We Have Acclimatized. I Mean, Acclimatised.

For my last Scottish language post, I said that we had given in, and started speaking more like Scots.  But really, it's not giving in at all.  It's acclimatizing.  Or as they say in the U.K., acclimatising.

I used to teach this in Introduction to Biological Anthropology - what is acclimatization? Acclimatization is adjusting to your environment.  I remember that Rhonda, my mentor, used to use the example of sweating in Arizona.  When you first arrive in Arizona from another part of the U.S. that features more reasonable temperatures, you sweat equally all over your body.  After a a few weeks, your body adjusts and you begin to sweat more efficiently, preferentially cooling your trunk, because, of course, that's where the important stuff for staying alive is located.  You have acclimatized. 

In Scotland, we have acclimatized in several ways.

First, we have changed our language, as previously discussed.  Even Paul, who doesn't really have much of an ear for languages, tending to remain pretty much American-English only, complains that half the time he calls our daughter's sweater a "jumper," in proper English fashion.  And as I read a book about food the other day with the three-year old, she identified the red fruit as a "to-mah-to." No, I said. "To-may-to."

We have also acclimatized to the cold, or more properly the absence of heat.  The cold is still nasty.  Especially the windy, rainly cold, like the entire month of November. Not kidding, the entire month. But, when we were in Edinburgh last July to get our passports renewed, it was HOT. And by HOT I mean 75 degrees.  This weather is described by Scots as "roastin'" and indeed we were roasting. It was clear and sunny ALL DAY, unheard of around here...here is a picture of that day. Look! Short sleeves! And I have my fleece around my waist, it's so hot. Truly, roastin'.

Roasting in Edinburgh, August 2014.

Another acclimatization is to driving - and riding - on the wrong side of the road.  Paul now has a full UK driving license, but in the early days he gave a couple of car dealers near-heart-attacks as he drive down the road, trying to stay to the side instead of (counterintuitively) hugging the center (I mean centre) line of the road.  Riding in the passenger seat, which would be the driver's seat in the US, took some getting used to, too.  For the first month or more, I habitually tried to get into the wrong side of the car.  Once I was in the correct seat, it still felt strange to be in the driver's seat yet have no control over the car.  And going around all the roundabouts made me feel slighly sick every time we took the car anywhere.  But eventually, I acclimatized.

The last acclimatization was to food availability.  When we first arrived, our families and others from the U.S. would ask us if we missed anything from the U.S., food-wise. And at first, we did. Decent bagels. Normal marshmallow. S'mores. But as we were here a little longer, we adjusted to what you could (and could not) get and became concerned with the bigger issues, that were mostly beyond our control.  Like, there are only two kinds of takeout food in Dundee that are any good.  They are: fish and chips, and Indian/Pakistani food. That's it. I feel lucky because I get to travel for work every couple of months, so every time I go to a bigger city, I seek out decent takeout food - Thai! Mediterranean! Sushi! Even (dare I hope for it?) Mexican! Okay, not really. You have to go all the way to London for that! Also, while the grocery store carries a number of products that we want to buy, they seem to mkae a game of organizing them in the most obscure possible way, so we can't find them. And, although we have also aclimatized to this, the Scottish idea of "customer service" bears only a faint resemblence to what you would see in the U.S. The idea of low profile shop assistants does have some benefit - you will never find a salesperson hovering next to you, glibly inquiring, "May I help you?" But, on the other hand, if you truly need help, sometimes it's like a prairie dog colony - you see salespeople all over the place, and then as soon as you open your mouth to ask a question, they're gone. Whoosh.

Two years of acclimatization. And soon we'll be back, and I'll be writing this blog in reverse.  Talking about how no one in America speaks properly or can cope with the cold.  Having the same unease about driving on the wrong side of the car, and actually driving again after two years of not driving. And of course, realizing that although Americans have proper bagels, marshmallows, S'mores, and of course fabulous takeout food (I'm looking at you, Tucson), the grocery stores will seem strange after two years away, and the salespeople uncomfortably clingy, over-helpful, and just plain American.

Time to acclimatize again.   

Dundee Flower and Food Festival 2014

This morning I started my day tromping through the grass and mud, trees and gravel parking lots of Camperdown Park in Dundee.  The group I sing with, Loadsaweeminsingin (previous blog about the group here) has a regular gig at the festival.  After the aforementioned tromping, I (and Paul, and the girls) finally found the parking lot we were meeting in, and moved on to warming up (both vocally and physically - although it wasn't raining this morning, Scotland in early September is not exactly warm).  When we got to the stage, my fan club were the only ones in the audience.  The audience did grow once we started singing, but this experience reinforced what I suspected - 10:30 on a Sunday morning is pretty early for Scots.

I'm about third from right - Paul's camera image

 After we finished singing at 11, we explored the flower and food festival.  Well, okay, first we let the kids ride the rides. 

On the ubiquitous merry go round ride - driving the bulldozer this time.

Finally getting big enough for the harnessed-trampoline-jumping ride!

Then we watched Indian dancing.  Then we ate lunch. THEN we explored the festival.  It reminded Paul and I of a cross between the St. Andrews Highland Games (blog here) and the Royal Highland Show (blog here).  It was a bit like the Highland Games in scale - a small fun fair, a good bit of Highland Dancing (and the accompanying bagpiping).  It was a bit like the Highland Show in its several tents packed with stalls and displays.  In this case, the stalls were selling fancy food, including jam, cheese, beef and lamb, hard cider, Scotch whisky, and various kinds of sweets (most with samples!) and the displays were of flowers, plants and vegetables.  It was definitely much smaller than the Highland Show, and there were also no animals, which of course are the main point of the Highland Show.  The Flower and Food festival didn't have a single sheep or cow (at least a live one, though they were well-represented in alternate forms in the Food section).

The vegetables were quite welcoming

Did I mention Claire likes carrots, and wanted to pose with them?

You know you wondered where the took place...Ireland would have been my guess. 

Given the popularity of jam in the food tent, I should have taken a picture of (not kidding) the booth for the World Jampionships, which are sponsored by a Scottish jam producer (MacKays, pronounced McKies) and won by a man from Dundee in 2014. 

We finally did find flowers as well!

Prizewinning dahlias

Other prizewinning flowers

Even Audrey got into the flower (or rather, tree) spirit, and fell in love with a Bonsai tree.  She wanted a big tree, but compromised on a little one - this is her with "Rosie" - she's chatted to her all afternoon, trying to get her to break out in the promised white flowers.  And no, Audrey isn't looking a little green - she chose the "witch" face-painting at the festival, while Claire went for a glitter tattoo of a princess crown. 

Audrey and Rosie the Bonsai.

Picnic at the Park

Just a quick post to say that in the past few weeks Paul and I have been trying to go over to our local park with Audrey for a picnic dinner at least once a week and hope to keep doing this until it gets too hot in the evening to sit outside.

We take our towel and pack an easy dinner - usually tacos - and just go sit in the grass. The park is nice because people are almost always there to have a good time -to spend time with their family, play with their dog in the dog park, celebrate a birthday or some other occasion...only on rare occasion have we seen people having some sort of negative interaction in the park. And there is plenty of grass (well, relatively, this is Tucson) and plenty of trees.

Audrey loves it because she can make a big mess and it doesn't matter. Tonight she grabbed some of the beans for the tacos and stuffed maybe 8 in her mouth at once. She lost a bunch of them when she started chewing but then picked them up and ate them again. She also got into (literally) her sweet potatoes and carrots, and then finished up with two whole strawberries and a whole grape. I took pictures but deleted them because it looked like she was bleeding as the strawberry juice dripped down her arm. So instead you get a picture of her commandeering the avocado before we opened the container!