's pretty spot on. And about 30 other people that I couldn't specifically remember after one meeting.

After all the sandwiches were gone Liz and I decided to head home, where we made dinner and went over our schedule to figure out what times we had classes, and to see exactly how much trouble we had gotten ourselves into with this whole Master's thing. We started tooling around on the university's website to have a look at our professors and their backgrounds, when I realized just how deep in the shit we had actually waded. To see just how wrong I was about Jacquie not being intimidating, please follow this link http://www.fmj.stir.ac.uk/staff/jacquie-letang/jacquie-letang.php. You will see how long she has been a leader in the field of PR and the CRAZY amount of stuff she has published on the subject (and also a picture of her). And the intimidation had reached its peak....this lady is no joke. Relatable or not, she IS obviously freakin brilliant, and that's always a little bit scary.

Stay tuned.

It Must Have Been the Sambuca...

Today began by Liz and I heading to campus to pick up our student ID cards. We found our building and headed in for what we thought would be a quick, "Hi, I'm me, thanks for the card." Two hours later, after standing in a line with all the other hundreds of students that also left this small task for the last minute, we finally got the much coveted ID card and went to meet Chris and Paul for lunch at the student Union. Needless to say we needed a drink after standing in that horrendous line, and we were pretty stoked to find out that they served beer on campus! I guess it's not surprising since here the drinking age is 18, but we were still surprised to see it on campus. So we all got a pint and chatted over lunch, before we headed back to the flat. We were supposed to be getting a campus tour from Chris and Paul, but it had started raining during lunch so we decided to see it some other, drier time.

Once we were back in King's Park, we showered and got dressed for our first night out. It just so happened that it was Fresher's Week, which is basically an excuse for every human being over 18 to get absolutely hammered for 7 days right before school starts. Did I mention that it's damn close to free to drink during this week - I'm talkin less than £1 per drink here people. We got into town and met up with Paul, Chris, their roommate Lyn and most of the girl's football team at The Corn Exchange and had a few pints there before heading over to this club called Fubar.

This club is just like any other club in the States, so there wasn't anything necessarily exciting or new to be seen in Fubar. I'm not much of a clubber anyway, I usually think it's way too hot, the music is too loud, and you have to scream at the person beside you for them to hear you. Not to mention that the place is usually filled with teenage boys ogling teenage girls. What makes a Scottish club special then, you ask? Well, first of all, they had buckets of gummy bears that the employees were passing around, and any club that serves me candy as I wait in line to get in can't be all that bad. Also, the shocking level of nakedness that the females in this country seem to be ok with is what makes it truly special. I'm all for the rule "If you got it, flaunt it", but the problem is - these girls AIN'T got it. I'm not a hater and I can admit when another girl is looking good, but these girls are by and large just far too ugly/fat/old/young to be wearing what they do. I wish I had a picture to explain exactly what I mean, but unfortunately I lost my camera...that comes later in the story. Anyway I was shocked at the number of girls that were making normal sized t-shirts into dresses and calling it an outfit, but I was buzzing by this time so I didn't care as much to call any of them out on being slutty as I normally would.

We made our way into teenage wasteland and headed straight for the bar. By this time we were with a bigger crowd of people that Paul had recognized in line, so lucky for Liz and I the guys decided to buy everyone rounds, which meant that we didn't have to pay for anyting else for the rest of the night (not that this was that impressive, since everything was so cheap, but again, I was buzzing...). So I ordered a few WKD's (like Smirnoff Ice but they taste way better) and was already double fisting when I was handed a jelly shot. I took it quickly to avoid having to carry so much alcohol, but then Paul handed me another shot...I wasn't sure what this one was but I trust Paul so I took it. Immediately regretted that decision - it was Sambuca! I hate that stuff. Liz saw my face after I drank my shot and she didn't want anything to do with it, and I'm not one to let a perfectly good shot go to waste, so I took one for the team (I seem to do that a lot) and drank her shot too. I think the Sambuca is what did me in, but we will never know for sure.

Anyway, by this time I was ready to hit the dance floor with the naked teenage girls and the ogling teenage boys. We walked/stumbled upstairs where the music was thumping and I was ready to shake my booty. Unfortunately the music in clubs here sucks for the most part - for some reason the British are big into shitty dance music, and I like to shake it to good ol' black music like Beyonce and Usher. I wasn't getting any of that here, so I decided to make the best of it and we all had a good time for about an hour.

Since I'm not single anymore, I didn't dance with any men, and all the girls were occupied with loving the ogling they were getting, and everyone in my group was too tired to dance anymore. Not me, I was ready for at least another 30 minutes of booty shakin. I couldn't find another suitable human to dance with so I decided in my haze that the speaker that was taller than me and blasting out techno was the next best thing, so I rubbed against that for a while until I needed some water and fresh air.

I grabbed the rest of the group and we headed outside. It seemed like a great opportunity for a family photo, so I went for my clutch to get my camera out...and EVERYTHING was gone. At some point during the night amidst my speaker-grinding, my clutch had opened up and everything that was inside, including my camera, my favorite chapstick AND lip gloss, and £20 had fallen out somewhere in the club. Luckily I had my ID and my cell phone in my pocket. I shouted out in despair to Liz that I had lost my camera and was pretty close to tears, but she was drunk too so I don't think she cared all that much. I decided that Knoxie would definitely still be awake at 3am on a Monday and called him instead. Luckily he's a great boyfriend and talked to me in between my sobs enough to calm me down and tell me he would buy me a new one if I couldn't find the old one.

I stomped back to the group and demanded that we all go back inside and hunt for my missing camera, and everyone obliged, so we went back into the club to the places we had been, but alas - there was no sign of my poor Casio. Heartbroken and exhausted, Liz and I got a cab home after someone responsible decided it was waaay pasy my bedtime. So, until I get a new camera, my posts will be full of other people's pictures and appropriate images I find on Google :(

Does McDonald's Count as an Errand?

Today was one of my favorite kind of days...a lazy day. We slept in and mosied through to the kitchen for breakfast before laying back down on the couch to watch Friends re-runs. After dozing back into unconciousness for a few hours, we were pretty hungry and nothing in the flat was looking good, so we decided to go to McDonald's. I never feel bad about eating fast food anymore because we have to walk a mile to get to town, and another mile back home, so I probably burn off most of the calories I eat while I'm there (at least that's what I tell myself). Plus McDonald's has free Wi-fi and we won't have the Internet at the flat for another week, and how many more reasons do you really need to go for a Double Cheeseburger anyway? We pigged out while we registered for our classes and got online banking up and running, then dropped by the pound store (UK's version of the dollar store) to get more hangers before running back home in the light rain to avoid the heavy rain that was sure to follow (ok you're right, we didn't run - it was more like a brisk walk). We could have used the new hangers to continue unpacking, but instead we did another one of the things we do best - vegged out on the couch while watching classic movies like Men in Black.

Japanese Food Party

Liz and I started out the day by unpacking most of our stuff, which is my favorite part of moving - finding new homes for everything and organizing my closet and my shoes by color and size...I'm a little OCD about it all. After lunch we got showered and prettied up for our friend Yasu's birthday party, where most of the people we met while we were here in April were gonna be, so we were excited to catch up with everyone again.

We caught the train to Edinburgh and met up with Ashley after about fifteen phone calls back and forth and much confusion about where we were meeting; "mall entrance" apparently wasn't specific enough since there were about four different mall entrances. Anyway we hadn't eaten much at lunch because Yasu ordered us to show up with empty bellies, so the homemade cupcakes that Ashley brought looked yummy and were definitely calling my name. Lucky for her I resisted the urge to steal one while she wasn't looking, and we headed to the nearest pub where I temporarily satiated my hunger with a beer while we waited for everyone else to get to town. After a while Beth and Keith showed up, followed by Ashley's fiance Euan. We had another round and then caught a taxi to Yasu's boyfriend's parent's house (did you get all of that?), where the party was.

As soon as we walked in, I knew that my hunger had not gone unrewarded. There was food everywhere!! Ginormous pots of rice on the stove, huge plates of noodles, bowls full of sauces...oh yeah, this was gonna be good. I grabbed a beer and immediately started taking little bits of food when I thought no one was looking; normally I don't care about things like that, but no one else was eating yet and I didn't want to be the first one to dig in uninvited. This plan didn't work as well as it did in my head, since I was so hungry that I basically ended up standing beside the table with my mouth stuffed too full to even talk to anyone. Eventually when I noticed that this wasn't going down anything like I had planned, I stopped caring that people had seen me eating, so I loaded up a plate and walked around the room socializing in between bites.

Jack (Yasu's boyfriend) was making sushi at the counter, which intrigued me since I had never seen it done before. He assured me that it wasn't difficult, but I assured him that I have a special talent for making things complicated that would be pretty easy for a normal person. I kind of wanted to try it because it looked fun, but more than that I wanted to keep eating, and sushi-making would have involved me washing my hands and NOT eating until I was done. Plus I fully believe that food is always better when you don't have to make it yourself, so I just let him continue making it and settled with watching. Luckily I had already polished off whatever else had been on my plate by the time he finished cutting it up, so I happily agreed to help him eat it (ok, so he didn't ask me to eat it, and he didn't exactly offer it to me, and he wasn't eating any of it himself at that exact moment. But I could tell he was thinking about offering it to me.) I'm not the biggest sushi fan, but this stuff was GOOD. I was definitely impressed with this Japanese Food Party, and it made me wonder, why don't people have food parties more often? We all know the best part of a party is the food, so let's stop the charade of only having parties when it's someone's birthday or whatever, and just call it like it is - an excuse to eat sweet party food! After all, meatballs ARE my favorite food group.

After we were all done stuffing our faces Asian style, Liz and I caught the train back to Stirling and fell into our beds, half drunk and 100% stuffed. That's what I like to call a good night.

Hello Flat #55!

Today we moved into our new flat. I'm sure Beth and Keith were just as excited to finally have their house back to themselves as Liz and I were to see our new home! We had signed the lease without ever seeing the flat, because as luck would have it Beth and Keith used to live in the exact same flat, and it just opened up right before we arrived in Scotland! Talk about coincidence. Anyway we took Beth's word for it that the flat was awesome, and the current tenant took his sweet time moving out so today was the first time we had seen our new home for the next 18 months or so. We woke up early, packed our suitcases up and did a major cleaning on Beth's flat.

Knoxie agreed to help us move, and he showed up at 3 with Chester (that's what I call his car, because it has a van-like area in the back but it doesn't have any windows, similar to something that a Chester the Molester would drive). It looks kinda like this picture, except it's much smaller, and white, and doesn't say "Free Candy" on the side. It does, however, have a faded Scooby Doo sticker on the back, which Knoxie claims was already there when he acquired the vehicle. It's not as good as offering free candy, but still a nice touch for the kids. Anyway, after packing load number one into the back (YES, we had more than one load...we're gonna be here for almost two years, we had a lot of luggage!) we stopped off at Chris and Paul's flat to pick up the stuff we bought a few days ago, crammed all that into the back, and finally made it to Snowdon Place.

We love it!! It's SO big considering that the general size of houses here are much smaller than they are in the States. And it's fully furnished, and has the most comfy sectional couch in the living room. Definitely big enough to host parties, which obviously is the most important feature in a student flat. After I leaped around the place with excitement for a few minutes like a dumbass, Knoxie and I went back to Dunblane to get the last of our stuff while Liz stayed behind to clean before we started unpacking. The place looked pretty clean already, but I definitely wasn't gonna complain if she wanted to do it again, plus she's a better cleaner than me and she likes doing it, so who was I to stop her?

After we returned from Dunblane and hauled the last of our stuff upstairs, Knoxie and I headed to the Tesco to pick up some essentials for the flat, like ketchup, milk, eggs, and Doritos. Knoxie made sausage frittatta (isn't that a fun word to say? fri-tta-tta...) for supper, which was amazing considering all we had in the flat was ketchup, milk, eggs, Doritos, and apparently some sausage and an onion that had appeared from outer space. I'm now convinced that the man can make a meal out of the most random things in the kitchen, which is a great talent to have while we're both poor students. And I forgot to mention we had beer, lots of beer; in fact besides ketchup, milk, and eggs, the only other thing in the fridge was beer. But we had invited our friends to come over for a mini-flat warming party that night, so naturally that would involve beer. What can I say, we're pretty good hosts!

Anyway Beth, Keith, Chris, Paul and Ryan came over and we all ate and drank and revelled in the magic of Flat 55, which involved Ryan re-claiming his favorite spot on the couch and Beth taking us around the flat and explaining the mostly grotesque stories behind each stain on the carpet. We called it a night around 3 and everyone went home, and Liz and I finally got to sleep in our own beds. I couldn't be happier with our new flat! Pictures coming soon...

Doing What We Do Best - Shopping

Today was fun, as any day that involves me spending money usually is! Liz, Paul and I went to Primark to buy stuff for our flat that we're moving into soon. We got pillows, sheets, duvet covers, towels, and looked at curtains and bathroom stuff before we decided that we were poor and probably should wait to SEE the flat before we actually buy anything else. Primark is kinda like Target, except it's bigger and the clothes are even cheaper, but just as cute.

This is definitely somewhere that I'm banning myself from going into before I have an income, because I can SO see myself blowing £100 in under an hour in there. Anyway after we bought the essentials we dropped our stuff off at Paul's flat and headed over to Morrison's for lunch. We met Paul's roommate Lyn and had a few drinks and I had another stuffed baked potato (they really are amazing).

After lunch Liz and I got on the train back to Dunblane and decided to make dinner for Beth as a tiny thank you for letting us crash with her for weeks, so we stopped by the Tesco and decided on a menu of a whole chicken and various veggies. Liz did all the cooking once we got home and I handled the drinking of the wine and sitting on my ass, because someone needed to do it and I'm not one to NOT take one for the team. After Beth got home we all enjoyed the meal, and rounded off the night by re-mixing songs from my iTunes for Keith's Pie Shop business that he's gonna start in America one day. I'm pretty sure there's a video on Beth's phone of me rapping about pies to a Kanye West song that I was not aware was being taken at the time...it would be perfect blackmail material if I was the type to get embarrased. Unfortunately for Beth she's gonna have to try harder than that.

NHS and a Fat Joke

I woke up today feeling like absolute shit. I moped around for a bit until lunch time, when I decided that I just needed to suck it up and walk my lazy ass to the doctor's office in Dunblane. So I got dressed and put my rain boots on (because of course it was pouring down) and made my way down the road. I walked in and went to the counter and said, "Hi, I need to register and see a doctor as soon as possible" to the receptionist. "Where do you live?" she asked me. "Well right now I live in Dunblane, but in a few weeks I'm moving to Stirling." She said, "Well, I'm sorry but we can't see you here, you're gonna have to go to the doctor in Stirling." I informed her that I had no car and needed to see a doctor ASAP to get some pills, and we went around in circles for a few minutes about not having any paperwork with my address on it, blah blah blah. Towards the end of our converstaion she had a look on her face that told me she cared more about what she was eating for lunch than my problem, so I thanked her and walked out in a huff.

I vented to Liz for a few minutes once I got home about how stupid it all was, then decided to call Keith to see if he would drive me to Stirling when he got off work. He agreed so I called the office in Stirling to make an appointment. Turns out Keith didn't get home till later than he planned, and we all hopped in the car and sped down the highway towards Stirling at a speed that made me grasp the oh shit handle in the car as discreetly as I could until we screeched to a halt outside the doctor's. I ran in and was seen immediately by the doctor, where he gave me a once-over and wrote me a prescription in under five minutes. I was pretty impressed with the impersonal-ness and speed of it all! None of this, "And where are you going to school? How do you like it?" small talk that I'm used to. I loved it!

I hopped back in the car and Keith sped me to the nearest pharmacy (which happened to be in a Tesco, our grocery store) to get there before it closed. It was still pouring down buckets of rain at this point. I was waiting in the store for my name to be called for the pills, so I took a stroll down the junk food aisle (where else?) and was perusing the strange flavors of chips when a MASSIVE amount of water came gushing out of a vent in the floor and proceeded to flood the junk aisle and the 4 aisles around it! Was it seriously raining THAT much outside? Luckily they called my name right at that moment so I got my prescription for £3 (that is DIRT cheap by the way, thanks NHS!) and high-tailed it out of there before they started evacuating people out of the store on inflatable rafts.

After that little adventure we headed over to campus to pick up Beth and headed home. Once we got back to the flat, we decided on pizza for dinner because Domino's was having a buy one get one free deal, so we thought it only natural to order 4 pizzas, one for each of us.

Keith left to pick up the pizzas while us girls did a little skin rejuvinating in the form of a mud mask. After about twenty minutes the food gods arrived with four glorious boxes of pizza, each one perfectly suited to the taste buds of each individual.

This is what Liz and I like to call Heaven, but I think most others would label it as a fat joke. Anyway after we all devoured at least half of our individual pizzas, we waddled our way into the living room for a night of shitty British tv before we all passed out.

Aberdeen

This weekend was fantastic! Friday started off with Liz and I walking into town to go to the bank and the pie shop. After our morning stroll we wrapped up the cleaning stuff we hadn't finished yesterday, which was mainly laundry. After our lazy-ish morning I started to pack my bag for the weekend because I was headed up to Aberdeen to visit Knoxie.

My train didn't leave till 4:50, but I headed down to the train station around 4 because it was the first time I was going somewhere by myself, and we all know how directionally challenged I am! Thank God I knew myself well enough to get there early. I ended up sitting on a bench on one side of the tracks for about half an hour until a train showed up. I got on the train and sat down, but had a funny feeling that something was wrong so I asked the lady sitting across from me if this train stopped at Aberdeen. She gave me a strange look (I'm sure she was thinking, "No, dumbass!") and said, "No honey, that train over there does" as she pointed to a train on the other side of the tracks! So I jumped off the train, ran across the bridge, and hopped onto the right train with only minutes to spare.

After that little scare the rest of the journey went smoothly. I had to get switch trains at the Perth station and was a little nervous about it before I got there, but when I arrived there was only two platforms in the whole station so it would've been pretty hard to mess that up. I got to the Aberdeen station around 7:30, where Knox was waiting for me. 

We walked back to his flat so I could drop my stuff off and I got the grand tour. After about an hour we headed back into town to meet his friend Mike and watch the football game.

I expected that we would be in an old man kinda pub since we were going to watch the game, so I was pretty surprised when we walked into this place called Soul that was an old church converted into a swanky bar/club, with modern style chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and the old stained glass windows still intact (you can see them in the picture below, which I stole from their website since I couldn't get any good ones the night we were there).  We ordered a beer and chatted about random things until Mike showed up. I had to pee after polishing off my third pint, so Mike said he would walk me over to where the bathrooms were (it was a big place).

  I didn't realize I was on my way to my first unisex bathroom experience. We walked through these double doors and I expected two more doors with the little man and woman pictures on them, but instead I was met with one ginormous bathroom. I was a little buzzed at this point and kind of confused, so I used the nearest stall and walked back over to the sinks to wash my hands, and there was a man standing beside me washing his hands too. There was a lady standing there with a towel and a whole tray full of soaps, perfumes, and lotions. I finished washing my hands and she came over to me and dried my hands off with her little towel. I was trying to go with the flow, but at this point I was thinking "What the hell is going on in here?" and I think Mike could see that look on my face because he just laughed at me, as he was getting his hands dried off beside me.

We walked back down to the bar where Knoxie was standing, and I went into a schpeil about how weird the unisex bathroom was; but he just laughed at me too. Apparently I morph into a comedian when I'm a little tipsy. After another pint or two we headed off to a pub that had a live band playing. When we got there, the place was absolutely packed and you couldn't hear a thing, so we took our drinks and sat at a cute little table outside. Mike entertained us for a few hours with stories of how he outran the cops twice in his life, and of the one time he got caught when the cops had a helicopter tailing him on the highway. We were enjoying ourselves when a pub employee came outside and told everyone that they were closing, so we finished our drinks and headed out.

Our last stop for the evening was this super posh bar called Orchid. It looked like something straight out of Sex and the City, with etched glass mirrors, black walls, and low lighting.

We had a few more drinks here, and after about an hour I was drunk and ready to go. So we were finally on the way home when we ran into a group of drunk girls on the street who needed directions to a nearby pub. Since I can barely walk around in my own flat without getting lost, and Knox was still new to the area, this was all up to Mike (which was totally ok with him since this particular group of girls was really hot).

One of the girls approached Knoxie and I and drunkenly slurred, "Oh my God, you two are so cute! You better keep your eye on her buddy, she looks like a keeper!" We both laughed and I said, "Thanks! Looks like you're having a good night, where..." and she interrupted me to scream, "Oh my God! You're American! What are you doing here? I'm Kathy from Canada! It's so good to meet someone here from home! *something was said here about maple syrup that I don't exactly recall* (looks to Knoxie) How did you land her? She's your girlfriend right? You guys are sooooo cute!" Naturally I was kind of embarrassed so I just blushed and laughed and tried to think of something witty to say, but I was drunk so I just kept giggling instead. Knoxie looked down at me, then looked at Kathy from Canada and said, "Yeah, I would say she's my girlfriend", then looked back down at me. I kept smiling and giggling, since thanks to all the Carlsberg I had earlier, I still couldn't think of anything coherent to say. By now Mike had finished giving directions, so we said bye to him and walked back to the flat. We finally got home around 3am and I immediately crashed out.

I woke up about noon on Saturday to the sound of Knox [warning - mushiness ahead!], my cute new Scottish boyfriend, singing along with some music in the kitchen. Curious, I hung-overdly (not a word I know, but how else do you make hung-over a verb?) walked into the kitchen to find him making breakfast. Made from scratch banana pancakes and pan-fried bananas! Can we say BEST hang over meal EVER??

After devouring breakfast, we decided to drive down to the beach since the weather was gorgeous. We got dressed, hopped in Chester (Knoxie's van, I call it Chester because it has no windows on the back and would be a perfect Chester the Molester Mobile), and made our way out of town. We made a mini pitstop at Morrison's and bought a cheap kite to take advantage of the windy Scottish shoreline. We parked, took our shoes off, and walked down to the beach where we put the kite together. Once assembled, Knox held the kite while I made a running start and....FAIL. After about 30 minutes of not getting the kite up in the air for more than half a second, I got frustrated (I mean, if an effing child can fly a kite, how hard can it really be?) and Knoxie suggested a bit of re-engineering. We fuddled around with the strings and gave it another go...and finally, success! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of us kite flying, but here is a re-creation of what it probably looked like:

We had the kite up for a good 10 minutes before it crashed and burned in the sand, and I decided that the kite had put its time in, so we wrapped up the strings and put it in the sand by our shoes. Then we went on a wee (like that Scottish language flair?) romantic walk by the water, until the sun started setting and it was getting pretty chilly, at which point we decided to go home.

Once we got back to the flat I took a shower and put my pj's on while Knox fixed supper. My nose was greeted with a wonderful smell upon exiting the bathroom, so I wandered in the kitchen to find out what it was...only to be mildly disappointed that it was PORK chops. I hate pork chops. But I didn't have the heart to tell him that because he had obviously put a lot of time and effort into it, so I just smiled and said, "Looks good!". We sat down to eat and I thought to myself, "Ok, just eat at least half of it to be polite" and took a bite of the pork chop...wait a second...it's...actually...good?! I was pleasantly surprised to be eating, and more importantly enjoying it! I told him after dinner that I usually hated pork chops but that his were actually really yummy, to which he gave some response along the lines of, "If I'm cookin it, it's gonna be good". Annoyingly, he's right. Since he's an ex-chef, that pretty much qualifies him to be stellar in the kitchen. But I'm not complaining, especially since we all know how much I love food!

Anyway, after dinner we watched one of my favorite movies as a kid called The Dark Crystal, which I hadn't seen in over ten years, so it was just like watching it for the first time! After the movie we went to bed, as I was still pretty tired from the night before. Sunday we slept in till noon again, and after lunch we walked down to the station so I could catch my train back to Dunblane.

When I got home, Chris, Paul, and Liz were hanging out in the kitchen. I was informed that Liz and Keith were having a "mince-off", which was a competition to see who could make the best mince meal (mince is what they call hamburger meat here). Liz made a spaghetti-ish dish served over pasta, and Keith made his mince with herbs and served it with mashed potatoes. Beth got home just as they were finished cooking, so we all sat down to a great meal and talked and ate and drank until about 10, when Chris and Paul went home. Tired and stuffed, Liz, Beth, Keith and I went into the living room and watched some bad British TV before passing out.

And on the Seventh Day...

Today was our first day of doing absolutely nothing since we arrived. Andy woke us up at 6 to say goodbye, and we rolled right over and went back to sleep the minute he left. We woke up again at 11-ish and started doing all the things we had been neglecting like laundry, cleaning, emails, etc. Beth and Keith got home around 6, and Keith cooked us all an American-esque meal of hamburgers and macaroni and cheese. After dinner we sat around in the living room watching TV and vegging out until bedtime. Although we've been having a blast, it was nice to have a full day of rest and general nothing-ness!

Errand Days Are Always Fun

Unfortunately we had to take a break from vacationing today and get our lives sorted out. It was also Andy's last day in Scotland. Our first stop was Mailers (the company who's renting us our flat) so that we could sign our lease! This was exciting, but unfortunately we can't move in until September 10th because we have to wait for Ahkmed (the current resident) to move out.

After signing our lives over for a six month period, our next stop was the bank. Beth had recommended the Bank of Scotland, so we walked in and told the guy behind the counter that we wanted to open accounts. Shortly after he started talking, he informed us that we weren't eligible for an account with a debit card until we had held accounts with them for 6 months....which doesn't help us much for the next 6 months. So we said thanks, but no thanks and walked out.

We strolled about half a block down the street and breezed into the ROYAL Bank of Scotland, which is apparently different than the REGULAR Bank of Scotland. The ROYAL bank agreed to give us debit card accounts, so we handed Gareth (the guy helping us) all the cash we had (which was about £2,500 each), signed our lives away once again with a whole new stack of paperwork, and we were set!

Next up was a quick pit stop into Argos, which wasn't a big deal for Liz and Andy, but once again I am too easily amused so this place was fascinating to me. You walk in and there's this long counter with catalogues and calculator-looking thingies beside them, and people flipping through the catalogues and writing things down with those little baby pencils like the ones they give you when you play miniature golf.

You flip through the catalogue, pick out the item you want (which for us today, was a hair dryer and a straightener) and type in its little product code in the calculator thingy. The calculator thingy tells you if they have it in stock or not. If it's in stock, you write down your product code on the little piece of paper with your mini-golf pencil. Then you get in a line and pay for everything you wrote down on your paper, all before you've even seen whatever it is you bought!! Next, the lady behind the cash register gives you a number (mine was B9, kinda like in bingo...I'm seeing a pattern here...maybe the Argos people have a slight obsession with low-impact gaming activities?) and you go into the back of the store and sit in a waiting room until another lady behind another counter calls your number. You walk up to the counter with your receipt and the lady hands you everything you bought in plastic bags, and you're done! So basically, Argos has come up with a brilliant way to eliminate shoplifting.

Anyway, after that unexpected adventure, Andy headed off to find a new suitcase (his old one bit the dust on his way to Scotland), and Liz and I walked to the Job Centre to register for National Insurance Numbers (these allow us to work in the UK). That concluded our errand running for the day, so we headed home.

When we got there, Keith told us we were going out for supper, so we all piled into the car and headed up to Stirling Uni to pick up Beth from work. Everyone decided on Indian food (not my favorite, but I can be a team player when I want to be!) so we went to Mr. Singh's for a nice sit-down meal. After everyone stuffed their faces (and I picked at a plate of rice, lentils, and non-spicy chicken), we walked down to the local bookies and placed bets on dog racing. We all lost, but thankfully our bets were all less than £1, so mostly it was just a fun introduction to the national past-time of old men while their wives are out shopping. Once we got home I helped Andy pack his new suitcase and we all went to bed pretty early, because Andy had to get up at 6am to catch his train home, and we were all exhausted from the week's shenanigans.