TheLionRampant.net

It snowed in our home town! Wow, that has never happened to me before; I had a difficult time paying attention in class Wednesday AM. It started snowing around 9:30 Wednesday morning and didn’t stop until class ended at 11. It probably snowed a few inches in that short bit. There were large big flakes, and then it was just a white haze at points when the wind was blowing so hard, and then it would change directions in seconds! Walking home was a bit precarious…I slipped a bit, but did not fall on my bum.
Let me tell you about our IKEA trip. Well, it’s always a bit of a challenge to get out there (about a 30 minute car drive, longer in the bus). We ended up taking bus route 37 rather than 37A and had to trek across a rather large shopping centre (yes, they actually have those here!) in the snow and very chilly wind as the 37 route didn’t go exactly directly to IKEA. We were very glad we had good-gripping shoes for this round of snow. But I was definitely rethinking how amazing Scotland is and how cool I thought the snow was before. (The snow is of course still quite cool, but definitely much more cool when one is inside, rather than in the midst of it–unless of course one is skiing–but I digress…). So we scraped our coins together and bought two hotdogs for 65p each and tried to get feeling back into our chilled faces. We had a nice meander through the store en route to fulfilling Mission Bookshelf. Unfortunately, Mission Bookshelf failed as the IKEA Staff Commandos charge ?30 for delivery of the bookshelf and since the bookshelf only costs ?29, we figured we had better abort the mission.

On another note, we bought an antique pine table (to use as our desk for the time being) c. 1880, so though Mission Bookshelf failed, we are getting a great pine table and hopefully the neck and back soreness from reading and typing on our laps will vanish!

On yet another note, all my friends are getting married and some are thinking of having children (not the ones getting married now!). There are four girls from home getting married between March and August and I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to any of their weddings. Why don’t they all just get married when it’s chilly and cold there so the flights would be cheaper for me? haha. The marriages are awesome, but when I think of people my age becoming parents it just makes me feel old, grown-up, etc.–all those things I usually don’t feel. It’s a mad world. Please let us know what’s up with you, too!

Welcome to our new site and new blog. I am so proud of the amazing job Bryce has done with the site, designing it and teaching himself how to do it! It’s all very impressive. We should have pictures up soon and we already have some of our papers up to read. We also have some links up so you too, can waste some time on the internet. Hopefully, we’ll get the section on book reviews up soon…well ’soon’ in the sense ‘as soon as we have time’ (which may not be so ’soon’). So have a look around and please comment away. For those of you who need instructions on the tricky art of commenting: you just click ‘comment’ at the bottom of each entry (we’ve imported most of the posts from our old blog, and you can comment on any post after the 19th Dec. entry), fill in your details and post your comment. Cheers!

We love hearing from you all and need all the encouragement we can get sometimes! Bryce is at the Kirk Session right now to be approved to do his internship at New Restalrig. He’s been great getting things cleared up with Scottish Gas, etc. I worked all day and went to a seminar. Now I’m home to read. Hope you all are having more exciting times than us. (Here, I’ve written to ‘read about our adventures’ and most times, it appears that we aren’t having particularly adventurous days).

OK, I’ll definitely need your prayers these next few weeks. Here’s the deal: I am planning on applying for the Overseas Research Scheme (ORS) that allows international research students attending Edinburgh Uni to pay tuition at the home UK rate rather than the international rate (a difference of about 5000 pounds). That application is due by 2 Feb at the latest. Of course, right now, I’m not a research student as I’m in a taught programme. So that means to be eligible for the scholarship for 2004-2005 I need to be accepted by the University into a Ph.D. programme before that date. Thankfully I have an undergrad prof and a prof at Edinburgh who will be speedily writing me recommendations for both of those applications. However, I’m intending on turning my Ph.D. application in by 16 Jan, which is really soon! The actual paper application isn’t difficult, but I do need to have a fully worked out research proposal and that’s where it gets tricky. I do have an initial idea: to study the open/sublime environmental spaces that outcast figures in nineteenth century American literature inhabit (the sea, the prairie, the wilderness/West, etc.) and analyse how this is a reaction against earlier, cramped European spaces. So…my next few weeks will be just a bit hectic! Plus, I am doing a bit of editing as well. Thankfully Bryce isn’t stressed as he isn’t back at classes for 2 weeks (of course he has a sermon to prepare and an essay to begin) and so he’s been great cooking dinner most nights and doing laundry. Love you all!

Yep, we’re back to the daily grind. I started back at work after a two-week break while my parents were here. Thankfully the last two days were slow (overall anyway) so it wasn’t Ashley returning from vacation mode to Ashley running around with her head cut off. Of course I have gotten ill again; I think this is the third time I’ve come down with something since moving to Scotland. I even missed both services on Sunday since I didn’t want to exacerbate the lung-hacking, nose-blowing thing. My wonderful manager let me come in to work today at noon, so I think getting about 10-11 hours of sleep has helped me to feel better today. So now, I’ve started taking a multi-vitamin and making sure I get lots of sleep. Also, I’m going to try not to overdo it this term and not to overstress either.

I have my first class tomorrow. It’s called Anglo Scots and North Britons and though the title doesn’t sound all that enthralling, I think it’ll give me some good background and I hope to get to know the prof (who may end up being my PhD supervisor) better through taking her class. It is odd being a postgrad though, we call our profs by their first names–I always feel odd emailing them and saying: ‘Hi Bob,’ or ‘Hi Susan,’. Then, I found out my core course, Postcolonial Identities, has been changed from Thursday afternoons to Friday mornings just like it was last term. I don’t like morning classes and especially on a Friday. I know you all feel so sorry for me when you are working five mornings (and afternoons) a week, but you are getting paid while I PAY the University. Ah well. This term ends mid-March and then it’s just writing the MSc dissertation on…something interesting I come up with. I’m also hoping to apply to upgrade my MSc to PhD status within the next month. Now I just have to come up with a research proposal!

I think every day I walk home I am reminded how much I like Edinburgh. It’s been right warm in fact this week with temperatures topping off at 52F once! It’s a beautiful city and so charming. I miss family and friends and all the security of living somewhere where we know people and are involved, but at the same time, I really like it here, even without everything all sorted. We are a bit short on our finances, so please pray for provision; also, we could use some more close friends.

So how are you all doing?

I don’t think I can possibly describe everything we’ve done in the past 2 weeks. I have taken 7 or 8 rolls of film; I’ll probably need to take out another student loan to get them all developed. But once I do that I’ll post them and then you can ask questions if you feel so inclined.
OK, so yesterday we went to Glasgow with the Hays. There is a bus that only costs 1 pound per person, and as long as you don’t sit upstairs on the bus you won’t get car sick (we learned this the hard way). Our primary objective in going to Glasgow was to go to St Mungo Museum Of Religious Life And Art. They have Salvador Dali’s St. John of the Cross, which is a really cool painting. Other than that, however, this museum is a complete waste of time. It was supposed to highlight religious life and art in the history of Scotland, but they obviously have an anti-Christian bent. There was much more pagan art than Christian, and the Christian stuff they had wasn’t even that great. They had prints of St. John of the Cross for sale, I’m now kicking myself for not buying one. The prints were cheap, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring myself to go back into that building.
Other cool things we did in Glasgow:
We saw St. George’s Tron (Church of Scotland), the church where both Eric Alexander and Sinclair Ferguson were previously the pastors. The church is something of an inspiration to evangelical Christians in the Church of Scotland, as The Tron has remained a strong church in the midst of overwhelming liberalism. It’s also a city center church (they have a weekday lunchtime service for people who work in the area) which is really cool. It’s right in the heart of the city, the street actually goes around the church, pretty cool. Unfortunately the church was closed, as Jonathan and I had hoped to get pictures of ourselves in the pulpit!
We also walked around probably the largest cemetery I’ve ever seen. It’s on the top of a hill, and is referred to as the Necropolis (city of the dead). There’s something about the old cemeteries here that is kinda cool, I’m not sure why.
We walked through the Glasgow Cathedral, which is probably the coolest cathedral I’ve seen in the UK (pictures to come).
At the end of the day, we walked along the main shopping street for about an hour. There were so many shops that it almost felt like being in the US. That is, except for the fact that everything closed at 5pm. We found a deep dish pizza place for dinner, a rarity in this country. And it wasn’t that expensive either, 5 pounds each for all you can eat buffet. We’ve found eating out to be a waste here. Unless you go somewhere really expensive the food is not great, the service is sub-par, and it is still over-priced.
So that was our day in Glasgow. It’s not as charming a city as Edinburgh so I’m glad that we live here. But it would be worth another visit or 2.

Today’s Cultural Idiosyncrasy:
For such a small country, it’s amazing the variety of accents you hear in Scotland. The country is less than half the size of California, but you can tell where people are from because of their accents. The Glaswegian accent is probably what most people think of as a ‘Scottish Accent.’ It is often really hard to understand, even now that we’re accustomed to Scottish accents. At its worst it sounds a bit like Brad Pitt in Snatch.