Where's Waldo? Not in the UK

That's right folks! There is no Waldo in the UK. He's WALLY here! Isn't that so random?? I need this to go with me outdated version of "Where's Bin Laden" book. :)

Grocery Carts (Trolleys)

If you need a grocery cart, be sure to have a pound coin on you.Why? Because they're not free. NOTHING is free in the UK.
Lets face it, in the US we have all had the unnecessary car ding from a rogue shopping cart that someone didn't bother to put away. Or found a perfect parking spot only to find out there was a cart right in the middle forcing you to get out of your car and move it in order to park.
It can be argued that this problem has created job opportunities for some lucky individuals who traipse around the parking lot wind, rain, snow, or shine rounding up the carts like cowboys with cattle, however, for the consumer, this raises the cost of your consumables to pay the salary of the cart cowboy, so the UK and Europe, and the middle east, and most countries really, have developed this locking chain system. Want a cart? Put a pound coin in that slot there. It will unlock the trolley and a grocery shopping you will go! When you're done, simply take your trolley back, insert the locking chain and out pops your coin! Too lazy to put it back? Or maybe you're shopping alone with two babies and after you put your groceries and kids in the car you feel it's too dangerous to leave your kids unattended in the car while you run your trolley back...it's only going to cost you a pound and the shopper who does pick up your cart and return it is rewarded with a whole pound! TAX FREE! It really is a brilliant system... until you find yourself with nothing but 20 p and a debit card.


I found myself in this situation...well numerous times really... but the first time, I went to customer service and said "Hi, I need to get a lot of grocery's and need a cart, but I don't have a pound coin. Can I trade my ID or my keys for a pound, and I will get it back to you when I'm done shopping?"
The manager at the counter replied "You want a cart for free?"
I said "Well I will trade you and pay you back when I'm done shopping."
"You can't get a cart for free, and just say you'll pay us back."
"Do you want me to shop here? I have a lot to get, and I can't get it all if I don't have a cart."

Turns out, they thought I was asking for a carton of fags (cigarettes), saying I would pay them back later...
Now I know...I need a trolley.

Prepaid Gas and Electricity Meters

What is THAT?? Yep... exactly.
Someone had the audacity to say "Hey! We have prepaid phones and prepaid visa cards, lets make a prepaid gas meter! The home owner will have to have a key that they put an amount on and once that amount is used then the gas gets shut off and they don't have any heat or hot water or a way to cook until they add more money onto it! We will charge them extra for the key, and the meter and a few other taxes here and there as well so they will end up paying 10% more (according to the BBC) on their gas then they would if they had a normal bill, but this way there can never be any debt on the account. Nevermind if the family using the meter has two small children who rely on hot water to heat bottles and have baths and...oh yeah... STAY WARM! If the meter runs out of money at 9:30 at night when all the shops are closed, they can just go without for 12 hours. Let's only put it in poor districts too... nobody cares what the poor think if they complain and if an upper class family moves into the area on accident, because the wife is American who can't tell if a neighborhood is ghetto or not because all the houses are either hundreds of years old or look like the box a refrigerator came in covered in rocks, they can pay the £300 to have it removed, even though we installed it for free! Hey Hey! Lets do it with electricity too!  We are gonna be RICH!"

Prepaid electric meter

prepaid gas meter

TV License

So a few months ago Paul and I were cuddling in front of the TV when a commercial came on. It looked a little bit like a commercial for a dating website when at the end it said "You don't have to do everything all at once. Pay your TV License online one month at a time." I thought it was a joke and started laughing. Paul said "Why is that funny?" and I said, "That TV tax thing". He still looked at me quizzically, and I  said "Oh my word, TV License is real??" He got out a notebook that had his TV License in it. He pays £144 a year for it. That's like $180... to own a TV... so you buy your TV at an exorbitant price at the store and then continue paying on it for the rest of your TV's life. Apparently it is so the BBC doesn't have to have commercials, but I find that it's awfully annoying to not have any. It means that there are no bathroom breaks, no chatting breaks, and you never know what is available in  your city or town restaurant wise or sale wise because there are no commercials for it. This is definitely a negative for the UK. Thankfully though, we only have to pay 1 fee for the household. The rest of Europe must pay PER TV. YIKES!!! I have also heard that Most of Europe has a radio license tax as well. Good news to people with black and white TV's though, you only have to pay £89 a year for your TV license! Although that sounds a little racist to me.

TV license from 2006...looks like the fees have gone up since then!

Duvet Vs. Comforter

So Duvet covers are probaby becoming more and more popular in America, but for the most part people there have big soft comforters. In the UK, you see a comforter occasionally, but for the most part people have a big soft duvet, which is like a blank white comfortor, and a Duvet cover, which is a colorful cover that goes over the Duvet like a pillow case. It's nice for washing, you just take the cover off and wash it like you would your bed sheets and then put it back on your Duvet.
Well Paul and I have a comfortor on our bed and the other day he was helping me change the sheets and he kept turning the comforter and finally through it down exhasperated and said "I can't find the buttons on this Duvet!" I laughed and said "It's a comforter Paul, there are no buttons."
Hehe... He's just adorable!

Culture Shock While Grocery Shopping

So, it took make about three days to write all about my Scottish wedding and post it, but when I finally did, it didn't post the last half which made me really mad so I havent bothered to post anything since then, but I'm over it (sort of) now and ready to start bloggin again.
So... Here we go, since the wedding, I have had a baby,

Moved from one house to another, and discovered a whole host of things about living in Scotland!

For starters, life here is so much harder then I ever thought it would be, and I get frustrated with myself for having such a hard time adjusting. 

Here is the thing... When you move from one developed English speaking country to another developed English speaking country... you don't think it's going to be that much different, but then BAM, all the differences from the major to the miniscule hit you in the face.... and bruise you.

Like when you're grocery shopping with two babies, and they're both screaming, and you're trying to balance a grocery basket on top of a double stroller while getting groceries for a family of 5 for the week.

It takes a lot longer because they call "tomato sauce" "passata" here... because Ketchup is called "tomato sauce". No big deal... unless you spend an hour at the grocery store trying desperately to find tomato sauce, and end up in tears because your recipe calls for two 16 oz cans of tomato sauce and not only can you not find it but everything is done in grams and your phone has died because you forgot to turn on the outlet last night so your phone didnt charge and you cant look up on google how many grams 16 oz is.

Sometimes being a parent can make you look ridiculous! My double buggy doesn't fit through grocery isle...and this is my SMALL double buggy

Pickles are called gherkins here. If you get pickle, it's a jar of a sort of  chutney made with onions and carrot and  who knows what else... it's delicious with cheese and crackers, but if you're expecting a dill pickle, you will be in for a surprise!

Need a ham for Easter? It's called gammon here. 

I will address Grocery carts in my next post, but here, they are called "trollies"

It's kind of like a mean grocery game, but if you're in the right mood... it can be fun...but not when you're with screaming babies... I believe there was one instance when the checkout guy said "You look frazzled" and I screamed "DON'T HAVE SEX EVER!" at him. 

Paul and Elayne Eunson Part 1

The Bridge Inn in Ratho was the location of our wedding.  I booked a room for the 15^th for Lisa, My Maid of Honor, and Amy, and I. They gave us a late checkout so we could use it the day of the wedding to get ready in, as well as store our things in during the wedding. 4 days before the wedding Paul was told he was going on the 3 day Skye tour which neither one of us were too thrilled about. I can’t drive here, nor do I really know my way around and cab fare isn’t inexpensive, and with so much still to do before the wedding I was a bit nervous about how everything was going to get done.

I have really wonderful friends here though who took me everywhere I needed to go, and helped me get everything ready the last few days. Paul took Amy with him to Skye, so by the time they got back, Amy was exhausted and just wanted to sleep in her own bed, so it ended up just being Lisa and I in the room, which was probably better anyway as we were up late redoing the seating chart, and rewriting out name cards, doing our nails, and facials, and trying to glue a kilt onto my cake topper.

I guess super glue doesn’t work on all materials. I succeeded in gluing my fingers together, gluing my fingers to the cake topper and accidently gluing the bride and groom to the night stand in the hotel room, but I never did get the tartan to stick to the bride and groom. Lisa included this in her toast telling Paul that I’m a lot of fun and that he was definitely in for an adventurous life with me.

The next day began very leisurely with us waking up at 7:30, heading down for breakfast about 9, having a wonderful Scottish breakfast (1 egg, baked beans, 1 sausage link, 1 piece of Canadian bacon, black pudding, haggis, a fried tomato, a fried mushroom, and a potato cake)

It was delicious. We headed back to our room where I burned a picture slide show onto a DVD to be played at the reception, and also burned the wedding music onto CD’s. Lisa and I went down to the canal boat to do a sound check, and make sure things were set up the way I wanted, we practiced walking in time down the center isle, and adding a few last minute touches here and there, before heading back up to our room at 1:00 to get our hair done.

The day was pretty cloudy, with bursts of rain throughout the day, even so, it was really beautiful out.

The canal boat we were married on

Unfortunately, even with the clouds and rain, it was exceptionally hot in the room. People in Scotland don’t have air conditioning. They open their windows. We had both windows open, but even still I was sweating so bad that I couldn’t put my makeup on. I tried calling the front desk several times, to see if there was anything they could do about it, and finally Kirsty, the wedding coordinator at the Inn brought us a small fan which enabled me to put makeup on and get into my dress.

Meanwhile, Paul brought Amy by a little after two so she could get her hair done and get into her dress. She was just the sweetest thing.

 She was so excited about everything. Excited about getting her hair done, and excited about wearing her dress and her shoes, excited about her flower girl basket, and her new jewelry, she was just all smiles and giggles and she wanted to help with everything! I'm so lucky to have such a sweet little girl in my life.

With only an hour until the ceremony Lisa suddenly asked why our flowers hadn’t arrived yet. I myself hadn’t thought about it, but they were two hours late with our bouquets at this time. Lisa phoned the florist, who said they had delivered them at two, but no one was home, so they left them with a neighbour.

Now, I tried to remind myself that the purpose of this wedding was for Paul and I to be legally husband and wife. That was the most important thing, because all of the legal stuff had been taken care of, at least that would be accomplished, however, upon hearing that they had taken the flowers to the billing address and not the wedding sight, I was pretty aghast!

Lisa said “We’re at a hotel, there is someone here 24 hours a day. What do you mean no one was in?” The person on the phone replied, “Wait, is the address 27 Baird?” and Lisa said, “Yes.” The florist said, “Oh. We will have them to you in a half hour.” They literally arrived just as we were heading out the door, to go down to the boat. When they did arrive, I thought they looked beautiful. They were exactly the color I wanted!

This is my bouquet with my Something old - A picture of my grandparents on their wedding day. They had the most amazing marriage... the stuff movies are made of... I thought it might be a good omen to have with me. Something new - my lace shawl that everything is sitting on, my something borrowed: A lace garter from Lisa, and my something blue: a Scottish flag cuff link.

Finally everyone and everthing was ready, Lisa was lovely in her dress, Amy, looked like a princess in hers, Paul looked AMAZING in his kilt,  and waist coat, and Jason looked very much like a handsome pirate in his ghillie shirt.

Everyone made their way down to the boat, and the ceremony began!

Paul and his parents walked into the song “Secret Love” By Jim Brickman, and Lisa, Amy and I walked into the song “Arrival of the Birds” by the Cinematic Orchestra.

I felt hot and sticky, and had sweat dripping down my face the entire ceremony, but I was so excited to be getting married to Paul that I didn’t notice it that much.

Weddings here are kind of funny because you have a person from the Registry (their version of the Justice of the Peace) marry you. If you want your own pastor to do it, you have to get all sorts of special permission, and fill out several forms, and we just didn’t have time for that. The woman who married us was a very sweet Lady, and I thought she did a nice job, although it was a little weird to have a woman doing the ceremony.

Two weeks before the wedding they gave me a printout of how a usual ceremony goes and then it has several options under each past of the ceremony where you can choose to have her say option a,b,c,or d which was to fill it in yourself with something new.

On almost every option, I selected d. Some things were optional, and some things were required, and I cut out most of the optional things except one part where they state that notice of our intent to marry had been posted publically for the required amount of time and in that time, no one had objected to us marrying. I left that part in because I thought it was funny. One of the required parts was that they have to identify us as being Paul Eunson and Timbrel Elayne Bilbrey. Since the person marrying us is a stranger, they have to make sure they’re marrying the right people... in anycase there were a lot of formalities that had to be done, and then Lisa read the reading “A perfect Heart”

“One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming
that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley. A large crowd
gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was
not a mark or a flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most
beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and
boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said "Why
your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine." The crowd and the young
man looked at the old man's heart. It was beating strongly, but full of
scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put
in, but they didn't fit quite right and there were several jagged edges.
In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were
missing.

The people stared - how can he say his heart is more beautiful, they
thought? The young man looked at the old man's heart and saw its state
and laughed. "You must be joking," he said. "Compare your heart with
mine, mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears."

"Yes," said the old man, "Yours is perfect looking but I would never
trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have
given my love - I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and
often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty
place in my heart, but because the pieces aren't exact, I have some
rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we
shared. Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other
person hasn't returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty
gouges -- giving love is taking a chance.

Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the
love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and
fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?"

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He
walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful
heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with
trembling hands. The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart
and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the
wound in the young man's heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were
some jagged edges. The young man looked at his heart, not perfect
anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man's
heart flowed into his.”

I chose this because 1, it’s always been one of my favourite stories about what it’s like to give and receive love, that sometimes it can be painful, but sometimes when we take a chance it can be wonderful as well, and 2, I thought that since Paul and I are both divorced it would be very fitting for a second wedding.

After the reading we played the song “Who we are” by Gavin Mikhail. Some of the lyrics are as follows:

“So many chapters to
This life we're living through
I rediscover you with every passing day
And I'm happy here
To know you're standing by
My side as time passes by, and I...

Know all the years and the places
The fears, the lonely faces,
scars, and broken hearts have made us who we are
We're always writing a new history
And redefining you and me
And though I know we've come so far
We will begin again
Our story never ends...

I wonder every day
If I could watch the changes
In our passions as they happen slowly
Making us what we need
The you and me we find inside
As time passes by, and I...

Know all the years and the places
The fears, the lonely faces,
scars, and broken hearts have made us who we are
We're always writing a new history
And redefining you and me
And though I know we've come so far...

We're changing all the time and I can see
So much of what you mean to me
I can't explain the how and why
Of all the changes now, but I...

Know all the years and the places
The fears, the lonely faces,
scars, and broken hearts have made us who we are
We're always writing a new history
And redefining you and me
And though I know we've come so far
We will begin again
Our story never ends...So many chapters to
This life we're living through
I rediscover you with every passing day
And I'm happy here
To know you're standing by
My side as time passes by, and I...

Know all the years and the places
The fears, the lonely faces,
scars, and broken hearts have made us who we are
We're always writing a new history
And redefining you and me
And though I know we've come so far
We will begin again
Our story never ends

We're changing all the time and I can see
So much of what you mean to me
I can't explain the how and why
Of all the changes now, but I...

Know all the years and the places
The fears, the lonely faces,
scars, and broken hearts have made us who we are
We're always writing a new history
And redefining you and me
And though I know we've come so far
We will begin again
Our story never ends”

 

When this finished, this was the message or “Definition of Marriage” the registrar gave:

“Every one of us is like the old man. We have felt the joy of loving, and the heart ache of loving. We’ve all loved someone and had that love rejected, leaving gaping wounds in our heart. We’ve loved someone, and lost them, leaving tears on our hearts, and sometimes, we have loved and been loved in return, and when that happens, something amazing occurs. It’s a chance that you take, and it can be a scary one, but for Paul and Elayne it was a chance they were willing to take, because when done right, a loving relationship such as theirs is a beautiful thing, and worth the risk.

Now that Paul and Elayne have shared their hearts with each other, they have decided to make a public commitment to each other and enter into the sacred bond of marriage. They already realize that a successful marriage is one where each partner discovers that it is better to give love than to receive it, that it is a partnership in which each can grow and be true to themselves, whilst sharing in the development of each other, that marriage is more than words or ceremony, but a commitment to be reaffirmed each and every day.  But what else?

Paul and Elayne, you must also, always remember:

  Never say, Must, always, and never.

  Laugh! Laugh a lot. Laugh at yourselves, laugh when things get tough. A sense of humor goes a long way.

  Forget whether you're right or wrong. The question is: Is what you're doing working or not working?

  There is no right or wrong way to fix a relationship. Find your own way that works. But recognize when it's not working and be honest when it needs fixing.

  Falling in love is not the same thing as being in love. Embrace the change and know that it takes work.

  You don't fix things by fixing your partner.

  Intimacy is so important because it is when we let someone else enter our private world.

  You don't necessarily solve problems. You learn how to manage them.

  Communicate. Make sure your sentences have verbs. Remember that only 7 percent of communication is verbal. Actions and non-verbal communication speak much louder.

   You get what you give. When you give better, you get better”

After this we said our vows to each other, and then I said vows to Amy.  I started to cry when I said my vows to her, but everyone else was crying too, so I guess it was OK. J Paul and my vows to each other were a little bit of a tongue twister... nothing hard, but putting all these big words together, in front of everyone, and Paul accidently forgot some of the words and had to ask her to repeat them. It was really cute.