Camelon

We've spent these first few days in Scotland living with Joe's advisor, Mike Purcell. Fr. Purcell lives in a home outside of Edinburgh in Camelon (near/in Falkirk). It's a nice little town and we have enjoyed it a lot. The other evening Fr. Purcell suggested a nice walk for us to take to the Falkirk Wheel, a significant landmark and engineering feat close to his home. It was a beautiful evening for a walk and we were able to time it just right for some great views:

The Falkirk Wheel was constructed to connect two canals in order to transfer barges from one canal to the other. It uses water displacement and, they say, takes the same amount of energy to move the barges as it does to boil 8 kettles of water.

You can actually take short tours or trips on a passenger barge to experience the lift in action. You can also take whole week trips and slowly move down the canal to Edinburgh and/or Glasgow. We met 4 gentlemen who take a yearly holiday to tour barges and canals and who had just completed a one week trip. They loved it.

Here's the view from near the Antonine Wall just behind one of the canals. It was a really beautiful night.

We’ve also really enjoyed Fr. Purcell. He is a really nice man and we’ve had some great conversations. Not to mention his outstanding hospitality. I hope we can return the kindness sometime. Fr. Purcell has two sweet Bearded Collies: Henry and Wesley: (this is Wesley)

Henry is about 13 years old and the most mellow dog you ever encountered. I’m not sure he even realizes we are here. Wesley is 1 year old and he knows we are here. He is so friendly and loves to be right in the thick of things. He is a sweet dog and we’ve actually grown quite fond of him (but no worries, our future children will still only ever have an imaginary dog).

We interrupt this programming...

Just a quick note to say we are still here and doing great. For some reason, blogger is giving me fits about uploading pictures, so I've got several posts waiting and I'll get them up as soon as I can get the pictures to cooperate.

In the meantime, read the previous posts to catch up on what we've been doing. Coming soon: Camelon, New Friends, Stirling, and Homeward Bound!

Since a lot of our family members are kind of new to the whole blog thing, here's a quick note that might help you navigate some of the postings: anything you see underlined is a hyperlink. If you click on the underlined word or phrase, it will take you to another site or blog, usually with more information about whatever it is I've been writing about.

Finally, while you hang on baited breath for our next exciting post (and to elicit a few comments), here's a quiz for you:

When a Scottish person says they are, "going to messages" what do they mean?

If you think you know the answer, without asking a Scottish person or someone who lives in Scotland, or want to take a guess, post your guess in the comments are. There may even be a prize for the first person who gets it right!

Jet Lag

I have just this week discovered the true meaning of jet lag. I now believe that every time I have traveled in the past, I have experienced being tired. Jet lag, on the other hand=sheer exhaustion! Total and complete upheaval of your natural body clock. I naively thought that I was not going to have much trouble with jet lag after our first night here. We painfully stayed awake through the vast majority of our flight over and, somehow, managed to stay awake until 11:00pm on Tuesday. We slept a good 11.5 hours. I figured we were good to go, on a normal sleeping schedule. Seriously. I was so wrong. I was so tired that night, like crying I was so tired, but could not fall asleep until 5:00am. We had appointments to see flats on Thursday, so I only logged about 3 hours of sleep. This, naturally, brought about terrible headaches and more tired crying (honest to goodness tears of fatigue). Between appointments, I caught a couple of catnaps on park benches (thus further authenticating my homeless experience). Now, we are taking some sleep aid to help us fall asleep. I don't know if our body clocks are adjusting--actually, I've read that taking sleep aids prolongs the adjustment, but I don't really care. We're sleeping. That is all that matters to me.

Oh, and I think I have shin splints.

Warm Welcome

We arrived in Edinburgh, to a very warm welcome, on Tuesday. The trip over was long and fairly uneventful. It was a busy week leading up to our departure with the drive from St. Louis to Virginia, a two-day trip to DC for fun (with my parents), unloading our truck and storing our things, and packing for the move here (which was much more difficult than we imagined). We finally headed out last night (Monday) on a 9:45pm flight from DC. We had a bit of a delay in the London airport for our connecting flight, but made it to Edinburgh around 4:30pm (an hour behind schedule). All of our bags (about 300 pounds total) made it through and we are feeling very fortunate to have gotten so much stuff over on the plane (we really got more on than we probably should have and didn't have to pay any extra fees).

Joe's advisor, Fr. Purcell, has opened his home to us while we look for long term housing. He is out of town right now but arranged for a very kind couple from his parish to pick us up at the airport. They took us on a bit of a detour to their home, on the way to Fr. Purcell's, where they served us tea and cake and finger foods, then showed us how to use the train (about a 5 minute walk from the house). They were so sweet and even had a bag of a few staples (milk, bread) for us. Fr. Purcell left us a nicely made up room, complete with train passes, postcards and stamps, a bottle of wine, electrical adapters and a few other helpful items.

Tomorrow we are hoping to meet up with a letting agent to view some flats (we are picking up the vocabulary quickly!). There is a couple here from St. Louis who have also been really welcoming. Rebecca (Manor for you St. Louis-ans) has generously offered to show us around and help us with opening bank accounts, finding groceries, getting phones, etc. It will be so nice to have fellow Americans to orient us to this new culture!

We are exhausted and our bodies are totally off schedule. Neither of us slept much on the plane last night. It was a HUGE plane and we were really fortunate to get a last minute seat change (thanks to Joe who stood in a really long line to ask) so that we were in the set of two seats with one window and one aisle seat versus our originally assigned seats in the middle of the 5 person middle section. But, still it was cramped and uncomfortable and sleep was not easy. I did not realize what a long trip it would be. All said, it took 19 hours from my parents' house to Edinburgh. And, we have not slept in quite awhile. So, we are hoping for a long night's sleep.

It does feel a little far from home, but it has been nice to be welcomed so warmly. We do miss our friends and family and are looking forward to getting settled so you can come visit us!

Long Awaited Updates

Wow. It has been a busy summer. We finally update the blog (though had to leave lots of important things out). Check out what we’ve been doing:

June 7: Our first anniversary
July 4-10: Schmitt family vacation to Lake Michigan
July 10-13: Long weekend in Chicago
July 17-20: Visit from the Rippetoes
July 25-27: Visit from Joe’s mom, Ronda
July 31-August 2: Visit from Ricky, April, and Ella Rivera
August 14-16: Visit with Joe’s family in their hometown
August 21: Evening out with friends
August 22: Another evening out with friends
August 25-28: Amanda’s trip to San Diego
August 29: Good-bye party for Amanda’s work
August 30: Our last day in St. Louis
August 31: Moving day!
September 4-5: Trip to Washington, DC

So, what’s next?

Joe and I are leaving on Monday evening for Scotland. We leave around 9:30pm and arrive in Edinburgh around 3:30pm the next day. We have a 4 hour stop-over in London somewhere in that journey. We are looking forward to getting there and the next stage in this adventure, but we do think we are going to miss the US, our families, and friends. We hope to have lots of visitors in Edinburgh (please, consider yourselves invited). We actually were not able to line up a short term apartment but Joe’s advisor really generously offered for us to stay in his home while we are locating long term housing. We are so grateful to him for this and for all the arrangements he has made (someone is even picking us up at the airport). We’ve got a few appointments scheduled to see apartments (flats, as they are known in the UK) and hope to get something together quickly. I have an interview on September 14 and just submitted an application for another job yesterday.

We should be online shortly after we arrive and are looking forward to updating the blog regularly with all of our adventures! Thanks for coming along with us!

Virginia

We’ve been in Virginia since Tuesday, following a very long drive from Kentucky (16’ Penske truck + West Virginia Mountains = LONG, slow, winding drive). Since we’ve been here, we’ve unloaded our truck, taken care most of our major moving related tasks (well, not packing) and become totally addicted to the Wii.

We also decided to venture to DC with my mom and dad. It was a great trip and we got to see lots of DC attractions. On the way home, Joe said, “I wish I knew about DC sooner.” Since I’m pretty sure he knew about Washington, DC long before this visit (heck, we went last April), I think he meant he wished he had been to DC earlier in his life since it is such an interesting place.

Our two days in the nation's capital were pretty packed. We finally took a tour of the capital after two mad dash trips back to the car to stash the fam’s contraband—food and drink and yes, a concealed weapon (in the form of a money clip with a pocket knife)—and then ventured over to the Library of Congress. I’ve been to DC a lot, but I’ve never been here. It was beautiful. The architecture and design were really stunning.

Library of Congress

Outside of the Capital

We also went to the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, the American History Museum (my favorite part was seeing the flag that was flying in 1814 that inspired the creation of the National Anthem. It was a really moving display), the Lincoln Monument, and Arlington Cemetery.

In front of the Lincoln Memorial

Excerpt from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Senator Ted Kennedy's grave

MOVING DAY!

MOVING DAY! I can’t believe today has come! Somehow, we managed to get out of St. Louis without a single picture of all our boxes, rental truck, or empty apartment. So, you’ll just have to take our word for it that there were a lot of boxes, a big ole truck, and eventually a very empty and clean apartment.

Joe’s mom and older brother were AMAZING and drove all the way to St. Louis to help load the truck (thank you Ricky) and clean the apartment (thank you, Ronda!). I’m embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t even there to load a single box or clean a single thing, as I had to work that morning. When I got home they were done with everything! We were SO thankful to them—there is no way that we could have gotten everything done without them and been on the road on today.

We drove about 5.5 hours to Lexington, KY where we are staying at a really nice hotel (thank you, Hotwire)! Joe and I are so happy to be sleeping somewhere clean with no boxes, no HVAC holes in the walls, no water damage, and temperature controls. Tomorrow, we’ll drive the rest of the way to Virginia, to my parent’s house where we will be storing our things while we are in Scotland.