Finding the Holy Grail

Hiya—a quick post after a great day. Today was our last day before I resume teaching, and Ben and I, and one of my students, elected to use it for a short road trip. We took an Edinburgh bus about seven miles south of Edinburgh, to Roslin, to visit the Rosslyn Chapel. I’d like to say that I chose to see it for the beautiful and plentiful stone carvings, but I was really in it because of The Da Vinci Code, which you have no doubt read, and, if you are anything like me, you thought it was a very poorly written book, but it still totally captured your imagination. I’m embarrassed by how much I enjoyed reading it. It was the most-discussed book in my Georgia book club, and we all agreed that it was the book we “hated to love.”

But I digress.

The weather was beautiful here today—sunny and seventy-ish, and we are anticipating uncharacteristically hot weather at the end of this week (91 F in Edinburgh.) Good news for our crew is that we are headed to the Highlands on Friday, and then on to Glasgow on Sunday evening. Most of the students have already said they are sad to leave Edinburgh and I agree, but I will muster the energy to be enthusiastic about Glasgow. Ben and I are lucky that we get to come back to Edinburgh for about a week at the end of the month, before journeying on to Italy to see Kate.

Anyway, phew, off topic. Rosslyn was beautiful—intimate and impressive. We spent about an hour inside and a second hour outside. It was built in the 15th century by the St. Clair family, cousins to William the Conqueror, joining him on his invasion of England in 1066. Sometime later, Will and the St. Clair’s had a falling out, and Malcolm “Big Head”, who was at the time the King of what would be Scotland, gave them some Scottish land so that the St. Clair’s could move north. Big Head’s wife was Margaret of Hungary, who would later be canonized (the oldest building in Edinburgh Castle is the chapel that Margaret’s son David built for his mother) and she had a piece of the crucifix at the time of her death, or part of the “Holy Rood.” The ultimate destination for that relic is unknown, but many believe that it is the crypt (sealed still today by the St. Clair family) of the Rosslyn Chapel. There were so many things that I loved about Rosslyn Chapel, amongst them the carvings of three plants found in America, probably found in what is now Massachusetts, earlier than 1492, by a St. Clair who traveled to North America as part of the Knights Templar.

Okay, okay, I know. Too much history. As many of you know, I LOVE churches and cathedrals. Always have, always will. Rosslyn moved into the top three today, though: Rosslyn Chapel, York Minster, and Concord United Methodist Church in Temple, Georgia.

Must teach myself all about the Jacobite wars now, as I have to teach it to eleven mildly-interested minds in about eleven hours. Tomorrow is teaching, an afternoon at the portrait gallery, dinner with the students, and a quiz. A good day.

The pics are from the walk way along the Water of Leith, very near us, and of a thistle on said walk. No pics of Rosslyn allowed, probably because of the Holy Grail/Audrey Tautou.

Love,
Robyn and Ben

Weekend in Auld Reekie

The weather has delivered this weekend—four seasons each day. We’ve enjoyed it anyway. We’ve spent the weekend with friends—visited Camera Obscura and the Scottish Storytelling Center, had a killer meal at Monster Mash, and, after taking a walk through the Meadows, rediscovered a pub I’d liked on my last visit to Edinburgh.

After brunch this morning, (I love Sundays, everywhere in the world) we spent the afternoon watching cricket while Ben explained the sport to one of my students and I graded the students’ first exams. The students did very well, which was great, and it was fun to spend a lazy afternoon at the cricket. We met Shan and Callie for coffee so that I can fuss over Callie, and are cooking in tonight, getting ready for the week ahead.

This was a week of birthdays for my family: Grandma, Jodi and Aaron, and my brother, tomorrow. Happy Birthday, fam. Missing you all.

Love,
Robyn and Ben

Week One is Done...

Hello, hello, hello…it’s late and I’m tired, and not feeling very creative, but it’s been five very eventful, fun days, and I need to think about it before it passes me by, already too quickly.
I’m still loving work—I lectured for three hours on Thursday morning and it felt like twenty minutes. I think that is a mark of loving what you are teaching. On Sunday evening, after we’d visited Stirling, we had the first of three SUPER yummy meals this week, a cauliflower and broccoli bake at Portcullis (the best of what pub food has to offer, methinks), a sweet potato and goat cheese salad at Circle Café in Canonmills this week, and a kick butt vegetable risotto tonight at The Orchard, also in Canonmills.

On Monday, I took the students to the Scottish Parliament for an afternoon tour—I think the building is beautiful, but my friend Shannon insisted that I was “joking” when I told her so. I think most of the students were a bit bored, but my dorky-little historians’ heart loved it. It was the castle on Tuesday (five visits, was, surprisingly, enough) after a lunch in my old hood of Portobello (at my local, The Blue Bean.) On Wednesday night, I spent the evening with Shan and Esme, and six hours were gone in about six minutes. Last night, the Literary Pub Tour (and a knock at the door at midnight from students upset about Michael Jackson.) Tonight, a visit from a friend from our Georgia days, Sabrina, who introduced us to her lovely partner Andrew. Andrew’s a Kiwi, and I only made it about six minutes before asking him about Flight of the Conchords. Sabrina and I haven’t seen each other for three years, but remarked to ourselves tonight that we’ve seen each other in four countries: U.S. during our Athens days, Amsterdam in 2005, England in 2006, and Scotland tonight. We decided that we’d start referring to ourselves as the Jet-Set.

When we knew this adventure was a go, Ben and I had big weekend plans for Spain, or Guernsey, or Stockholm, but financial realities and now desire have kept us in Scotland. Seeing friends, relaxing when we can…we spent most of the afternoon yesterday watching the pond in Stockbridge and sleeping in the sun.

Sounds good as I write it. Let’s have more of that.

I’m not going to talk much about work on this thing, because I love my job, and blogging about work is recipe for disaster, but leading a study abroad group makes work very personal too—I feel so fortunate to watch 11 people experience Edinburgh and Scottish culture for the first time. Nine of those 11 are traveling internationally for the first time as well. They love the accent. The miss the free refills. They talk WAAAYYYY to loudly but just like Americans do. They ask me if men’s knees get cold in kilts. They complain about the reading. They marvel at fish and chips, and ask me what “mushy peas” are. They are delighted with brown sauce. They are sure that I should know the bus route automatically for every bus in Edinburgh and withhold this information to torture them. They have already made big declarations about moving here as soon as possible. They complain about the walking, (which, phew, me too) and they remind me of me eleven years ago. It’s humbling.

Ben is loving his gig as sidekick, kept man, fellow traveler…he takes a lot of photos and tells dirty jokes that my position prevents me from telling (but I can’t help laughing). I run a lot of my lecture material by him and he’s a thorough critic. They are pretty engaged in class but that might just be the cheese platter I brought from cheese scored at the Farmer’s Market.

We’ve been back to The Elephant House, sent the students on a scavenger hunt, and visited St. Giles and Stirling, but the best bit has been catching up with friends and just being HERE, shopping in Stockbridge, finding this killer organic ice cream in Peckham’s, hitting the Farmer’s Market at Castle Terrace, having a snakebite at The Bailie, walking the Water of Leith…this gig is heavy with memory. We’ve introduced the students to pub food (a yummy pub in Stirling called The Portcullis), Irn Bru and our old gig, The Rose St. Brewery, which had FRESH FLOWERS and new carpet and wasn’t nearly the dive I loved and remember.

It’s fun to teach what is basically a directed readings course—they are doing a blog (http://www.esuinscotland.blogspot.com/) which is fun to read (I don’t edit the content, so you are getting it straight from their mouths)—especially about something I love so much, and their travel skills are really improving already. It is difficult not to mother-hen them to pieces, but so far, this is a great group of students, independent and curious and fun.

Our accommodation is great—a real score, and about a fifteen-minute walk to the city center, which puts the students in a real neighborhood, not some hostel on the Royal Mile. That view of the castle above is the view from our window.

We were at Stirling on the day of the Scottish Fashion Awards. Ben was impressed. See models above. I think that one in the middle is THIS CLOSE to picking a bat out of the cave, if you know what I am saying.

Picture us eating the best grilled cheese sandwich I’ve ever had, or walking through the Royal Botanical Gardens, and have a look at a heap of photos taken over the last couple of days.

Off to read, then to sleep…

Love,
Robyn and Ben

Edinburgh

The first time I went to Edinburgh, I stayed on the floor of my former RA’s flat that she shared with a group of strangers. We got along because she bought me beer and let me break the rules at Baker in exchange for information about my best friend, A.J., upon whom she had a major crush. By pimping out A.J. (not LITERALLY) I was able to score us free accommodations in Edinburgh for a long weekend.

I was nineteen, studying abroad in the spring of my sophomore year. We arrived late at night in February. It was raining and cold, and we had the start of a plague that would linger for over a month. We came out of Waverly station, saw the castle, and I was in love, at home in a place that I was seeing for the first time.

I didn’t take full advantage of Edinburgh that trip. I remember drinking a lot of overpriced test-tube shots on a pub tour and talking the RA off the ledge in the bathroom when A.J. flirted with someone else at the bar. I did make really sophisticated decisions while shopping, however: a packaged, whiskey-flavored condom that I later glued to my scrapbook when I got home.

That scrapbook is EM-BAR-RASS-ING.

I had my quarter-life crisis when I was 23, a few weeks after being accepted into a doctoral program. Dyngus talked ourselves into a year abroad, a year in Edinburgh, and, after much drama and the last-minute advocacy of the man who would become my major professor, I was given a deferment and free reign to take a year off of graduate school.

THEN I got scared: I was going to be behind everyone in my program. My parents would never get over it. I was going to have to ask them if I could move home for a few months to save money. I was walking away from a sweet assistantship and two jobs. I would probably end up homeless. ALMOST everyone thought it was a bad idea.

Not my grandmother. My grandmother thought it was a great idea and for that I will always be grateful.

And, defying all logic, I also thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t know why. That move was the riskiest decision I’d ever made.

I worked two miserable jobs in Wichita, one overnight in a group home where I had to deal with a lot of plumbing issues created by grown men. I’ll leave you to speculate. The other was at a live-in drug and alcohol facility directed by a seriously mentally-ill woman who used to call me crying late at night. I earned every magic bean I was paid.

We moved to Edinburgh in early December, stayed in a hostel with a broken window and nearly got pneumonia. We got a flat on Christmas Eve and ate canned spaghetti for Christmas dinner. The night after we moved in, our neighbors called the police citing “hysterical laughter” (fair) and another neighbor yelled at us for using her rubbish bin (unfair). We frequently embarrassed ourselves, in a myriad of ways (Cockburn street is pronounced co-burn) and told people we were Canadian. We saw charming, almost unbelievable things (like a man dressed like Sherlock Holmes) and frustrating things (like hooliganism) and hysterical things (like the time Andrea got solicited by a 12 year old.)

We made some of our dearest friends, who I get to see in just a couple of days.

We had crappy jobs that made us either miserable or deliriously happy, depending on the day. We didn’t act like tourists. I joined a book club. We had a local quiz night. We travelled. We fought. I threatened to kill a twelve year old who threw a snow ball at me. We found nachos after a three-month search and almost cried. Shannon had a line on some Ro-Tel. We drank a lot. Sometimes I walked eight miles and didn’t even think about it.

I fell in love for the first time. Then a second time. It was all very dramatic.

The second love moved to America to live with me. We got married four years later.

I volunteered and did counseling with people who were very culturally different from me. I nearly stayed, going as far as sitting in a real-estate office with a lease in front of me. I lived broke. Really broke. I asked a couple of people out.

I took risks. I laughed AND cried, mostly laughed. Once I locked myself in a bathroom to get away from Andrea and Autumn. They will give you a different version of that story.

I was the most adventurous, least-stressed version of myself I’ve ever known, and, for all these reasons, but that especially, those nine months in Edinburgh were a watershed for me. I still miss that Robyn, and look for her every time I travel, but especially in Edinburgh.

I’ll let you know if I find her again.

Thanks to the lot of you who have posted such nice comments on this blog. My readership is generally limited to Nadine, (a better sister-in-law is never to be had) but it’s good that it’s expanded to about four people.

I’m concerned, though, that you say such kind, ego-stroking things. I was temporarily worried that my ego would expand beyond its already bulbous boundaries.

But then I remembered that I once wet my pants in Atlanta traffic, about fifteen minutes before I was going to teach a class. I had to blow my pants dry under the hand dryer. Or, that on another day of teaching, my first at the same university, I fell backwards over a podium and landed spread-eagle on the linoleum. Or that, on my last trip to Australia, I projectile vomited into a lifeboat in front of thirty tourists. Or that, in high school, some people called me Hoover because some bizo named Erin started a rumor that I had sex with a vacuum cleaner.
The first three have occurred within the last three years. The latter never occurred, but ALLEGEDLY occurred in seventh grade, the same year that my idiot math teacher kept me after school for “gang activity” after he found the notes I’d made on gangs for my CHURCH YOUTH GROUP PRESENTATION.

I still wore side pony-tails at this point, mind you!

In high school I also did a dance routine in a bear mask to “Leader of the Pack” and thought I was in love with a boy who once ate a pound of fudge in a single sitting.

Clearly, I was misguided.

I could go on forever… Seriously. All that is to say thanks for the kind comments, folks. This has been fun.

Lots of people on the home front have been champions for us, too—mail, bills, mowing the lawn, trips to the airport, etc…and we are grateful, grateful, grateful. Thanks to all of you who have done all of these good, good things for us.

Catching our Breath?

Melbourne is a fantastic city; vibrant, pretty, multicultural, energizing. In fact, my cousin-in-law tells me that it is the “second most livable city in the world” after Vancouver.

That’s nice.

I was hearing none of it, because my energies were consumed by this lovely child:


She is AWESOME. Check that smile:


This was our third visit to Melbourne, and we saw it proper on the first two; this trip was really just about catching up with family and friends. We had great times with the Melbourne Gerrards and I had the chance to meet Ben’s uncle Mark and his wife Gwynn. We caught up with ABC chums Jude (and her lovely little boys) and Belinda, all of whom are fun and warm…the best kinds of people. For these and lots of other reasons, it is difficult to ignore the siren’s song that is Melbourne.

Plus, they had this cute café in an old tram station (Mart, which is Tram backwards) where we had brunch with Ben’s Aunt and Uncle. If I have a design aesthetic (doubtful, very doubtful), they achieved it. Bonus: The corn fritters rocked my socks off.

Our trip home was uneventful, and we even scored a bulkhead seat with lots of leg room and exit rows on our two domestic flights, so clearly the travel fairy was on our side. I also, finally, got to watch much of the new season of Flight of the Conchords and was not afraid to laugh out loud. I couldn’t help it.

I must be getting older, if not maturing, as this was the first time I can remember my tailbone hurting from sitting so long.

I asked Ben if he still liked me after three weeks in constant company and he said yes. I think he meant it, but maybe it is because I had a Violet Crumble candy bar in my possession and he knew it.

My folks were at home to greet us, having been at a wedding in Kansas City; they had pizza and lots of good stories from their Alaskan cruise for us, and it was great to see them. It’s so great to have parents who will meet you at the door, dinner ready, after 24+ hours in airplanes and airports.

Sunday was devoted to laundry, thank-you-notes, bills, and an awesome surprise birthday dinner with Dyngus, David and Ben—well played Dyngus, well-played. Andrea cooked the meal from our “Everyday French” cooking class and Autumn scored a DQ ice-cream cake, and it was great to see them.

Ben and I hit work on Monday and Tuesday—we are not accustomed anymore to things like “work” but it was good to get caught up a bit, and to check in with clients and students. I love my job. And speaking of work, I’m toiling away in the Newark airport just now, guiding a group of 11 students, most of who are flying internationally for the first time, on a study abroad program to Scotland.

Oh, the drudgery.

In a few hours we wing our way to Edinburgh. I’ll try to write a bit about Edinburgh soon. She’s like going to see an old, very dear friend (in fact, there are dear friends living there) but flying into Edinburgh is still, always a bit magical for me.

We’ll post when we can.
Love,
Robyn and Ben

Tassie, Tassie, Tassie OY OY OY

We’re watching a second episode of Good News Week (a re-run) and this show cracks me up. We spent our only full day in Tassie eating well and catching up with good friends. This was my brunch (a proper English breakfast, had in Australia, why are baked beans for breakfast so delicious?) :

We ate with our friends at this enclosed atrium in a former jam factory, and then spent a couple of hours browsing shops and art galleries at Salamanca Arts Center, before meeting up with an old friend of Ben’s, Tracy, who has lived in Hobart for about ten years. It was great to meet her as I’d heard lovely things, all of which were true.

Tonight we had FRIED SCALLOPS FOR DINNER which I’d been remembering with longing for three years, since our last visit to Hobart. Dude, they are the best, best, best thing EVAH. They will sustain me until our next visit.

Off to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon—

Love,
Robyn and Ben

Tasmania and Wee Ben

Check this guy out:

I was relieved to see how adorable he was since all previous pictures were from Ben's late teens and early twenties when he looked like Kenny Rogers. It's good to see those dark years were booked-ended by cuteness.

We're in Tasmania and, though we arrived in the dark, it's still lovely.

Tasmania is one of the two places I've ever been where, though I was visiting for the first time, I felt like I was at home.

More adventures soon...for now, sleep!

Love,

Robyn and Ben

Live from the Adelaide Hills

I apologize for this video. It was late at night, and there is some mildly-filthy language. Upon review, we probably would have re-done it, but, alas, we ate ourselves. To death. Like Pizza the Hut.

Not Sweating the Technique

I’m tucked in for our last night in the Adelaide Hills, and, even with a week behind us here, I’m sad to go.

On Wednesday night Ben’s Dad suggested we have lunch the next day, so we headed back into Stirling on Thursday, this posh community about 30 minutes from Ben’s parents’ place, where we’d spent the day before. To accommodate my dorky self, the family agreed to have lunch at LocaVore, a new-ish restaurant in Stirling that follows the “100-mile diet” plan whenever possible, and had SUPER yummy lunches all around. I had local salmon, smoked very near the farm, Ben had his second lot of bangers and mash, and the in-laws had the daily moussaka special that featured a “Manchego Cheese Crust.”

Which reminds me: Manchego cheese is basically the best cheese in the world. In my heart, it’s a picture-finish between smoked gouda, manchego, and, while basic, an English cheddar. Call me a simpleton, but, dammit, those cheeses rock.

Ben got to have sticky toffee fig pudding, his favorite dessert for all time, and thusly approved retroactively of my choice of restaurant, expanding my X-Men mutation beyond my ability to pick the best thing on the menu to picking the best place to have lunch. You can see why he married me, right?

We spent the afternoon pottering about Stirling, and then Ben and I had dinner with his former boss/mentor and his wife that have become dear friends. We had dinner at a local Indian place where we’d first met them five years ago, on my first trip to Australia. They have two lovely children who are doing interesting things with their young lives, including this cool thing in Australia called “Pedal Prix” where kids build and train to pedal-power small, Indy-like race cars. Cool, right? Anyway, I won’t list names here, because they the humble sorts of people who would be embarrassed by what I’m going to say, but they’ve mastered that ability to deserve your respect and admiration while still being totally relatable and fun, and we both agree that no trip to Australia is complete without time with this crew.

They also have a sulfur-crested cockatoo who is in love with Ben’s mentor and sometimes attacks his wife in a fit of jealousy.

Which reminds me: Ben’s maternal grandparents once lived in India and his grandfather, Peter, had a pet monkey there, who would sit on his shoulders while he did office work and eat crackers all day. The monkey hated Ben’s grandmother, Ann, and used to throw books at her when she would come into the office to see Peter.

Also, the above-mentioned cockatoo ovulates when she has enough quality time with Ben’s mentor. If I hadn’t read this in Barbara Kingsolver’s book last year, I would not believe this kind of stuff happens.

Which reminds me: I would not tolerate that sort of crap.

Yesterday we went in search of this yummy liqueur, Island Sting, that Suzanne had tried at LocaVore the day before. It’s made from this honey produced by bees on Kangaroo Island that are the only “pure” bees left in the world, meaning they’ve never mated with other, “lesser” bees. They come from the Ligurian region of Italy, but apparently got “polluted” there. Anyway, the liqueur: I love that vacations afford you the time to try something new and then search it out. We took about an hours’ drive through the Adelaide Hills and went to Gummeracha, a wine district, where we did a wine tasting at a local winery, had super yummy antipasto for lunch, and scored the liqueur and chocolates we’d set out for. On the way, we encountered these awesome red toad stools, a bunch of llamas, and, because we were with my mother-in-law, stopped on the roadside to check the pouch of a dead kangaroo to make sure there was no joey.

There was no joey. The dead kangaroo was a dudearoo.

As we left the winery, we saw a kangaroo hopping between the vines. She’s hard to see, but do you see her?

Last night we went to some neighbors/ friends of the in-laws, and had a nice evening talking, sharing yummy treats, and kicking an eight-year-olds ass at Uno, (me), despite the fact that he was a wicked cheater.

I also saw a spinafex (sp) hopping mouse, which they keep as pets at the house. He’s a zookeeper and she’s a Montessori school teacher, so they’re just fun to talk to. He whittles spoons for fun and got out his spoons to show me, and she talked with me about her latest class project of recycling paper into combustible paper bricks that you can burn in winter.

Today we spent the whole day with some of Ben’s best friends, Gill and her son Finlay, Tash, Krys and their son Josh, Pete and Kath, and had a long, chatty lunch. Last time we saw them, Tash and Krys were getting married, and Fin was only two, not yet talking. Josh was only a figment of his parents’ imagination.

Fin and Josh are gorgeous children, and, can I just say, children with Australian accents are adorable.

We’re on the road again tomorrow. Sad to say goodbye to South Australia and the people in it, but on to the friends in Hobart, Tasmania, and, while not as important as the friends, the deep-friend scallops that still have their gonads.

I give the gonads to Ben.

Love,
Robyn and Ben

Morton Bay Bugs OR Slipper Lobsters

Are delicious. They look gross, but I assure you, they are delicious. We had them for dinner last night. They taste like tiny lobsters.

This morning we drove past old haunts for Ben in Aldgate and Stirling, and picked up lunch to go from this yummy and super cute organic market.

Then, we went to join Ben's Dad for his Wednesday model sailboat sailing club. It was fun! Seems like mostly the other guys (there are about ten) stand around and insult one another. I overheard, "your boat just got passed by a duck, Colin" and a heap of other insinuations and insults. We sailed.

I'm posting from the Mt. Barker Public Library. We have a sailing video and one other, but apparently "wireless" is still a new-ish concept in The Land Down Under, and all signals are "low" at best. Ben is pirating music from same library. It's a lazy, lovely, vacation-y day.

Adelaide Central Market: Porn for Foodies

Today Ben treated me to an afternoon at the Adelaide Central Market. He said, “this market will blow your mind.”

He was right. It was a great market, and a nice reminder of how wonderfully multicultural Adelaide is. We also met a fella from Nebraska at the Visitor’s Booth; he got his Masters Degree at KU, but has been in Adelaide for nearly forty years.

We’ll show you in pictures what we did with the afternoon.

That little frog thing is called a frog cake; Ben misses them all the time, apparently. I found it a bit sweet and he is incredulous as a result.

Scooter Blenny

This is video of one of our roommates, Scooter Blenny. You cannot make this stuff up.



Now, I'm off for dinner. We're having chicken, not fish.

This Rooster Is Obsessed With Me

He follows me everywhere. Ben says it is because the rooster "wants" me, but I think he just wants me for dinner....

Green Hectares

Some photos Ben and I (mostly Ben) snapped around the farm yesterday...

Here is a cow family. Are they really a family? I do not know. Let's assume yes. It's a non-traditional family.

More cows.

Here's the farm. Green, eh?

Here's our roommate, the marine fish tank. Video to be posted sharpish! Way to represent, Nemo!

This is Mingus....

and Mia....

and the stained glass (Ben was all, "really, we have to post stained glass?" and I was all, "yep.")

It's pretty, right?

Here are my in-laws wicked admirable solar panels....

and my mother-in-laws equally admirable garden...

and Killer Chickens, chasing me....

and something really disturbing...

Finally, a Ute, just so yous guys know its a working farm...