Silly American

The biggest pain in my tuchas by far is the walk up the hill on Great George St. to my apartment.  I take that route as few times as possible, but sometimes, the Hill of Death is inevitable in my weekly routine.  For instance, one must collect groceries if one plans on cooking for oneself.  Today I went to the grocery store to get some essentials: fruits, vegetables, garlic, peanut butter, soy sauce.  I have all these ambitious culinary plans this week and I'm not about to let some stupid hill ruin it for me.  Trekking up the HOD on the way back, however, was the sweatiest, angriest, most grueling experience of my life.  I'm also currently on a mission to ascertain exactly which side of the sidewalk people in Scotland walk on, since they obviously drive on the left side.  My "research" up the HOD today, as you can imagine, yielded no conclusions.  Every time I would walk on the right side of the sidewalk, some young lovebirds, staring adoringly and into each other's eyes, would heedlessly veer in my direction.  If I walked on the left side of the sidewalk, I would inevitably run into an old lady and her 100 Scottie dogs, or some angry punk with scars and anarchy written all over his face.

I haven't even told you the best part: once I reach the hill's summit, I have 4 flights of stairs to stumble up to get to my floor because apparently the Scots don't believe in elevators, or lifts, if you will.

But then, after I burst into my room and collapse, with groceries in hand, on to my bed, I realize just how lucky I am to be schvitzing in such a gorgeous apartment that's also close to a grocery store.

Today is the first mildly sunny day we have had in a while.  Yesterday, Sarah and I went to the Glasgow Necropolis next to the cathedral and walked among some real old-skool graves.  I can't get over how green everything is here.  We ran into a woman walking a couple bulldogs, including one that was named "Obo," which is the best name for a bulldog that I can think of.

Afterwards we searched for a well-known vegan restaurant/record store called Mono, and stopped at a vintage clothing shop along the way.  I've been trying to find a faux-fur vest for some time now, and even though my search for faux fur yesterday proved fruitless, I found the most delicious faux-meat at Mono.  Sarah and I had a good time messing around with the waiter.  She dared me to hit on him, but all I could do was awkwardly tell him that I liked his Garfield shirt before burying my face into my sandwich.  

It's so funny sometimes how American my tendencies are.  Sometimes I don't even realize it until I'm somewhere like a restaurant and I end up waiting for a half an hour for my check to come as opposed to just asking for it, long enough for the manager to come up to our table and quietly ask, "Um...did you guys want something else?"

Also, they call coffee with milk here "white coffee," which seems consistent with calling coffee without milk "black," except I could not reason this in my head fast enough when the waiter asked me if I wanted white coffee, so I just said "Uhh...I'll have coffee...with milk."  Oh well, I'm sure that part of my education abroad is learning how to laugh at myself and how to be laughed at.

Much Love,

Caitlin

P.S. I don't know how to fix the pictures in his post, so until I do you all will just have to deal with it.

EDIT: Fixed it!  You can stop complaining now!