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...