My On-Line Journal
Fall 2003

September 25th, 2004
October 8th, 2004
October 13th, 2004
October 17th, 2004
October 27th, 2004
November 4th, 2004
November 13th, 2004
November 19th, 2004
December 8th, 2004

September 25th, 2004

I'll have to make this brief as I'm at a cafe and the prices here are a bit steep for internet access. Well, we made it to the Orkneys after some bus issues and a rather rocky boat ride. The hostel in Stromness (one of two main towns on the "Mainland" of the Orkneys) was very nice, small, but comfortable and run by a very nice lady. We spent our first two days in and around Stromness, we visited Maes Howe, an anciant burial mound and two of the largest and oldest stone circles, the Stones of Stennes and the Ring of Brodgar. These were all amazing sites but we were very much overwhelmed by the weather. It changed so often we couldn't really keep up! Sunny one moment, torrential rain the next, then hail, all mixed with hurricane speed winds and of course, lots and lots of rainbows! It was insanity! Sarah was glad to have bought a new waterproof jacket and I was very happy for my new sneakers.

We spent two nights in Kirkwall in a lovely little B&B owned by Mrs. Fletts. It was really really wonderful. Kirkwall itself was much more interesting than Stromness and had more stores and touristy things like the kirk (church) it was named for. And to make our stay a little more interesting, we decided to hire a car for one day. A Standard Car. And neither of us can really drive standards.... For more information on that, see Sarah's journal entry as she was the one who actually ended up driving and we've decided that she gets to talk about it. We visited a lot of the more remote sites that we would not have otherwise been able to see unless we had taken some sort of tour or spent a lot longer in Orkney. Many mounds of stones and ruined castles later, along with a fair amount of stalling and bunnyhopping which did, luckily, get much much better as the day went on, we got back to the B&B in one piece and even managed to fill up the car and return it without any injuries. :)

In total we spent four nights in Orkney plus the majority of yesterday as our ferry to Aberdeen left at 11:00pm last night. We've decided that other than the weather that felt more like late November rather than September, we really enjoyed Orkney. Everything and everyone was very laid back and no one seemed in too much of a rush. They were all really friendly and had a really interesting accent. It was like if you tried to take a Scottish accent with the phrasing, musicality and intonation of the Scaninavian languages, that's kind of what it sounds like.

Yesterday we spent most of the day getting last minute errands done, I got my hair cut, we went to the Highland Park Whiskey Distillery tour, lots of fun though I don't really like Highland Park that much. And we even both had a massage! Sarah got her legs and feet massaged and I got my neck and sholders done. It was a really wonderful idea and I'm so glad we did it. Carrying around this much luggage really wears a person down! I have my backpack which is really heavy from my laptop plus two medium sized suitcases in this bizzare train type setup. Turns a lot of heads every time we move somewhere new. The boat ride, other than being uncomfortable, was pretty univentful. 7 hours of trying really hard to sleep. I even ended up on the floor for a few hours! Needless to say I'm pretty exhausted today so I'm sorry if this doesn't make much coherent sense. We're in Aberdeen now at a really nice and quiet B&B pretty far out of the city centre. It's a bit strange to be back in a city but I'm sure I'll enjoy it more when I'm not so tired. We're starting to really look for jobs on Tuesday. If we don't find any here we're off to Edinburgh. Talk to everyone soon.

Love

Jeannie

October 8th, 2004

Hi everyone! How much things can change in a few weeks! We stayed at the B&B for that weekend, it was a really nice and very quiet place. The woman who ran it was nice, if a little nervous, and breakfast was wonderful with fresh tomatoes and plum jam from her own back yard. From there we moved into the local youth hostel. It was a little more expensive than most hostels but not too bad. The kitchen was really large and well equiped. Unfortunately we had one other girl sharing our tiny room the first night and she slept all day so we didn't spend much time in the room at all. She left after that though and we had the room to ourselves.

Last Tuesday we started to job hunt. The job centre here is really nice, a bit of a different set up than at home in that you go to the kiosks and sometimes the jobs that come up have a thing saying you have to go give the number to a member of staff and they give you more information about the job, such as an address and such. Sarah was really lucky and managed to get a job from the first interview she had! I figured it wouldn't be hard as they're looking for people with her qualifications. And so now, Sarah works in a Nursery... as a Nurse... so she's a Nursery Nurse :) Fun title. I also had an interview for a night reception job out in the middle of nowhere. I thought I had the job for sure as I was overly qualified for it, but nothing ever came of it. Probably for the best though as it was out in the middle of nowhere and I'm not sure if I really want to work nights.

So to celebrate Sarah's success, we went flat hunting! We looked in the paper and called a bunch of places, most of them taken, and finally got appointments to see two flats that day. Both were beautiful, fairly cheep, nice landlords, washing machines and easily accessable by bus. We had a really hard time to decide which one to take, but in the end it came down to one has a dryer, is better decorated, in a slightly nicer area and has regular gas bills rather than cards, plus it's on the ground floor rather than having to lug all our stuff up three floors and we could move in the next day. So the nice reception guy at the hostel refunded us three nights and we moved into our new place on Saturday. So if you want to send anything to us, our new address is:
442 Clifton Road
Aberdeen
AB24 4EL
Phone: 01224 685030
Mobile: 07944 187189

Yes, we also have a land line now so it's cheeper to get a hold of us. We have phone cards to call internationally really cheeply as well so we can keep in touch better.

But what about me? Have I found a job yet? Well, after a week of playing housewife, getting up, doing the dishes, cleaning the house, going out and doing the shopping (doing a little job hunting) coming home and making dinner before Sarah comes home, as fun as all this is, I'm also doing most of the paying for things as Sarah gets paid monthly and frankly it gets a bit boring after a while. Today, after a whole lot of nothing for quite a while, I had not one, not two, but three job interviews! One at Monsoon a really nice upscale clothing store, one at Bargin Books and one for a reception job at a corrier company. The first two are both part time to start with and the other is only guarunteed for two weeks, and quite frankly I'd prefer the first two, strange to think I'd ever be working retail after vowing to never do it, but both stores are really nice and small and there isn't any presure to sell or to get in peoples faces and force them to buy anything. All the interviews went really well, and I'll hear back sometime tonight or tomorrow. With luck I'll get the first two jobs and get to turn down the third, it was kind of out in the middle of an industrial park and the boss didn't seem too enthusiastic about her work, but it could just be that she had a cold. So wish me luck and hopefully by this time tomorrow I'll be gainfully employed.

Apart from job hunting, Sarah and I have been enjoying being in a large city. (Aberdeen is about the size of Halifax with around 212,000 people in it according to a sign) We have been to the art gallery where we enjoyed looking at all the local and international art. Some of it was excellent. We especially loved this one giant statue of a Japanese girl. Some of it was just bizarre like a room full of metal shapes that had boring names and just didn't seem like art. It was really nice to be in an art gallery with someone rather than by myself as we could do things like pick our three favourites and least favourites in a room, and make comments about the poor lighting etc. We also went to see The Terminal, extremely awesome movie, and Super Size me. Very good as well. I didn't like fast food before and now I like it even less. We ended up not eating at all during the movie and I totaly felt sick. I laugh everytime I pass McDonalds now. One night we decided to go out to see a play at the Lemon Tree, a tiny little theatre in town. We saw The Empty Chair, a collective type play done by a group of 50+ mostly women, one man. It was excellent! Extremely funny. All about this group of women "of a certain age, grey hair, too much time on their hands" who are in a library and the librarian who tolerates them mostly because they're pretty quiety. Anyway, Ariel from the Tempest breaks out and starts making everything topsy turvey. It had a kind of Ludus Malificarium (Katherine's creation from High School) feel to it, both in set and in tone. It even had a witch burning scene that was very well done. The Aberdonian accents were a bit thick in places but we understood what was going on for sure. My feminist theatre sensibilities were very much pleased by it as well.

Other than that, we've been amusing ourselves in little ways like reading a whole lot, Sarah's taken up knitting, and playing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on the computer. We've both finished it and so now I've got Sims2 to keep us busy. We've promised ourselves a TV when we get our first paycheck. We already have the connection so it doesn't cost anything, but TVs are a bit out of our means still until I have a steady job. Nights are kind of fun because we have a gas fireplace so we often end up in the dark with just the fire, a few candles playing card games. It sometimes feels a bit like Juan even though we do actually have electricity.

I think that's about all for now. If anyone's thinking about coming up to visit or to come up to work in the UK (GREG, PAT, anyone else) drop us a line, or give us a call. We don't have a guest room, but the living room's pretty comfortable. There are lots of fun stores in the area and we're going to a "moot", a meet and greet next tuesday. Hope everyone's well.

Love
Jeannie

October 13th, 2004

Hi everyone. I've officially been keeping this journal for one year! Wow, that's a long time. It doesn't seem that long. I have tons and tons of news and now that I have a membership at this coffee shop, it's only a pound an our at the off peak times. Yay! So where to start, I guess first I have some awards to mention, I think I mentioned some in my last e-mail. First off, Josie and Ryan win an award for being the first people to come and stay at our flat. Sarah's Dad wins for being the first to phone us. My dad wins for being the first to be called from our flat and Leah wins the first non-relative from home to call us. Josie would have won that last award but she called me on my cell phone instead of my land line.

So on Thursday Josie called me up in the morning to tell me that she and Ryan were in Edinburgh and were on their way up to stay with us. So I met them at the bus station and we spent most of the rest of that day and Friday hanging out, doing a little shopping and just generally catching up. We still don't have a TV so we ended up playing cards on Friday night and on Saturday night we rented Lost in Translation. On the way back from Blockbuster we saw an actual hedgehog in our hedge! We were really excited. Hopefully we'll see it again, it was really cute! Sunday we realized that it was Thanksgiving so Sarah and I went out for groceries and made a great dinner with some quorn "chicken" that tasted so much like chicken we had Josie a little worried that it was actually meat. We also bought some Asti, a really nice, sweet, cheap sparkling wine. When we brought it up to the counter, the guy at the checkout, who was probably about 19, asked to see some ID. I just started laughing but showed it to him nonetheless. He stared at it for a really long time and said he guessed it was okay seeing as I was 21. I laughed again and said that no, I'm 23. He was really embarassed. Anyway, the dinner was really great and then after celebrating Turkey Day, we celebrated Cake Day with two cheese cakes Josie and I had bought earlier that day :)

On Monday, after tearing Ryan away from the Sims (it turns out that my computer can't play Sims2 much to my dissapointment but I bought Sims Triple Deluxe Special Edition that has three expansion packs plus Sim Creator) where we have a family that is actually us in that we used photos of ourselves to make these Sims, it's really creapy, Josie, Ryan and I went to the nearby village of Stonehaven to see Castle Dunnotar (insert scary music). We all think Dunnotar sounds like a villan from a children's show or something. Stonehaven is a really pretty little village, larger than Drumnadrochit, right along the North Sea. It was very chilly and we had a long but interesting walk along the cliffs to get to the castle. We walked through an entire rabbit city and I fell in a rabbit hole, but unfortunately did not end up in Wonderland. The castle itself was very impressive. It did not really have much information about it, no visitor's centre or anything, so all we really knew about it was that William Wallace lived there, 122 Covenanters were tortured and horribly murdered there and that Mel Gibson's Hamlet had been filmed there at least in part. I'll have to rent the movie and see if I can recognize any bits. We heated up some beans on Josie's travel stove and had some bread in one of the rooms, took tons of pictures as usual, and then headed back home. Unfortunately, Josie and Ryan left then next day to continue their journey through Europe.

Yesterday was a rather boring day for me. I did end up being offered two of the three jobs I applied for, the two I had hopped for in fact, and I have accepted the one at the book store. It's a full time temporary job for the Christmas rush, but it doesn't start until two weeks from yesterday, so I have two more weeks of being Suzie Homemaker. I did a lot of cleaning yesterday as our flat really wasn't designed to hold four people for an extended period of time. I went out for a walk in the afternoon and found a library really close-by, but I didn't have any proof of address on me. In the evening I went to the moot with Sarah and we met lots of interesting people, a lot of whom go to the University here so that was lots of fun.

Not much is new today, just a little more cleaning and some shopping. I bought Jenga to help keep us occupied in the evenings until we can get a TV, though I'm not so sure I want to bother any more. I do have some bad news for me, but probably good news for other people. Sarah booked her flight home for Christmas this weekend and is planning on going home for good. She misses home and the way day cares are run at home and things. So that's good for people at home, but unfortunately for me it means that a) I'll be alone for Christmas as I can't go anywhere due to my job, and b) I have to find a new roommate for January as the flat's too expensive and lonely to live there alone and I have it until March. So if anyone has ever thought they'd really love to come and see Scotland, this is your big chance! Drop me a line and we'll work out all the details.

I think that's all that's new. Thank you for all the e-mails from everyone who wrote me recently. Talk to you all soon.

Love

Jeannie

October 17th, 2004

Hi everyone. It's a typical autumn day here in Aberdeen. Cloudy, it may rain or it may be sunny, we don't know. It's been a bit chilly the past while, and by all accounts it will be a "hard winter" but I doubt it will come close to a hard winter that I'm used to at home, so all I'm really worried about is road closures. If you want to see what Aberdeen looks like right now, I have a webcam website on my homepage that was sent to me by my friend Susan.

This past week I've mostly just spent trying to keep myself occupied. I've started to walk to town a lot now that I know it's not that far. To walk to the Bon Accord Centre, the mall that's just on the edge of town where I'll eventually be working and where this coffee shop is located, takes about half an hour. I went into the book store I will be working at eventually to pick up a polo shirt uniform top thing, but they didn't have any other than a few larges so I'll have to go back again this week. I got to meet a few of the people I will be working with and they all seem really nice and friendly.

On Wednesday I decided to walk to this park that Josie, Ryan and I had passed on the bus on our way to Stonehave. It's called Duthie Park and it was really amazing. It was kind of a cross between the Public Gardens and the Halifax Commons with a giant green house stuck in the middle. It was really beautiful and deffinitly satisfied my need to be out in green spaces. The walk itself to the park was also really nice. That end of Aberdeen is really beautiful, kind of reminded me of the South End of Halifax. Made me a little homesick for a bit, but it's also different. Lots more roses. I could see why Aberdeen won Britain in Bloom so often. While I was walking downtown I played this silly little game inspired by drama games we used to play. I would walk behind someone and try to imitate how they walk, their stride, how they moved their arms, things like that. I didn't exagerate it or anything, it was just something to keep me occupied. I would change people about every block or so, or whenever the person I was following changed directions. It was way too much fun and I wondered if anyone would notice but I really doubt they did.

Sarah and I rented some movies the other night at Blockbuster. Unfortunately they didn't have Hamlet but we got My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which we loved and are now watching again with the "Greek School" option turned on and may watch it a third time with the commentary. We also rented Final Fantasy and The Pianist. We have them all for a week so plenty of time to watch them. Sarah stayed home from work on Friday due to a really bad cold that is fortunately getting much better now. We went to see Bride and Predjudice yesterday at the cinema. It's so nice to have not one but two cinemas in town! It was such a funny movie! If anyone has ever read the Austin novel, even if you hated it, you should see this movie, or if you like Bollywood, or even if you don't even know what Bollywood is, this was a really fun movie. Sarah nearly pissed herself laughing and she wasn't the only one in the theatre. Everyone was laughing really loudly.

In other news, I've come to a rather important decision the other night. I've been feeling a bit lost lately as to what I want to do with the rest of my life, what I want to do when I get home, what career path I want to follow, things like that. So I sat down and thought seriously about all the jobs I've had and what I liked most about each of them and what I love to do. I was thinking about how I like working with kids, but I don't really want to work in daycare like Sarah, and how I love theatre and writing and I'm interested in so many diverse things, and how in each job one of the things I liked doing most was teaching in some form. And so I've decided that when I get home I'm going to go back to school and get my BEd. It's kind of silly, but I've been fighting against becoming a teacher because so many people in my family are teachers, but at the same time, that should be a reason to be a teacher because all of my family that are teachers are really good at thier jobs so it must run in the family at least a little, right? :) Anyway, I'm starting to look into all the requirements and everything and I'll probably have to take a few courses in Science and things first but I feel much happier now I have something to work towards.

Anyway, that's enough from me for today I think! Hope to hear from everyone soon.

Love

Jeannie

October 27th, 2004

Hi everyone, this will be a short one because I'm on my lunch break from work right now so I don't have a whole lot of time, only a half hour left now. Things are going really well here. Last week was pretty quiet for me, I didn't really do a whole lot of stuff, just some shopping and a lot of reading. I've been to the library near our flat a whole lot. It's a really nice place, very quiet and a fair selection of books despite it's size. Plus they rent out videos for fifty pence so that's good.

Thursday was a big fun day for us. My aunt Jeanie sent me a lovely early Christmas present of some money to go towards our new TV. It was in pounds so we figured it would be really easy for me to go to the bank and just deposit it into my account, but the teller I had at the bank was new and everyone was really confused by this postal cheque because it was in pounds but it was from Canada. But eventually we got it all sorted out and I went to one of the second hand electronics stores and got a really nice combo TV/VCR with teletext (I don't really know how to use that bit yet) and took it home, but couldn't manage to get it hooked up. So we had a TV and a VCR but no stations. Next day I went to the electronics shop and got the right cable to hook us up, brought it home all excited, it all fit and everything, but we could only occasionaly see and here one out of five stations. On Saturday we called up our landlady and she managed to get an engeneer out to our house yesterday morning so now, finally, we have tv! British programs are so much fun to. They're reallly really crazy.

Thursday was also fun because we went to see the Moscow Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty at the Music Hall. Our seats were pretty crap, but that's what you get for waiting to get tickets. To be honest, a lot of the performance didn't thrill me. The main dancer was... not an actress to be sure and she smiled very woodenly, more showing her teeth than smiling really. But it was pretty cool, and fun to be able to recognize some of the choreography.

So I finally started work yesterday. Things have been going pretty well, I'm catching on fairly quickly though the till will be giving me nightmares I'm sure. I'm very uncertain when it comes to making change and that still and I still don't know our stock of the top of my head so I'm still having to reffer people to other workers, but it's not bad. Plus working in the mall means that I get to be really close to everything and I get lots of time on my lunch and my breaks to get out for a bit. On Saturday there's a woman coming in to do a book signing, and then on Sunday the mall's having a Halloween party for the kids and I get to juggle and do the diabolo! Fun fun! Circus skills coming in handy once again!

On Friday, Sarah and I are going to a Halloween party as well. We're pretty excited, though I'll be working on Saturday so I can't stay out too late, but it'll be nice to get to meet some new people though. I'll post pictures of our costumes when I get some.

That's about it for me for now. Back to work. Hope everyone's well.

Love
Jeannie

November 4th, 2004

Hi Everyone,

I�m writing this from home on my laptop and then tomorrow I�m going to the library to post it, just trying to save some internet time as, when I�m at Costa it costs money and at the library I can normally only get about a half hour of time. Both have nice fast computers and internet connections, but I don�t like spending too much time there doing what I can really be doing at home beforehand.

So what�s new in my life since my last entry. Well, let�s see, our TV�s all working and we have great reception now on four channels, we can�t really see channel five, but that�s pretty standard. I�m enjoying being able to see British programming as it�s really interesting. There are a lot of programs on here that they would never be able to put on at home because it�s too risky as to whether or not it would be successful, plus it�s a lot more local programming which is really nice. For the past week leading up to the American �election� there have been quite a few critical programs looking at American �democracy� and talking about how it�s not a true democracy at all and how those in power use fear to gain power over the American people. As you can tell, most Brits aren�t exactly pro America, and certainly not pro Bush, so there was a lot of disappointment today when Bush won the �election�, though from what they were saying about Kerry, I�m not so sure he would have been much better, but I think a change would have been good, at least it leaves some possibility that things could improve whereas with Bush, well, we pretty much know we�re in for it. And of course Tony Blair is going on about how pleased he is Bush won and how this gives them more opportunities to fight terrorism etc. The Scots from what I�ve heard, are really not pleased because the Blackwatch has been posted to Iraq and have already had a few casualties.

Anyway, in other news, my job is going really well. My co-workers and boss are all really nice and it�s a pretty great place to work all around. We�re fairly busy, when we�re not unpacking huge orders of books, we�re cleaning up the shop and re-arranging the books so they look better and are easier to navigate. I�m getting better at the till though I�m still a bit slow at it and I�m not all that great at counting out change in the �proper� way yet. I�m supposed to do what�s called counting back, where I take the price and add on change until it adds up to the amount of money they gave me. For example, if someone buys something for 6.64 and hands me a ten pound note, I would count out 6.64 and .01 makes .65 and .05 makes .70 and .30 makes 7.00 and 3.00 make 10.00. I�m supposed to do that in my head into my hand and then out loud into the customers but it just takes too long. I�m pretty much okay with figuring out the math except for when I�m hungry of course, plus a lot of people are starting to use their various cards, either Solo or Switch or Visa Debit cards which are all basically debit cards in various guises and acceptability. Customer care in the UK is very different though and, frankly, I prefer it this way. Basically, unless someone comes up to us with a question or they look really lost, we pretty much ignore the customers. There�s very little �hard selling� which is against the mandate of this company anyway, and the whole shopping experience is just a little more laid back. People don�t seem to mind coming up and asking for help if they need it, and we really don�t mind giving it. They look at you really coldly if you go up asking if they need help if they�re just browsing too.

Halloween here was an interesting experience. Last Friday Sarah and I went to a Halloween party at the University. The guy who held it is a bit of a collector of people we think. He invited a lot of kind of random people, ourselves included, and the Slavic Society and the people from upstairs etc.. The unfortunate part being that it was held in a university residence in the kitchen so it was all a bit squished. Some of the costumes were really fabulous though and everyone seemed pretty impressed with ours as well. There was bobbing for apples and cute little turnup lanterns and some really strange grapefruit fruit punch and they had us read tarot cards to add to the �spookiness� of the evening. It was a bit hard to talk over the music but everyone seemed to enjoy it. At around midnight most people were heading out to a club but as I had to work in the morning and Sarah was tired, we decided to go home. Unfortunately, the cab companies were all really busy and so we ended up having to walk home. It wasn�t that far of a walk but we both had ballet flat type shoes on so our feet were really sore by the end of it.

On Halloween itself we carved our pumpkin and sat him out on our step. He was the only one on the whole street, actually, the only Halloween decoration on the street at all I think. We were really pleased with how he turned out. Then I had to go to work for this Halloween party the mall was having. I got dressed up again in my Chinese costume to go sell things from our store and to juggle and do the diablo for the kids. I bought some new juggling balls for the occasion as my balloon ones are looking pretty ratty. It went over pretty well and all the kids went away pretty happy. I just kept thinking how ironic it was that my costume looked like one of the World Circus members from the Museum I worked at two summers ago, in fact, she�s the one who did the little instructional video for the diablo! Craziness. That night we had twenty-one trick-or-treaters, a very large number according to my co-workers. They were really cute and we noticed that none of them had very large bags for treats so there must not be that many houses that participate. They all really liked our pumpkin though.:)

What else is new? Well, Saturday we went to see �Finding Neverland�, an excellent film, though bring a box of tissues. We�ve also watched �The Girl With the Pearl Earing� and �Brother Bear� at home, both really good films as well. Mostly I�ve just been working a whole lot. Though I have more days off this week.

On Tuesday I had a surprise day off because we�re a bit overstaffed. In the morning I got a text message from Phillipa from Polmaily saying that they were going to be in Aberdeen for the night and would we like to see them. I assumed �them� was her and Chris. She called later on and said they had rented a car and were doing some of the Whiskey Trail and then staying at the hostel in Aberdeen and then going to see some castles the next day and would we like to go out to supper with them. So after Sarah got home we went to the hostel to meet them and, much to our surprise it was not just Phillipa and Chris but also Lisa, Lelanie and Sebastiaan. So we took them all to our favourite fish and chips restaurant, getting a little lost on the way by taking a �short cut� but we got there eventually and had a great time catching up with them. It�s so fun being out with a group of such mixed nationalities. :) Sebastiaan and Lisa are seeing each other and the Hotel�s been sold to Mr. Halifax, so we�ll see how that goes, and all of the South Africans are leaving soon. After dinner we took them back to our flat for a bit just to look at some pictures and chill out for a while.

That�s pretty much all that�s new. I�m going in to Sarah�s work later today to read some Robert Munsch books but that�s pretty much all I�ve got planned for the day. Wow, this entry�s really long. Hope you enjoyed it though and I hope to hear from everyone soon.

Love
Jeannie

November 13th, 2004

Hello again, and welcome to this edition of my journal commemorating the fact that I have officially been in Scotland for one whole year, minus the ten days spent at home for Kat and Adam�s wedding. It seems a little strange that I�ve been here for a whole year. In a way, it feels like it�s only been a really short time, but at the same time, it often feels like I�ve lived here forever. On the whole, I have really enjoyed my time here. I do, occasionally, get pangs of homesickness, especially when contemplating what is most likely going to be pretty lonely Christmas. I really like Scottish people and I love the country in general. We haven�t had much of a chance to travel around the sites since we�ve come to Aberdeen, and I do regret that, though as Jeff said, when you move into a place and you get more comfortable there, the tourist thing becomes a bit less important. It�s just like being at home:)

So of course, because it�s been one year, I�ve been thinking a fair amount about what was happening one year ago. Leaving was so hard and stressful to begin with, and then living in Edinburgh by myself was so scary, but exciting and fun at the same time. And of course going hungry for a few days while my whole bank... fiasco was being sorted out. I mean really, you�d think the bank would have told me before I left and was starving and trying to live off a few pounds that you can�t get money out a savings account from ATM�s here or from the banks for that matter. But for the most part, I did really enjoy Edinburgh, especially after I had access to my money again and could eat again. Edinburgh is definitely one of the places I really want to visit again before I go home if I get a chance.

I�m sorry to say I haven�t had a whole lot of interesting things happen this week to talk about. Really it was mostly just work all week. I had Sunday off and then I worked all week until today, Saturday, when I had my next day off. In the middle, I worked a whole lot, in fact, on Wednesday I did an extra three hours at the Aberdeen Bargain Bookstore up on Union Street from 6pm till 9pm. It was a bit boring, hardly any customers at all, and I really didn�t have much else to do as all their storage is kept upstairs and I couldn�t leave the shop. Plus it was really cold and all I had on was my work t-shirt. But it means that I got a little extra money out of it and I was even allowed to read a book at the till for a while! Something I never get to do at work regularly because we�re just too busy! And it�s getting worse now that Christmas is coming, plus we�re having a clearing out sale to make room for some new stock.

So I guess you can gather that I�m enjoying work. :) The people I�m working with are all really nice people and it is a good workplace in general, though when I was offered a permanent full-time position, I must admit I did turn it down. Why? Well one reason is that I�m trying to swing an extremely long distance correspondence course in either science, math or computer science so that I can get into the Education program when I get home, so I�m worried about having a full time job, though really, I suppose I shouldn�t be that worried, it won�t take that much time out of my schedule. The other reason I didn�t want to take it is that, as much as I really am enjoying this job, it�s not all that... stimulating or challenging. I mean, don�t get me wrong, I am still have a lot to learn about the job still, the money side, and we get all kinds of new stock daily so I get to look at lots of books all day which is fun, but I would like something a little more challenging. Plus I think it would look a bit better on my education application to have another job that has something to do with children.

Other than work, Sarah and I went to another moot on Tuesday after work. It was a bit better than last month�s I think, we got a little more involved in the conversation, and then there was a woman from the States in talking about Celtic Mythology. Funnily enough, she was from one of the states that voted for Kerry in the US election, and claims she�s actually from the United States of Canada. Then, since I had Saturday off, Sarah and I finally decided to take advantage of the fact that we�re living in a city with a really good nightlife and went out to a club. It was lots of fun once there were actually other people there. We�re still kind of not used to the time that other people keep at night. We would rather go out earlier, say at 8pm and go home at say, 1am. That would be fine. But of course that�s not the way other people do it. We did enjoy ourselves though.

So that�s about all for this week. We�ve been watching lots of movies and bought a few additions to the house, nothing major, just things like an organizational tray thing and kitchen utensils. It�s all about being domestic. Well, I�d love to hear from everyone.

Love
Jeannie

November 19th, 2004

Good Morning! I just realized while looking at the pictures off my camera that there�s a lot of fun stuff that I have left out of my journal so today is going to be all about pictures! So those of you who have been wanting to see more pictures, here you go.

First off, this morning I woke up in a great mood. I have the day off today and it looked like a lovely bright day out from what I could tell through my really nice thick curtains. I had been in a bit of a bad mood the day before, a combination of tiredness, hunger, it being that time of the month and a touch of homesickness all making for a grumpy Jeannie. But it was going to be a nice sunny day off and I had been able to sleep in nice and late. So what could make this morning even better? Opening my curtain and seeing this! So of course I went running around the house like a nut in my pj�s opening all the curtains and singing �It�s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas� and I�m sure all the other tennants in the building think I�m crazy. It was sunny the rest of the morning, but cold enough that the snow didn�t melt, and for the past hour or so it�s been snowing again in earnest. I�ve been so jealous of everyone at home for having a snowstorm so early in the year, and now we have our own, well, not a storm really, but a good solid snowfall to be sure. Snow just makes everything look so much more pretty this time of year.

But to backtrack a little, one thing that I completely neglected to mention, and I don�t really know how I managed this, is Guy Fawkes Day, other wise known as Bon Fire Night or Fire Works Night. It�s the 5th of November, basically celebrating the fact that some guy did not blow up the parliament. Any excuse for a party, right? Well Sarah and I had both heard from workmates that there was going to be an amazing fireworks display down at the beach that night, so after work we decided to head out. The only problem being, we had no idea where the beach was! So we hopped on a bus to the city centre and found out from the driver that the number 14 goes that way. While waiting for the bus we noticed that almost everyone was walking in the same direction en-masse. Sarah spotted one of the people she works with and her boyfriend so we caught up with them and found out everyone was walking to the beach as it was really quite close. So we walked with them, both really nice people too. Mari�s from Ireland and her boyfriend�s from Australia. The fireworks were awesome. I tried out my �fireworks� setting on my camera and managed to get a few nice shots. There was about a ten minute stretch of the same thing over and over that was a bit boring, but the company was good and it went on for a half an hour. After we walked back to Union Street and ended up at a really nice coffee shop with a live bluesy band.

Sarah had originally bought a set of fireworks for us to set off in the backyard as a lot of people had been doing for about a week, that night especially though. Yes, it is legal to buy fireworks here. It was so strange. But since we went out and there was a ban from setting them off after 11pm, we decided not to set them off that night. So the next night, it was a Saturday, we decided to go to a close-by field and set them off. We probably could have set them off in the yard, but we were too afraid of hitting something or setting something on fire. So out in this field in the middle of the night with nearby neighbours watching, we set off five rockets. It was soooooo loud! But so much fun too. They went really really high and exploded into different colours. They were real fireworks too, not piddly little things. We also had some coloured sparklers that were lots of fun. I took one video with my camera but I�m not sure how to put that on my website yet so you�ll just have to believe me that it looks really awesome.

Another thing that happened that week that I forgot to mention before was that I went to Sarah�s work to read to the kids for reading week or something. They were having a lot of random outside people come in to read so I went with �Mortimer� and �The Paper Bag Princess� and read to the kids. It was pretty fun. And then instead of going straight home I decided to visit the parks around where Sarah works since I could see them on the map. They were so beautiful, but I�ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

In more recent news, work is still going well. I took the day off on Monday because I wasn�t feeling very well. Mostly just exhausted and a bit achy and blech. It�s nice to be able to take days off when I�m sick as opposed to the hotel where I had to be dying before I could justify taking a day off. We now have to deal with MacHappy and MacHuggle, this bizzare animatronic singing talking display that�s just outside our shop. It goes off every half hour and runs for about ten to fifteen minutes. It has three different programs, all of which we know off by heart by now. Mostly the programs are about people should shop more so they�ll have a happier Christmas, and about giving hugs and cuddles, called �bozzies� in the local dialect of Doric, to people you love, but not to strangers. It�s very annoying and means that we can�t listen to our own music very much so no �Reggae Love Songs� for us.

That�s really about all that�s new. It�s about 2pm now and it�s stopped snowing. It�s a lovely sunny day out now to the front of the house, but still snowing in the back. Go figure. I should get to the library now and put this on the internet. Talk to you all soon!

Love
Jeannie

December 8th, 2004

Hi everyone,
Not a whole lot to talk about this week. The biggest news is that we now have internet at home! It's dial-up so it's not fast at all, but it's better than nothing. I get to check the e-mails at home and I can update from home as well. I wish I had a photo to put up for this week, but no such luck I'm afraid.

We've both come down with a bit of a cold though. I'm off sick today and Sarah's been off for the past two days. I did go to work yesterday but I didn't really feel well at all. And today I still feel very blech. I hope I'm feeling better tomorrow. Sarah's off to Edinburgh on Friday for the weekend. And I've got our work party on Saturday night.

Last night Sarah and I went to a planning meeting for a Solstice party that's going on next week. Neither of us were feeling particularly well, but we went anyway because we want to get involved and get to know more people in the area. The meeting went well, but almost everyone smoked so the room was very smoking. Not helpful in us feeling better.

Samantha's been staying with us for the past few days. I haven't seen her in quite some time. We stayed in on Saturday night and then on Sunday we went to the art gallery. The metalalic exhibit that we really didn't enjoy is gone now so we wanted to go and see what had replaced it. There was a great exhibit on painted portraits. Some of them were so amazing! There were a few that looked so realistic that they looked like photographs until you look really closely. Then we went to see "The Incredibles" which was, well, incredible! :) It was really fantastic.

Monday, Sarah went to work so I took Samantha out to the mall to get a few little things. I bought a new shirt from Primark for three pounds and we ate at the food court. Samantha and I watched the silly MacHappy and MacHuggy (see the picture above) the first time I've ever actually watched it. I've only ever heard it. It's even worse to see than to hear! It's really jerky and horrible!

Other than that, nothing much new. I'm applying to three Universities, UNB, St. Thomas and Memorial. Nova Scotia Universities are stupid. They don't recognize drama as a teachable, dispite the fact that drama is taught in Nova Scotia schools. Not only that, but with the new High School rules, High School students require an art credit to graduate, and for those that are not in band or don't want to take fine art, drama's a good option, plus I do think that drama's one of those subjects everyone should take because regardless of what you do with the rest of your life, it's good to be able to get up in front of a group of people and to improvise and to articulate and project and all those great things you learn in drama, but I guess I'm a bit biased. So I have to look out of the province for University. A bit annoying and I've had to find out about whether or not I can have the same sort of certification to work in Nova Scotia if I go to any of these Universities, especially since one is a one year program and the other two are a year and a half as opposed to the two years I'd do in Nova Scotia. It'll be less expensive though and I won't have to take the extra science or math course, so that will deffinitly save me money.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to more e-mails. I've had a few lovely ones from Mark and Amy, and am always happy to read e-mails from anyone.

Love
Jeannie

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