All Smiles :)

I am grateful to report that we BOTH passed our theory tests today! Yeah! Thank you for your prayers. What a relief to be done and to have passed! To celebrate, the sun has been out all day (after fog off and on for a week, it has been very welcome) and we are going to Edinburgh bright and early in the morning to get away until Friday night. We are looking forward to a short break in Scotland's capital that we hear is a wonderful city to visit. I'm sure you'll get the full report when we are back :)

Stay Where You Are!

The title of this post was the title of our pastor's sermon on Sunday from 1 Corinthians 7:17-24. What an encouragement to be content in the circumstances of life and where God has us at this moment, not longing to be elsewhere or be someone else. We just thought we'd pass the encouragement along--if life is unusually dull and making you long for something more exciting, or if life is a little full of too many surprises right now and you're desiring peace and quiet; or if there are aspects of life you'd really like to change in the belief that things would magically get better if you were elsewhere--then take the 30 minutes or so to be encouraged to press on and remain (contentedly) in this spot God has you for now--it's for a reason! Click here to hear sermon as a streaming audio file or download as an MP3 file.

Haardy-haar haar

The lovely see mist/fog, or Haar as it is referred to by locals, has been here a lot this week! Usually found upon waking in the morning and looking out ones windows a thick fog is seen when looking towards the coast. As is the case with other things, because we are situated higher up we have a fairly good view of the haar coming our way. Sometimes the haar will roll in in the afternoon and we can watch it get closer and closer to our flat. It's kinda sad, though, that there are days that would be sunny or mostly sunny except for this fog that covers the sun. My favorite days are when the sun wins out and melts the haar away! (Too bad that hasn't been the case today. Though the haar is lessened from these photos taken this morning, it is still not very clear.)Here's what it typically looks like (minus the rainbow!) We have at least a 2 mile visibility. Maybe more.

Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks?

....We have our doubts after our first two hour driving lesson with an instructor this afternoon!!! If we get our UK license, it will indeed be by the grace of God! I am starting to think it is easier to get a PhD than a license here.

Needless to say, we have lots to work on. I would have failed my test before we even left our street. You absolutely CANNOT put your gear shift into neutral and coast or you fail. I think between Mark and I we violated that rule at least 50 times in 2 hours! Did you know when driving a stick you can stop from 3rd and 2nd gear? (Of course, you have to remember to push the clutch in at the end or you will stall!) In fact, are required to do so. As the instructor said, 1st gear is for starting off. We also discovered that there are few stop signs, mainly just "give way" signs, meaning you can slow down, look and pull out onto an intersecting road. No stop sign means, no complete stop. I remember that was big when I took my test at the young age of 16--coming to a complete stop. She kept wondering why we were stopping so much!

Whew. How humbling is it to have nearly 15 years driving experience each and be constantly told you are doing something wrong!? We may be taking lots of excursions in August just to practice our driving.

Traffic Confusion

The BIG day is coming soon. A week from today, in fact. That's the day we take the first part of our driving exam--the theory part. Please be praying with us about this! There are 50 multiple choice questions for the first part of the test, then a hazard perceptions part, which at this point is utterly confusing to me. They show you a clip like you are driving down the road and you have to click the mouse when you see potential hazards. Can't click the mouse too soon or too late or you won't get full credit. And some of the hazards progress/change and you have to know when to click again. Sounds confusing, huh? This afternoon I'm going to practice with a DVD we bought on-line to help you learn how to take hazard perceptions part and do well. Let's hope it works.

So we've been studying for the multiple choice portion of the test for at least a month now and are feeling more confident, but at the beginning we were also confused the terminology they use for various things. Here are some names/words/phrases I jotted down each time Mark and I were studying and looked at each other and said "What in the world is that?"

Level crossing - railroad crossing
Motor slipway - exit and entrance ramps to the "motorway" (i.e. highway)
T-junction - dead end road, have to turn left or right (this one makes sense!)
National Speed Limit - well, it's obvious what this is, but the sign is just a white circle with a big black line/bar through it. Not very informative. Plus, the speed limit changes according to what type of vehicle you are driving and what road you are on (the chart contains 20 different possibilities)
Dipped headlights - We had to ask "the locals" about this. They must have laughed when they left our house! These are just your average lights you use at night, low-beam, I guess is what we'd call it. "Dipped" from "main beam" (high-beam).
Side lights - Again, asked about this, we think we've understood they are parking lights, the lowest setting of lights.
Central reservation - the median, or middle portion of the road between the opposite lanes of traffic.
Lay-by on road - still don't know what this is! Maybe a side road?
Clearway/Urban clearway - Also trying to understand exactly what the definitions of these are and how they differ from all the other type of roads.
Amber - yellow, as in Red, AMBER, Green. :)
Box junction - Cris cross yellow lines on the road in an area where you aren't supposed to stop when traffic is backed-up (so that pedestrians can cross if the light changes colors)
Single (or dual) carriageway - 2 lane road (or 4 lane road)
Ring road - bypass or loop around the city

Number of crossings they have: 4 -- Zebra, pelican, puffin and toucan. Not sure what's up with the animal names. Wish they would just have one name and one type. Still don't have these all the way memorized yet. VERY confusing to us!

Our favorite word used to describe being blinded by on-coming lights when driving at night is "dazzle." ("You must not use any lights in a way which would dazzle or cause discomfort to other road users") Dazzle is fairly descriptive, isn't it?

Believe it or not, the two signs shown here do NOT mean the same thing, as one would think. The round one on the left means "ahead only" and the rectangular one on the right (sorry, couldn't find a better photograph!) means "one way." Slight difference...enough to warrant two similar looking signs. The "no waiting" and "no stopping" signs resemble each other too, but I'm pretty sure both mean "no parking."

If any doubt lingers in your mind that the driving standards here are a bit more rigorous or the tests more thorough, I give you this story, a 62 year old woman who took 27 YEARS to pass her exam! Do you see now why we need your prayers?!

Just For Fun

I used to be a photo purist...thinking photos should stand on their own and not be messed with. This year I have gotten over that by realizing most images we view in magazines and on-line have been digitally manipulated or enhanced. Yes folks, it's true. So, rather than miss out on all the fun, I've chosen to join in it! Here are some selections of this week's Picasa editing fun. You might notice a theme. Let's just say I like to stare out the windows and look for photo ops, especially around sunset or when the seagulls are particularly amusing me with their graceful floating on air. (Or annoying me with their squawking and I'm trying to see why they are doing this!)





I'm still trying to get a good shot of a seagull flying. Very hard to do!

Any favorites? I am not sure what mine is. Maybe number 3?

Rest of Flat Photos

As promised, here are the rest of our photos showing the front half of the flat.
Our living room. We spend most of our time in here, so I am grateful we are overall pleased with it. All of the decorations (right down to the plant!) came with the flat. Some flats are like that here--when they say furnished, they also mean decorated! It's good and bad. Nice that we don't have to buy our own for the short time we are here. Not so nice if we don't care for something. Thankfully most things in our flat we are willing to live with (or have boxed up and put away).On to the kitchen. There is a door connecting it to the living room, but I don't have that angle in a photo. It's behind the couch shown above. We also have a small table near the door to the kitchen.Here's part of the kitchen. Also haven't photographed the left side of it. Don't worry, not missing much there, just the sink and washing machine and usually clean dishes piled in the drainer. Not crazy about the blue & maroon tiles, but what are you going to do?!Here is the fridge/freezer--freezer is on top. We are grateful for the freezer, otherwise I don't think we could live with just this little fridge. This fridge is normal for Scottish households. You can see how jam-packed it usually is. It is so low poor Mark struggles to find anything since his knees are bad and he just bends at the waist rather than squatting down! It took some getting used to using this small of a fridge, but I have to say we've learned to manage. If I plan ahead and plan correctly (i.e. remember to buy what I'm supposed to!), we don't have to go to the store more than every 5 days or so, which it seems we were doing anyways, so it really isn't a problem.