Harwell

These last few weeks have been insanely awesome. Easter Sunday I caught the train down from Edinburgh to Harwell, where my friend MissMarkey lives. I’ve known MM since she came to stay at my place before the 2009 Christchurch Convention. Luckily for her, we all got on like a house on fire, but I’ve only had the pleasure of her company once since then, when we spent a week in New York, and then went to the BC in DC convention in 2011. She was definitely one of the drawing points of my move to Scotland, although it’s not that close to where she lives, it’s definitely a LOT closer than New Zealand!

So I was pretty excited to go visit her. But first, the train trip. I had thought about getting the bus down the night previously after work, but by the time I finally booked, the train was about £4 more expensive, during the day, and still got me in to Oxford in time to get the last 2 buses to Harwell. So train it was. I’d acquired the latest Doctor Who episode to watch on the train, but I only got as far as the first 15 minutes or so and was distracted by the gorgeous view going along the Forth of Firth. It was stunning – lots of green, and a few falling down dwellings that had probably been there since the beginning of time! So I turned on an audiobook (What I Saw and Why I Lied by Judy Blundell, which I still haven’t finished, I need to put it onto my ipod instead), and spent a glorious couple of hours appreciating the view of Scotland and England. I got off the train in Burmingham to transfer over to a train to Oxford, and spent just less than an hour at the railway station. Sadly I left my box of nuts (for snacks) on the train. I really need to remember to check under the seats!

I got on to the train to Oxford fine, but had a small freak out moment when there was someone sitting in my spot, and I thought I had got onto the wrong train! I wandered around for a while trying to find the train conductor, and ended up sitting next to a slightly skeezy, drunk guy who tried to hit on me *shudders*. Luckily he got off before I had to do anything drastic, and then we were in Oxford!

The train got in to Oxford right on time, and I got off with minimal fuss, then had good fun first putting money on my phone so I could let MM know when I was on the bus, then trying to find the bus stop. It wasn’t too bad, I just had a bit of difficulty matching my written description from google maps to the streets, and whether I should turn left or right. Luckily I looked suitably lost with my book of useful information that a cyclist asked if I needed some help and confirmed that I did indeed need to turn left. After that slight kerfuffle, I made it to the bus stop just as the bus was pulling in (admittedly there was a small amount of running when I realised I had 10 minutes to do an 8 minute walk – I don’t trust buses not to leave early!). I was the only passenger until we pulled into Didcot Railway Station (where my train was going, so next time I’ll get off there instead and save myself the walk). From there it was only about 10 minutes to Harwell where I had asked the driver to give me a yell a few minutes before we got in so I could organize myself. Luckily I saw MM on the side of the road signaling, because he hadn’t yelled and it didn’t take me too long to get off the bus!

We had a nice hug, and then walked a few metres down the road to MM’s place. It was so nice to see MM, who I hadn’t seen since 2011’s trip to the USA when we spent a week in New York and a weekend at the BC in DC convention. We had a nice catch up while the soup for dinner warmed up. After dinner we had a delicious flan that MM had whipped up, and then knitted, and hung out on the internet till about midnight.

The next day (Easter Monday), we were part of the village Easter egg hunt, so we headed off to the church after lunch (after some more knitting and internetting). I was the Easter Bunny and had to hide somewhere in the church for the kids to find me and claim their Easter eggs. The first hiding place I had wasn’t that great, but after 2 kids found me I moved into the pulpit with the door open a smidge, so I could see out and sat in there for what seemed like a long time! When my legs started going numb I moved across to somewhere with a bit more space, and sat there for a bit. It wasn’t nearly as good, so once a few more kids had found me I moved back to the pulpit, and then ended up back in my third hiding place for the last (cold) hour or so. I had tried to text MM to ask if there were any more kids, but didn’t get any reply (there wasn’t much cell reception in the church), and eventually the last kid did come and claim their eggs. It was lots of fun!

The chicks were all over me

Once we’d had a cup of tea and a bit of a chat with the people still there we drove around and picked up all the Easter bunnies scattered around the village (as part of the scavenger hunt) then got dropped off back at MM’s place. More soup for dinner, and some more knitting, hanging on the internet, and warming the chicks up. Janice has lots of chickens, and she’d taken a few of the eggs in to school so the kids could watch the eggs hatch, and brought them home with her in the evenings/weekends. She had also decided to take them into the church for the kids there to look at and had cleaned their warming lamp which then didn’t want to work in the church, and I thought the fuse must have blown, but it turned out to just need a new lightbulb. In the meantime the chicks were being heated by hot wheat pack, and we’d taken them out in the evening for a bit of a romp.

Tuesday we caught the bus into Didcot and did a bit of shopping in the charity shops. I bought two long sleeved cotton shirts for Turkey, and Janice might have bought some books. I’d been looking for cotton shirts in Edinburgh’s numerous charity shops and hadn’t found anything I liked/fitted/was the right weight so I was really glad to find these 2, especially when I thought I’d miscalculated how many tshirts I’d need and that I’d brought one less (I hadn’t!). Then off to a yarn shop with a slightly scary Swedish woman who helped us make a few purchases, mostly for yarn bombing on my part. Then we made our way to the supermarket to get things for quiche (which I had promised to help make). We caught the bus back to Harwell and MM got potatoes in the oven to roast and I made 2 (yummy, if I say so!) spinach quiches, one for dinner and one for lunch the next day when Skyring was supposed to be joining us. We realised when we unpacked the groceries that we’d accidentally gotten one sweet pastry crust and one savory, and of course I then made the mistake of taking them out of the packaging and then we couldn’t figure out which one was which, but I’m pretty sure we ate the sweet one (filled with spinach and egg and things!) for dinner that night. It was still nice! Followed by the last of the flan. More knitting/internet/chicks until around midnight when we snuck out into the village and yarnbombed a couple of the bus stop poles on MM’s street. Lots of hilarity there when we thought we’d stuffed it up and ended up with one side much higher than another, but it was just my fairly average holding together. One ended up inside out, but I think it still looked fine! Then back home to bed.

I didn’t sleep well, I kept waking up early in the morning wondering if Skyring had got in yet, his flight was supposed to have arrived in London about 5am (but was delayed), and eventually got up about 8.30am and hung around in my pajamas for a while. After what seemed like ages (but probably wasn’t!) he arrived and we all had a massive hug. He needed to rejig his suitcases because his big BC tote bag had the zip broken in transit and no longer did up once he’d opened it so brought some of his stuff inside. Janice and I made a pavlova while he did that. It turned out pretty good for my second ever attempt (and first on my own without Mum!). Had the rest of the quiche (the savoury one!) and the pav for lunch, and then went off for a tour of the church tower as MM had very kindly arranged for the head bell ringer to give us a bit of a tour. He showed us a bit about the bells, and even lowered one (which involves ringing it) for us! Then we went up on the church tower roof which had amazing views over Harwell, but was incredibly windy and a bit cold. When we’d had enough, we climbed back down, and went on a small snarfari around the village. I probably got about 30 before we’d all had enough of the wind and we went to MM’s book tree book and created a book tree. Then back to MM’s place where I packed all my stuff up. Lytteltonwitch arrived about 5, and we all headed out to dinner at a pub in a neighboring village with Molyneux and her son. Lots of fun had (as tends to happen when BCers meet up!), and we might have convinced Molyneux to come to Leeds in September for her birthday, which happily coincides with the BC Unconvention happening there. About 10 we left, Skyring dropped LW and MM back at MM’s place, we picked up my luggage, and drove in to the airport hotel at Heathrow.

Discoverylovers Road Trip Peanut Buttery Chocolate Pretzel Goodness

The second ever road trip Skyring and I did together, I somehow got put in charge of snacks, so the wonderful Tzurriz and her 2 kids (at the time) took me to Trader Joe’s to load up on yummy things like dried banana slices (not like banana chips, much more moist), mango slices, biscuits (cookies), and, possibly the coup de resistance, chocolate coated peanut butter filled pretzels. I don’t think we came close to eating it all, but ever since then, the chocolate coated peanut butter filled pretzels have been the in joke for road trip snacks.

So when I figured out that Skyring and I were going to be doing another road trip in Turkey, I was determined to try and find them to take with me to Turkey. My first attempt to get them was to ask Linda (last visitor) to see if she could find them in the US before she came over, but she couldn’t find them. Next, I had a look at the American Candy Store in Edinburgh. I found chocolate coated pretzels, which would have been fine if they hadn’t been £5 for about 100 grams. So then I decided I should just make some.

So, for your perusal/deliciousness: my road trip peanut buttery chocolate pretzel goodness*

Makes 11.

1 bag of hard pretzels
300 grams of dark chocolate (I used cooking chocolate)
2 big spoons of good peanut butter**

Melt the chocolate and peanut butter together over a pot of boiling water (you can use a double boiler, but I just used 2 pots of the same size with boiling water in the bottom one), stirring constantly.

In cupcake patties, put a small handful (about 6-8) pretzels.

When the chocolate and peanut butter are melted together, spoon 2-3 spoons of the mix over the pretzels, making sure you coat the pretzels so they stick together.

Leave to set.

Enjoy! They’re quite rich, and I don’t think kids would like them, they might prefer them with milk chocolate!

*feel free to call it something else if you like eg dlrtpbcpg***

**I bought mine at real foods, and I think it’s organic and just has peanuts in it

***no I don’t know how to pronounce that either, especially with my New Zealand accent!

Busy Bee!

I have had the busiest week in a LONG time (thinking about it, probably the week before I left NZ!).

Sunday I finally got a hold of Pete to tell him my exciting news. After being told that school holidays managed to almost exactly line up with when Pete was planning on being here, I had managed to work up the courage to ask one of my employers for the Saturday he was here off so we could book a trip to Gallipoli! So we spent lots of time planning

I also had to work on a new idea for the library interview on Monday. After a lot of freaking out about it I had to hand draw my original idea because I hadn’t come up with anything I liked enough to use.

Monday morning I caught the bus out to the library after getting not enough sleep, and when I got there found out the interviews were actually the next day. So I got to schlep myself back home for another hours sleep, and to try and keep working on the poster (because I then knew the people who would be interviewing me would be the same as the previous interview). After an hour sleep I went in to after school care and was only slightly zoned out! Luckily I was on snack, and the kids don’t know me well enough yet to know that usually my memory isn’t quite that bad!

After work I caught the bus into town (it was snowing like crazy, in fact it looked exactly like it does in Christmas cards!) and met TCM who was back in town for a night before heading home early the next morning. I was a bit of an appalling host, I was so tired, and so distracted trying to get ready for the interview the next day. I did manage to get another poster ready, and I managed to get out of bed at 4am to say goodbye though! And the macaroni and cheese I made for dinner wasn’t too bad either!

Tuesday morning saw me back at the library for the proper interview. It was a bit average and I didn’t think I would get it (and I didn’t). Then back home and back to work in day 2 of the snowstorm. After 2 nights of not getting enough sleep I tried to go to bed early but failed to actually fall asleep because there was way too much going through my mind (primarily should I get any vaccinated for anything before going to Turkey – according to Pete (and his doctor wife!) I don’t need anything ).

Wednesday morning was my first day at the play group I’m volunteering for. That was lots of fun! I got to play with lots of small kids, and did one on one for one kid who wasn’t have a great day. He was fine as long as he was entertained though. After that finished I went home to have some lunch, I’m so looking forward to getting my bike (oh yeah, I’m buying a bike!) because two of the jobs are really close together, but I don’t really have anywhere to hang out between, and home isn’t that far away either. Plus it’s along a canal, so no car traffic for Mum to worry about! I then caught the bus to a shopping center where I had arranged to meet someone I was buying a tripod off from gumtree. I completely failed timewise again and didn’t think about the bus times back, so the last bus I could catch to get back to work in time was 10 minutes before we were due to meet. Slight fail there! Luckily I did manage to get back to work in time, but I got the pleasure of riding in a black cab for the first time this year!

Thursday morning I got to sleep in until a decent time (10am oh year!) and after face painting at work (a couple of 8 year olds did a great design of a flower on my face, and a cool elephant on my hand, and I did a couple of cool designs on them too!) I got seriously lost trying to find the Australian woman I met at the yarn festivals house to talk about looking after her kids during the holidays and some mornings before after school care. I got amazingly lost (I had to ask for directions 3 times even with a map book!), enough that I’m mentioning it twice :p I did find my way there eventually, and we had a nice chat, and I got to meet one of her sons (the other one was sick in bed asleep). He is SO gorgeous and tickly, and we (the Mum not the son!) worked out some hours for the holidays

Friday morning I got to sleep in again and then went in to work for the afternoon. I did face painting again, and mistakenly let the 5/6 year olds loose on my face. They went slightly mental and I ended up covered in brown and green and purple, all covered in gold glitter. And when I say all, I mean face, ears, neck, hands, forearms, all. I managed to get most of it off, but holy cow does that glitter stick! You’d think that because the glitter was over the top of all the other paint it would come off if I got the paint off, but you’d be wrong! It ended up all over my face, down my top (even where they didn’t paint thanks gravity!). After work I headed to my ukulele groups first birthday and we had a great strum along.

Work, yarn, and possibly more work!

I started work at the after school care on Wednesday and it’s going really well so far! Wednesday I got to do snack, which I was a bit freaked out about because there’s about 80 kids and no one told me they weren’t all coming in for snack at the same time. Thankfully, they only come in about 5 at a time, so I wasn’t too rushed!

Thursday I helped with the bake sale for comic relief. Pretty straightforward, I just got to supervise whoever wanted to help take money in exchange for yummy baked goods. It was easy peasy – the only difficult part was when a VERY loud 11/12 year old on a massive sugar high started harassing me for the last popcorn covered in melted marshmellow. She didn’t have enough money for it, and even if she had I wouldn’t have sold it to her! I’m 99% there won’t be any hard feelings come Monday (she wasn’t in on Friday).

Thursday evening I got an email saying I made it to the interview stage for the library job (same as the last job for the library, but at a different library). I thought about not booking an interview, but then figured I can go to the interview and hopefully either fill in some gaps (original thought), or stop working at after school care (Mum’s suggestion, because I’m still in my trial month and haven’t signed a contract yet), or not work at the after school care every day (new thought). Then I had to decide whether to use the poster I designed for the last interview or to make a new one. After thinking about it for a while I’ve decided to do something similar, but not exactly the same.

Friday was the most fun day of the week. School finishes early on Fridays so I get paid for longer, plus we were all dressing up for Red Nose Day so I got to wear my pajamas to work Plus a bright red dressing gown, which I mostly took for warmth (I didn’t know we were getting dressed up for RND), so it was a nice coincidence that my dressing gown was red. I’m so glad I took it because I was out in the playground for most of the day. But because I didn’t have disclosure (police check) until Friday evening when I got home, I’m not supposed to be alone with the kids so there was an extra person out there, so I got to run around and play with the kids. Lots of make believe (I think I drowned several times and was blown away by a hurricane at least once!), and quite a few questions from some of the older kids about New Zealand. Possibly the funniest bit was when they asked me to talk “New Zealandish”!!

Today was the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. I haven’t been to a yarn festival before, but was curious to see what they were like, plus I was looking for some yarn for a special project (which shall remain nameless because it’s for someone who *probably* reads this), plus I knew quite a few people I knew were going and figured it would be nice to see them! I had a great time, bought 2 balls of yarn which I think will be perfect for my project, and got to hang out with some fellow knitters. I was impressed at both the variety of yarns, plus the variety of people there – I wasn’t the youngest (not even including the kids/teens who had obviously been dragged along!), and I even saw some guys with ravelry badges! At the end, after one last look around I got talking to an Australian woman who dyes (beautiful!) yarn about New Zealand and Australia and moving here and work, and it turns out she might be looking for a nanny! So if this library thing doesn’t work out (again), there’s a possibility of a job there

In other unrelated yet exciting news, my hair is now long enough to tie up, and I’m in the process of purchasing a bicycle! The after school care I’m working in has a great cycle path most of the way to it from my place so I’m excited about cycling to work!

Crazy week!

Last week was possibly the most insane and most exciting week this year yet (apart from perhaps the week I moved from NZ to Scotland that is!)

Monday saw me at a job interview with a woman having major surgery in a few weeks with 2 preschoolers. Hubby is massively busy with work for a while yet and so they’re looking for someone to basically be the parent while their kids are awake until the Mum is recovered. The interview went well, I really liked the woman, and we sat and chatted for about 2 hours. One of the longest interviews I’ve been too! She got back to me Wednesday while TCM and I were at the museum (it’s coming up!), saying I hadn’t got the full job, but offering me one day a week on Sundays (actually she meant Saturdays as I found out Thursday) which I took. So YAY for job! Even if it’s just one day a week.

Then after the interview I had to come home and clean, get groceries, AND try and get an early night (it didn’t happen sadly!).

Partly because Monday evening I went to a really interesting talk with Bookfrogster (a bcer also keen on history) at the Royal College of Surgeons for International Womans Day. The first talk was all about ‘the female malady’ and was about mental illness focusing specifically on the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. The second talk was about 3 specific woman – James Miranda Barry, Sophia Jex-Blake, and Elsie Inglis, who were all fascinating woman.

Tuesday my friend, The Chief Markeroon flew in for a 2 day visit on her way to her parents house further north. I had agreed to go pick her up from the airport (somehow it took her longer to get here from the USA than it took me from NZ…) so I caught the bus out to the airport to pick her up, arriving earlier than we had arranged, but still after she had got through customs etc and started reading a book.

I was expecting her to be a lot more jetlagged than she was so had only planned one major snarfari, but she was raring to go, so we came back to my place to dump her luggage, had something to eat and were out the door again on what is definitely the longest snarfari I have ever been on. I still haven’t figured out exactly how many historic places we took pictures of, but we have been accused of “tak[ing] a photo of every single building on the entire street!”, which to be honest is what we did!! It’s not *my* fault that almost every house is listed here! For those playing along at home we went along Leven St, Home St, Lauriston Place, Forrest Rd, George IV Bridge, then down the Royal Mile all the way to Holyrood Palace. We were planning on coming back via Queens Drive but we were both exhausted and could barely walk at that stage. So we caught the bus back to my place.

The next day I whipped onto the computer and booked us into High Tea at the museum. I was a bit dubious about these, it always looks like a very small amount of food for an exorbitant amount of money, and even this looks that way. BUT, we were both stuffed by the time we had finished all those delicacies. I got to try clotted cream for the very first time (and liked it!). The chocolate mousse (top center) was amazing, even though we both got white chocolate powder all over ourselves, but I think my favourite was the scones with jam and clotted cream.

After fortifying ourselves we went up onto the roof to have a look at the view and stayed up there for about 2 minutes – it was COLD! And we couldn’t really see that much because the low cloud was low.

When the cold got too much for us, we headed downstairs and out of the museum to snarf our way along Princes St. East Coasters I should warn you that pretty much every building on that street is historic as well (I haven’t got that far in logging yet!). We hadn’t really picked our time very well, rush hour had just started and of course (almost) every single bus runs along Princes St, so we had a few problems at the start, but it lightened down as we went further along. Princes St is probably the best road for snarfing along here, there’s only buildings on one side, and the other side has statues/monuments on it, so you don’t have to continuously cross the road to get decent pictures. Unfortunately we were battling with time as it started to get dark, and towards the end all my photos have these amazing balls of light from the street lights attached to the buildings.

By the time we got to the end of PS, it was almost completely dark, so we made our way back to my place for soup for dinner. After dinner TCM took me through the catalogue (which I think I mostly got), as well as some of the new features she’s working on at the moment (they look seriously cool!).

Thursday morning I dropped TCM off at the railway station and headed back to my place for a couple more hours of sleep before heading off to ANOTHER job interview, this time for an after school care at a school. That interview went well too, and I found out Friday that I had got that job as well. Apparently after the interview they had all agreed I was awesome [small preen] The good news just keeps on going, my old boss from Science Roadshow (he of the wheat allergy aka bossman) has sent me a truly fantastic reference – the woman he sent it too said it was the best she’d ever seen! Thanks Bossman!!

Thursday evening I dragged myself out of the house for BookCrossing meetup (I was trying to keep myself on a slightly normal sleep pattern and didn’t want to go to bed too early, but also I’m a big fan of BC obviously!) which was fun

Friday I did basically nothing – well that’s a lie, I started logging my hundreds of snarfs from the snarfari, and did a bit of reading (just finished Ink Death by Cornelia Funke, it was good!)

Saturday I had a delicious spiced orange hot chocolate at the Chocolate Tree with LittleSuz from BC to hand over my Italian phrasebook. Definitely going back to the cafe!

Sunday I had knitting – there were only 2 of us, but I got a significant amount of my hat finished (all done now!) and I’ve now started my yarnbombing projects to take to Sweden in only 5 weeks (on Friday!)

Monday and Tuesday I was waiting to start work but they needed my references to come in, so today is the day! I’ve done some baking (nothing like home baking to get people to like you right :p) and am super excited to finally START WORK!!! Plus uke tonight and I haven’t been in 2 weeks because of cold and TCM

Science Festival

They finally got back to me and I didn’t get a job at the Science Festival. I’m not hugely disappointed right at the moment (and haven’t been yet), but I think that’s partly because I’ve had a headache since yesterday (which seems to have driven away the blocked nose and sore throat which I’m thankful for!) and it’s slightly distracting…

But yes, I’m fine!! Really truly fine!* I’m really looking forward to seeing TCM from Markeroni for a couple of days next week, plus I had a job interview yesterday for a nanny for 2 boys and a girl (aged 7, 5, and 20 months), which I should be finding out about tomorrow… ok later today.

*not sarcastic (and neither is this!)

Roller Coaster!

Right, well it’s been a while since I updated (sorry!). First off (Dad and Alex this is mostly for you), I found the subscribe button on my blog so if you would like to, feel free to click the button to the left (at the top of the page) that says ‘follow’ and you will get my awesome blog entries delivered right to your inbox!

Last week was a bit up and down. Longtime followers (and other BookCrossers) might know that it was Becky’s birthday last Thursday which was sad. I tried to go and donate blood in her honour, but Scotland Blood Service needed to do a Malaria test because I lived in Zimbabwe for longer than 6 months (I think anyway, I can’t actually remember). I hope I don’t have malaria, Mum reckons we didn’t live in the malarial part of Zimbabwe, and the NZ blood service have been taking my blood for the last 10 years or so!

I got home from attempting blood donation and found out I had made the interview stage for the Science Communicator job at the Science Festival in the Easter school holidays. That was exciting! (more later).

Sunday I was still feeling blue (mostly because I wasn’t getting enough exercise and was eating crap food, which for the record I have fixed!) so decided to go for a walk. I looked up on my list of historic places (thanks so much to Linda for that!) in Edinburgh to see if there were any historic places I hadn’t been to in the Meadows, and discovered there was a sun dial close to my house, so decided to go and find it.

I found it easily enough and took a few photos of it. The light was amazing, enough shadows to make it look interesting.

While I was taking pictures a friend who I had been chatting to before I went out texted me saying she was on hold talking to the NHS 24 hour hotline (I think that’s what it’s called) because she had chest pains. I (obviously) asked if she wanted me to come over, and to cut a long story short got my very first ride in an ambulance. She was fine (ish, she wasn’t having a heart attack at least), and I got to spend a couple of hours reading One of Our Thursday’s is Missing by Jasper Fforde in the waiting room.

My interview for the Science Festival was Tuesday and I think it went well! There were 3 interviewers who were all really friendly. Mostly they asked about Science Roadshow (which makes sense lol!). Then I had to wait for a bit while they interviewed 3 other people. After that we all had to do a short presentation that we had prepared earlier. I did mine on inertia (thank you science roadshow!). Here’s my bit:

“Water? Did someone ask for water?
[walk over with plastic glass of water on a tray, stop suddenly and the glass falls into a bin positioned on floor in front of audience.] Lets have a look at what happened here. What stopped me from moving? Yes, my legs and the floor. What stopped the tray from moving? Yes, my arms and hands. But there was nothing holding the glass so it carried on. We have a word to describe that, inertia. All inertia means is that things want to stay in their current state of motion. So, if something is moving it ‘wants’ to keep moving and it will keep moving until something or someone stops it. This is why we wear seatbelts in cars. If we’re driving along, and the driver puts the break on quickly, your body will keep moving forward until something (hopefully your seatbelt) stops it.

I’ve made a bit of a mess now! I should really clean that up, but I don’t have a cloth on me. Wait a minute, here’s one. I’ll use this. [Pulls the table cloth away and the dishes and cutlery stay on the table.] Now, some of you may have noticed that the plate and cups didn’t move much but the knife and fork jumped quite a bit. Why did that happen? Yes, they are lighter. So the heavier something is, the harder it is to get it moving …… or to stop it from moving, because heavier objects have more inertia. Think of a steam train and a scooter. A steam train is hard to get moving, and it’s also hard to stop. But a scooter is easy to get moving and easy to stop, because it’s lighter and has less inertia.”

I know I spoke way too quickly, but I’m hoping they’ll put that down to nervousness (because it was lol!)

Interviews end today (Friday) and they’ll be discussing us all Monday and Tuesday, so I should find out early next week.

Wednesday was ukulele which was fun as usual but a bit different from other weeks. Usually we meet at the White Horse, but when we got there our room had been booked so we couldn’t go in there. Unfortunately they forgot to tell us before the first 2 of us bought a drink, so we had a drink there and then migrated over to No1 High Street (that’s the name of the pub). They had live music advertised from 9pm, but the thing at White Horse was only going till 9, so we figured we could play at No1 until 9 and then migrate back. We almost did too, but at 9 the live band showed up and didn’t mind us playing for a bit longer, so we did. Then they played, and we had a bit of a jam together. They were really good! So less playing from us, but I still had a good time!

Yesterday I had arranged to meet up with Bookfrogster (a bcer!) so we met at the library (we both needed to return books) and decided to do a walk around the New Town in a book BF had with her. It was really interesting! Probably my favourite place we went to was the Magdalen Chapel. The book said it had the oldest stained glass windows in Edinburgh (from the Middle Ages!) so we went in to have a look. About 10 minutes after we came in a group of German people came in and had arranged for a talk by the pastor (?), which we were told we were welcome to stay for. It was REALLY interesting, hearing about the history of this chapel! You should go look at the website, because this is getting slightly wordy, but seriously, fascinating history. I could probably write another blog entry on it!

Today I have grand plans to do laundry (half done), and then I’m off to the museum because it is a perfect day for it! Later I’m having dinner with some of Sally and Jochan’s friends, and tomorrow some of us are planning a trip to the Rosslyn chapel. There’s also a OBCZ in Roslin that I want to have a look at

Amazing Grace

Some of you probably know that I’ve been learning the ukulele. Well I’ve been really slack, and so part of my 30 before 30 was to practice more. Since moving to Edinburgh I’ve started going to a ukulele group (not classes, we all just go along and have a jam). I’ve been having a great time, and it’s been making me WANT to practice (also someone is bribing me with googly eyes – thanks Lins!).

I’ve also, in accordance with Neil Gaiman’s New Year Wish (bravery and joy for those that don’t want to click the link), have been trying to do things that scare me, so am posting this video of myself singing ‘Amazing Grace’. Please be kind! I’m not the best singer in the world.

Job hunting

Well I just got an email saying I didn’t get the library job. I’m a bit disappointed, but not terribly so, because this means I can go to Sweden for a bit longer in April!!

I was so close to booking and paying for train tickets to go to the north of Sweden before the convention to try and see the Northern Lights, but luckily my internet broke before I could, and then when I was thinking about it later thought that I shouldn’t do it till I found out about the job. Mostly because if I go for longer I would have had to take more time off work.

So now I can go and book tickets and fun things like that!!!

Also I found a seriously cool job (ok it’s basically the same as my last job, but I might get to go to Abu Dhabi!) here: http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/.

SNOW and other awesome things!

It’s been a pretty eventful week!

Saturday I visited the Botanic Gardens which were cold, but still beautiful. Got to see some different kinds of plants, and saw squirrels for the first time since I’ve been here! I went with someone I met at the BC meetup (also the knitter mentioned later). I’m looking forward to going later in the year when things start flowering

Sunday I went to a knitting group that had been recommended to me by a BCer at the meetup. I had an awesome time, got lots of knitting done and met some new people which is always good! In scarf news I’ve finished! But need to find a big enough needle to sew my ends in.

On Monday I had a job interview, which I think went ok. I’ll find out if I’ve got it some time next week hopefully. Unfortunately it’s been downgraded to weekend work only, so I’m still looking (well I would have been looking anyway) for work for during the week. I’m really hopeful that something will pan out soon!

Tuesday evening I went to a movie night at someone’s house (who I met at knitting on Sunday). It was good, we watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which I haven’t seen in YEARS! And then we watched Black Sheep, which was all right, if a little too gory. Hilarious New Zealand accents though!

Wednesday I almost didn’t do anything but Sally *forced* me to go to Ukulele, and I’m SO glad she did! Met some more cool people, practiced the uke, and it’s encouraged me to practice some more! I’ll definitely be going back. Especially since one of the people there gave me googly eyes to stick around Edinburgh! Love me a good googly eye!

Thursday evening I was supposed to go out, but no one got back to me on where and when I was supposed to be going so I didn’t :p

Friday was really uneventful. Well mostly. Sally went out for her work Christmas do (they’re apparently not terribly organised!) and came home about midnight saying that the snow was deep enough for snow angels, so we all got dressed up and went out to make snow angels. There was also a small amount of snowball throwing

The snow’s still here which I’m loving – it’s slowly melting where people are walking, but there’s parts of the Meadows which are still covered in snow and/or have snow people on them, and it’s really magical up by the castle. We’re supposed to get more this week too.

Last night some of Sally and Jochen’s friends came over for dinner and we stayed up WAY too late talking about travel. It’s gotten me really excited about all the travel I’m planning And some that I wasn’t planning but seems like it could be fun.

Job hunt is going slowly but surely. I’ve looked every day, and applied for something/s most days. People haven’t been great at getting back to me, apart from one person who I’ve been emailing backwards and forwards trying to get my cv to her. I don’t think I’ll get it because they want a registered early childhood teacher, but you never know!

I’ve also emailed someone on the gumtree language/skill exchange about learning Italian in return for English…