Scotland, States, and all that Jazz...

It's been some time since my last post and I'm realizing that means with each passing day and month, we are becoming more and more acclimated here to where this feels like home for the time-being thus the reason for the longer space of time in between posts.

Since our trip to Rome, we survived the month of January, which tends to be the longest month of the year post-holidays and long stretch between paychecks. I get paid once a month on the last Thursday of the month; due to the holidays, my paycheck was posted on the 18th December and with January being 5 weeks, the next paycheck wasn't until the 29th January!

Each day is also a reminder of recession depression; the papers and news are adourned daily with the number of people losing jobs, the number of people angry at our Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, for the decisions he has made surrounding the economy, pay cuts, public spending that he's minimizing, and the prices he's increasing in certain areas. Almost 10% of Ireland's population is uneployed which amounts to almost 400,000 people. Brian and I feel incredibly lucky to have jobs that allows us to live and do the things we want to do while we are here. My salary has been impacted so far in that I will not be getting the salary increment as indicated prior to my accepting the position, but that goes for everyone.

But alas, January was not all doom and gloom, Brian and I were able to enjoy 2 separate trips--I went to Edinburgh, Scotland with a friend and Brian ventured back home to Seattle.

Edinburgh was absolutely amazing and is one of my top favorite cities for the moment; Colleen and I made the most of our weekend by waking up at the crack of dawn to enjoy what the city has to offer. We started off our first day with taking in all the sights such as the: Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, the Parliment, walking the Royal Mile, among many other things. While the weather was cold, we were dressed appropriately and embraced all that the city has. The people and food were fanastic; the B&B we stayed at was EXCELLENT in its location and service, we'd recommend it to everyone and would return to the same spot for future trips. Our second day there was an all day trip to the Highlands and Loch Ness (with several stops along the way through small towns). Scotland has an amazing landscape in that we saw beautiful waterfalls, trees, and snow-capped mountains all on the same trip. The Loch Ness is stunning...no monster sightings though. Our 3rd day was spent waking up at 6:15am to hike to the top of Arthur's Seat to catch the sunrise over Edinburgh. While the hike was not physically challenging, it was a bit confusing as there were no signage for the way up...mind you, there were several paths and we ended up taking several before we made it up. The sunrise that day was not a stunning as the one we saw Saturday morning. Only an hour flight from Dublin, I will definitely be returning with Brian.

Brian's trip to Seattle was eventful, fun, and busy with spending time with family, friends, lunch and dinner dates, a bachelor party, and of course playing in a competitive flag football game on his old team. His trip home was a surprise to everyone except for 2-3 people; imagine the surprise on his family's face when he walked into the door. He returned home for a couple reasons; one, because of a good friend's bachelor party and a chance to see everyone together, and two, he had the holiday time to take off. Brian and I have different calendar years for work; my calendar year starts in January and his starts in April, so he had time to use up that cannot be carried over to the following year. In his words, the trip was amazing and it was great to see and spend time with family and friends, but being home made him realize how fast paced America is and made him appreciate the 'simpler' lifestyle here. I'm happy to have him back home and enjoyed the goodies he brought back! He had some requests from our Irish friends--Twinkies and Butterfingers!

We have an amazing fun-filled year ahead of us; before we know it, our year here will have come and gone. Here's our calendar for the year:

February: The last weekend of February I'm whisking Brian away to an unknown European destination for his birthday.

March: Leann and Melanie come to visit!

April: My birthday weekend away the first weekend of April to an unknown European destination; Jen comes to visit!

May: My family comes to visit!

June: I am attending a 2-day conference in Galway, Ireland.

July: We're celebrating our 1 year anniversary for a week in the Canary Islands.

August: We are hoping to that Brian's American football team will make it to the championships, and he'll be playing in the Shamrock Bowl!

September: TBD

October: TBD

November: We are going back to the States for my brother's wedding (and maybe a dear friend's wedding??).

December: TBD

And that wraps up the year! :)

We have had some unusually COLD weather this past week; the coldest in 18 years and more snow than this country has seen in decades! Imagine how Seattle is when it snows, well, it's worse here, but ask anyone Irish, they LOVE the snow. Some of the young children of parents I work with saw snow for the first time; many were scared of it, older children relished the opportunity to make snowmen and have snowball fights. My co-workers and I were victims of being pelleted by snowballs...the competitiveness in me didn't stop me from getting them back and running away as fast as I could.

We hope your 2009 is off to a good start...we think of you often and love hearing from everyone. The pictures on here are from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Love,

Rosanne and Brian