BURNS SUPPER!

A few weeks ago I got my first real taste of Scottish culture and..ahem..retch...haggis! Um...yes, I did!

On January 25th Scotland holds this dinner festival called the Burns Supper in celebration of a man named Robert Burns. I guess you could say he was like the Scottish Shakespeare. He is known as, "Scotland's favourite son", the "Ploughman Poet", the "Bard of Ayrshire" and/or simply, just the "Bard". In fact I am certain you have heard at least one of his poems, it goes like this, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot,and never brought to mind ? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?" WHAT?!? What is that? It sounds familiar but...what?! That's right he wrote that song that everyone sings at New Years but no one really knows the words or else you make them up...yep, that's the one. Anyway, now that you are all nodding your head in realization and saying, "OH...." you can understand who Robert Burns was.

So, our ward put together a nice Burns celebration and Mike and I bought our tickets and were planning to go. Unfortunately, we were not supposed to take Andrew (no kids allowed, this is a serious supper!) and due to a long story our sitter fell threw. Well, Mike being the nice and awesome husband that he is said he would stay home with Andrew so that I could go (at this point due to the weather I had been stuck in the flat for about three days straight and he recognized I needed to get out) so I called my friend Camille, whose husband was also staying home with he kids, and we went together.

We were ready! All dressed up in our tartan (plaid skirts). When we walked in it was super cool! There was a bagpiper playing and all the men wore their kilts and there was tartan all over the walls and it just felt so...Scottish, it was fun! We took a seat and got ready for the celebration. There were some lovely songs, some Scottish dancing, lots of bagpipes, and then the food. 90% of the food was great! It started with some Scottish broth which was basically chicken stock soup with vegetables, very good, and then it went into the main even...gulp...we knew it was coming...the haggis.

Quick refresher--Haggis contains sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in a sheep's stomach for approximately three hours.

It was the poor mans meal and it really is a staple in Scottish history and culture, therefore I knew I was going to have to try it, based on principle. If I'm going to live in Scotland, I need to try haggis. So, when it was coming I prepared myself. And when it came out it was, well...quite and event!!!

First of all a bagpiper plays the haggis song and marches around the whole room while the chef carries the haggis behind and they proceed to deliver it to the honored guests seated at the front of the room. (Meanwhile we all stare in awe at the wonderful haggis) The person at the head of the table then does this reading TO the haggis all said in Scottish and, sadly, I couldn't understand a word except for, 'delicious', haggis' and 'knife' (pronounced 'neef') which the lady then waved around the stakes presidents head and then slashed the haggis open and put the stuff in her hands and smelled it. MMMMMMMMMMMM! After that then the bagpiper and the chef pick up where they left off and march it out to the kitchen to be served up.

I knew it was time. So when I was presented with my plate I decided to take no hesitations. Just dig in. I asked Camille if she was going to try (Camille is a fellow American) and she looked at me like I was crazy and replied, "no". Very well...so I picked up my fork and took a bite. (Bear in mind I was seated at a table with Scottish people, and I was so nervous I would offend them if I didn't like it). But no worries, one of the girls at the table confessed she hated it and made her husband eat hers so when I put that spicey bit of sheep stomach in my mouth and nearly wretched, no one cared! Honestly it wasn't the worst thing I have ever tasted, in fact if I didn't know what was in it, it wouldn't be too bad, but the texture...well you can tell what it is by the texture so that was enough for me.

After that Camille and I left to get back to our kids and had a little adventure getting out of the church parking lot. It had gotten so icy that her van couldn't make it up the little hill to get out. After multiple attempts and sliding back down the Elders came up and helped push us. THANK YOU ELDERS! It was actually kind of hard but my favorite part was when Camille asked one of the Elders if they could try driving it out and he responded, "We can't...it's against the rules, but we HAVE FAITH in you , sister!" Well, the faith worked and we did eventually get out of that ice pit.

I did manage to brings Mike some haggis. So when we got home he tried some. Let's just say his reaction was similar to mine. YUCK! But so fun that we finally got to experience such a great Scottish past time.

I loved the the culture, and the atmosphere and really everything about it except the haggis itself. I just wish everyone could experience it!!!

Scottish broth


Dancing


Bringing out the Haggis!!






Reading to the Haggis!


Here it is! YUMMO!!!

Recovering fast food addict?!?!

I have never wanted a Wendy's hamburger more than I do this very second. The smell of the pickles and the onion (even though I HATE onions), the cheap imitation cheese, the square patty of american beef, nestled between a soggy tomotoe and crunchy lettuce. The squishy, fortified white bun is smeared in kethcup, mustard and mayo...mmmmmmmmmm! I can almost taste it, I can almost smell it...I can almost hear the crinkly sound of me unwrapping it from its greasy red and white paper while I take in the comforting aroma of warm burger goodness. I want it so bad right now it hurts. I want it with fries and a soda and a mini frosty. I want to gobble it down in a matter of minutes and feel that amazing satisfied relief the can only come when a craving of this magnitude is relieved. It's gnawing at me. It's making me crazy!!!! I have NOTHING in the house that comes remotely close. I tried cooking a frozen egg roll. Discusting. I tried eating a peice of chocolate. Insulting. I tried making a ham sandwhich. My stomach churned. I have no beef in this house! There are NO, repeat...NO hamburger joints in my village and I don't have a car. The closest thing is the "Ploughman...A real pub!" down the street. They serve mutton chops.

There is a McDonalds in the city, but I don't have a way there....beleive me I would drive the 35 minutes if I could! I feel so lonely and gnawingly depraved of my comfort food. Curse you Scotland! I just want a cheap American hamburger!

Ok, Scotland, I take that back, I don't curse you. But I do curse the fact that I have this incredibly overcoming craving that will not go away! I feel like a drug addict without his heroine...this is beyond sad. I know.

SIGH....for now you will remain a fond dream.

Some pictures

Hi! I am working on a long post explaining all the updates of our lives here in Aberdeen, but I'm not done and I don't want to rush it. However we are finally able to post pictures (turns out we were just missing the right cord) so I decided to post a few showing our adventures of the week we spent in Northumberland with Mike's parents. Remember how I said we were snowed in? Well, you will see what I meant...but despite the crazy snow, Rothbury (the village they live in) is probably ones of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Take a look and see what I mean...

Here is little Andrew all piled in a snow bank. This was funny, Mike just tossed him in and he pretty much landed like this...although Mike added a little snow around his shoulders. Poor kid!


These are Mike's parents cars all covered in snow. It's funny because just the day before Mike had dug them out and cleared the drive...sigh...I helped him do it all over again.



This is Andrew showing how deep it is on level ground.


I believe it took Mike about an hour to clear this little walkway!


I LOVE this view! It's from my in-laws rear window. Behind their house is a beautiful field complete with a stone tower constructed in the 19th century for a wealthy man who wanted to have a special place to study the stars...well, why not build a tower?!


This is the sun peeking through the clouds in front of the house. Isn't it lovely?!


We went sledding one day and put Andrew in a make-shift sled of sorts. This is Mike dragging him in a plastic bin...it worked okay. Enough to keep Andrew happy and excited!


This is a view from the field looking back to my in-laws house.


More sledding! Believe it or not this is one of the main roads to get to quite a few houses. They just aren't equipped to deal with this kind of weather so it took weeks before the council (local gov.) came and plowed the roads. However, in the meantime, all the residents get allotted a certain amount of grit (i.e. salt and dirt) to use so that they can at least attempt to get out the drive. It would work accept that about half way through we ran out of grit and they didn't have any more...hence the fact we were stuck! (At least until the very nice stake president with a 4X4 came and gave us a lift to the train station...but that is a story I'll explain later)


On another day we all walked into town. This was picture of us at the top of the hill overlooking the little village.


This is a view overlooking the countryside. (Not quite sure why I look like I'm getting goosed...)


Here is tired, little Andrew after a long day of fun in the snow.


Goodbye! I'll be posting more soon!

The Angel Enigma

Andrew...OH, my stinky little Andrew. He had a rough day today. Granted it is understandable. After we got up and ate breakfast we ventured out to Aberdeen city center to find a bookstore that sells Mike's textbooks. We didn't think it would be too difficult. SNORT! We were wrong. Driving here is DIFFERENT! Woo-da-lally, it is different! Forget the whole driving on the the 'other' side stuff...the real problems come from the impossibly small roads and the incredible difficulty of navigating. I was spoiled with the Utah grid system, that is certain. We live in a little village called Peterculter (pronounced, 'cooter' here)and we knew that it would take about a half hour or so to get into the city center near kings college Aberdeen which was our destination. Well, after driving about 2 hours we finally found the bookstore by making three wrong turns down a cobbly alley. We were lucky...YES! Although I will say that a fantastic member in the ward, Brother Goldie, was kind enough to let us borrow his Navman (gps) for the week to help us get used to where we need to go. The Navman saved our life! In fact, if we hadn't had it we would probably still be trodging around Aberdeen. Anyway, as you can imagine we had a fully rested and awake toddler strapped in the back who DID NOT appreciate being cooped up for so long. So on some level I could understand why he screamed for half the time...although, I'm still twitching a little.

Well, after we went to the bookstore (and consequently found out that they DID NOT carry Mikes books)we decided to take a little trip to the nearby ASDA (UK version of Walmart) to stalk up on food and a few other things we needed. Well, Andrew DID NOT appreciate this either. I thought he might enjoy it, he usually likes going to the store with me. However, in his view the whole shopping trip was a crule taunt. We would not let him play on the moving walkways (seriously, like the ones at the airport, except you can put your cart on them...so cool). We would not let him throw the hello kitty phone accessories into the display basket and we would not let him squeeze the tellytubby toy for the 205th time because it was time to go. Needless to say he screamed nearly the whole time.

When we finally made it home, he was still screeming and saying things like, "No, no Mommy!" or "STOP...Noooooooo!" the funny thing was I wasn't doing anything...nada! So after feeding him a jam sandwhich and letting him watch a little kids show he calmed down and I finally got him to sleep. Ahhh... Mike and I were laughing when it was all over. We were laughing because it was quite a stressful morning and Andrew was the cherry on top, we were laughing because we were both so frazzled it smelled like charred hair and we were laughing because, well...what else are you going to do. (I have left out a bunch of other stressful things that happened, but really, it was quite crazy today) Anyway, during our laugh time Mike said it was funny because most people think of thier kids as little angels and today we agreed...today Andrew proved to be our little angel of DARKNESS!

Well, typically if Andrew has a rough morning it will stay that way throughout the day and I fully expected it to continue once he woke up. I was right. Mommy could do no right this afternoon and we were pretty much neck deep in a battle of 'figure-out-how-to-keep-Andrew's-pitch-out-of-shrill-opera-singer-tones'. Anyways, so this was the pace of the afternoon and then suddenly, non-expectantly, Andrew became happy. He was sweet, he was cuddly, he would play, he would laugh, he would eat. In fact I just finished putting him to bed and he was SOOO cute. We read a book and said a prayer (he copied everything I said and is getting so good at his words!). He gave me a kiss and a hug and even said, "I ub ew" unprompted. WHAT THE...

I suddenly found myself NOT wanting to put him to bed. I wanted to hold him and snuggle with him and play with him and read to him. I wanted to kiss those chubby cheeks and hold those chubby hands and do whatever that little angel wanted! HUH?! What, wait?!? Did I just catch myself calling Andrew and ANGEL...like the kind with white wings and a halo?

Oh....isn't parenting an enigma?!?