At the Airdrie library

Should get Internet at home this week, Lord willing. It will be greatly appreciated and will stop these little trips to the library to get online.

Quickly - the latest - as I remember it:

1) Our family and a new foreign exchange student from America went for a hike up a mountain on Friday. I have a blister to prove it.

2) Painted bedrooms last week.

3) Hung pictures around the house. Aaaah.

4) Had our first week of METs (Mutual Encouragement Times) which are bible studies. Went well.

5) Will start homeschool this week ushering in a regular routine. Good beans.

6) Love and miss you all (you know who you are.)

In the new house

We're here! In our new house that is. Spent Friday and Saturday unpacking. Got most of it done with the exception of a few piles. Ah, it feels like home already, amazingly.

Aaron, great to hear from you on the last post! (He's one of my former students!) In answer to your question, our "new" house is in Carnbroe which is directly south of Coatdyke. Our mailing address is now in Coatbridge (both Carnbroe and Coatdyke are villages which are too small to have their own mailing addresses.) You'll get a kick out of this, Aaron. Angus said that we would need an Airdrie passport to get back past the "border" because there's a rivalry between Airdrie and Coatbridge. Probably been going on for hundreds of years or something. I told him that we were faithful Airdrie-ites and would spie out the land for them. But seriously everyone is truly happy to hear of our residence in this new location and anxious to visit. BTW, Carnes is my maiden name so that gives me a rather homey feeling to think of living in Carnbroe.

The leaves are already barely starting to change showing a glimmer of fall. One of the elders named Sam Bell (I like his last name because it's my mother's maiden name) said that the fall colors are usually spectacular. Yum.

Rob was excited to see a wee Scottish rodent in our back yard yesterday. It was the size of a weasel with a little white tummy. He likes to observe wildlife.

We found a clothesline here so Rob and Candace hung it up for me. Then I peacefully hung clothes on it hoping not to meet the wee rodent at just that moment. All in all the experience was quite relaxing. Haven't hung clothes since the children were little and living in the Texan backwoods.

What odd details I choose to divulge.

Just before we move ...

Woke up early this morning probably because of moving day anticipation. As I said, we're moving to another house in a town near Airdrie. Don't worry it's not far away; it's only a few minutes drive to the church. We will be truly settled when we move to this house, I think.

And we got our crate of stuff delivered to the new house! Ah, to have scissors and paper and casserole dishes and CLOTHES and such. It will be grand! Let's see, we sent it from Kokomo a month before we moved from there, and we've been here for a month, and so you do the math. Can't wait to unpack - it'll be like Christmas!

The most wonderful news of the week is that Josh made it safely all the way from Glasgow to Dublin to Chicago to Atlanta to Houston to Alto to Longview. Praise the Lord! God is certainly good and merciful.

Jenny will travel back to Indiana on Saturday and she will be muchly missed here.

Candace doesn't start her uni in Glasgow until the end of September. Party on.

Amy enrolled as a distant student with the University of Texas yesterday so she can take a couple of college classes. (Sorry all you Aggie fans out there - we never did really pick sides or anything. Does that make us bad Texans? Oh well, I have one sister that works at UT and the other one works at Rice, so we're going with UT instead of A&M.) Amy will also study some high school courses in our homeschool.

Ben and I can start our studies as soon as we're settled in and I have a chance to plan out the year.
(Oh darn, I should have bought one of my favorite lesson plan books at Staples before I left. Oh well, I'll muddle through somehow.)

This year's gonna be great! I relish the idea of studying with only my own kids again. Don't get me wrong, I love to teach in the classroom, but most of my teaching over the years has been with my kids in our home. I just love teaching my kids!

Rob has an room for an office in our new home. I'm so happy he will have his own space to get some work done this year. And a place to go and shut the door and talk to people too. Once again, God is good.

Breakfast to make, places to clean, boxes to empty. Bye now.

Beeps and flashes

Days run swiftly filling up the week. As time passes my perspective of people and places around me changes. Speech I once couldn't understand at all - now makes some sense to me. Customs which used to seem foreign and quaint are fast becoming a part of my second nature. All this proves to me that a person can acquire more cultural habits than those of his native country.

For example ...

Round-abouts are fun.
Have you ever watched a cat walk? Well, that's what I feel like when I drive around them.

Wanta' turn right? No problem - just turn on your right blinker, look right, and then jump out onto the round-about and start going to the left. Cars will be whizzing all around, but don't worry, if you do something wrong you'll get a honk and a glare. No biggy.

These folks are actually very good drivers and are good at avoiding collisions. Don't ask me how I know this.

I am improving ...

no really ... I am.

And then there's the honking. All honking is not the same.

There's the -
get outa' the way honk which is a sharp angry honk.

Then there's the -
friendly honk which is usually sounded in two short happy-to-see-you beeps.

Flashing at the on-coming traffic here does not mean the usual -
oh-no-there's-a-cop-close-by.

It actually means -
hey buddy, you can turn in front of me and I won't run over you.

Quite nice, actually. ::said in her best Scottish accent::

Other news:

• Josh flies back to Texas tomorrow. He will be muchly missed - but that's where he's supposed to be.
• The latest word on our ship load of stuff is that it will be delivered later this week or early next week. Yay!
• We will be moving to another part of town on Friday to a more permenant residence. (This house was always a temporary place for us since it continues to be for sale on the market.
• This week we are pleased to have over our friend, Jenny from Indiana, to spend many happy nights to help her celebrate her last week here in Airdrie.

Please pray for both Jenny and Josh as they journey home this week. Wow what a wonderful alliteration!

Random spatterings

Once again today, Rob and I will drive some folks to visit historic Scottish sites. Our church is hosting a Covenanter's Tour and 18 RPer's from the States are here for that. Yesterday, we followed the big blue van that Andrew (the pastor here) drove. We carried 5 people in our van and headed to St. Andrews.

Today we're off to Edinburgh. It's nice to drive and just follow a van. Don't have to concentrate as much. It's also nice to get to tag along on the tour. I'm soaking it up like a sponge. Had some nice chats too.

Our good friend, Virginia Landow who is the last one still here from the mission team, came along too. Good times. Ginny has been over at our house a good bit - spending the night, eating, helping to clean house - just like one of the "kids." (How old do they have to be before you stop calling them "kids"? Beats me.)

Fish cookery is moving up on my "to-do list." May (an elder's wife) lent me a fish cookbook after we conversed about how I haven't had much experience with fish cookery (except the nice pond fish Rob has caught over the years). Get back to you on that one.

Let's see ... what else.

My time and attention are required in some unique areas such as:

• spending lots of time looking for paper to write on,
• spending more time reading user guides,
• paying particular attention to voltage,
• and participating in a haggis taste test.

Just thought you'd be interested to know that.

And here are some things that have given me pleasure of late:

• when my girls and I have cooked familiar meals for new friends,
• when our 5-year-old neighbor, Olivia, slipped around behind our house to fetch me a rose from our own garden,
• when I looked out my kitchen window and saw two little Scottish boys sword fight with sticks,
• when I played frisbee with my husband,
• and when my family sang familiar psalms together.

Well, the nice paragraphs I started out with have reverted to random spatterings of lists. My apologies. Someday, I plan to return to a more traditional paragraph form of writing, but since blogging patterns should reflect the writer's life patterns, lists are all I have to give. My life just hasn't quite smoothed out to paragrah form yet.

Thank you for your forbearance.