It's worth MORE?!

We went to the bank yesterday (FOR THE THIRD TIME!!) to try to deposit our international cheques. They kept telling us they couldn't do it, but the lady in charge of foreign currency for all of our banks in the nation said that they could. And that she was tired of them saying they couldn't.

So we went back yesterday equipped with all the right words to say to tell them that they CAN do this.

After about 20 minutes of 3 people looking over the cheques, getting on the phone, looking at the computer, one lady came over and said, "Is this a pound sign?" When Josh confirmed she said, "Oh, that's what she said but I thought it was a euro sign."

After about 10 more minutes another lady came back behind the counter and said, "Ok, all of these are MORE so here is the amount of each check..." She seemed astonished that £35 converted to $70 and expected us to be so happy and greatful that we were getting more dollars than pounds. It was cute. But then she told us we wont see the money for 6-8 weeks...

Nobody likes to make any aspect of an international move easy.

Church picnic

The dessert table!

Sunshine on Leith!

I am really liking how my pictures look on the black background. I am going to have to change the format of my other blog! For now I just want to post these pictures here.

As I said on the other blog, these are from a walk I took to Leith about a week and a half before we came back to the States. We were blessed with a wee bit of summer in the weeks before we left!

City art

I always loved the view over the Forth

It's a port town.

A mural of the working class of Leith

Josh's work


Only 2 more days of work!

Labor Day

We Americans need a reason to have a government holiday. It can't just be called "Bank Holiday" and just take a day off just for the heck of it like other countries do. ;)

Today is Labor Day. When I was young I thought it meant you had to labor. Maybe harder than normal? Then when I realised that businesses were closed on Labor Day I thought that maybe you had to labor in your garden (lawn) or something.

But no. Labor Day is a day we take off (except retail, of course, because they need to handle the huge sales) to go to a parade, get together with friends and family, barbecue, and take a nap. There's also the laboring in the garden bit for some.

The Lowell Labor Day parade is the largest in the state for a town under 50,000. And I will vouch for it's length. It took over 2 hours! In that hot sun! No trees!

But lots of candy!!!
I forgot to mention that they throw candy at the crowd.

The pipers came out just for us! And they even played the Scottish anthem!

More on Flickr

The Great American Highway

When we first got on the highway back in the States my first thought was "YUCK!" It is just so ugly compared to what we experienced in Scotland. There are wires everywhere. There are huge billboard signs every 100 feet or so. IT IS SO FLAT! Tall grass and weeds growing along the side. Huge warehouse sized shops.



We just got back from taking a small trip to Michigan to see some of my family. My parents, Stevie, Josh, and myself. As ugly as it is in our part of the country, I do appreciate the American highway system. It makes it so much easier to get around in this vast country. The roads are wide. Not like on Mull where an A class road was hardly wide enough to fit a bus (let alone a passing vehicle!). ;) It is easy to make a stop. There are nice rest stops where one can simply pull off the road to stretch one's legs and have a picnic on the picnic tables or even barbecue on the grills provided. The rest stops are heavily shaded and provide a nice respite from the busy, smoggy, hot roads. The road system is fairly easy to navigate (MUCH easier than Ireland!!) allowing you to go great distances in a decent amount of time.

I do miss the scenery on the Scottish roads: hills, sheep, landscaped roundabouts, billboard-free, ruins. But in a country as large as this, we like efficiency.