Anniversaries

The past month has been filled with significant dates and it has made for a reflective and sentimental few weeks for me. August brought with it the anniversary of when we moved to Peru in 2007 and the anniversary of leaving Peru in 2008. Yesterday marked the day of our move to Edinburgh last year after a blessing of a visit in Denver (yes, airfare was significantly cheaper on Sept. 11), which carries a lot of memories of saying goodbye and leaving family and friends behind indefinitely. Today marks our arrival here in Edinburgh, which brings a whole different set of emotions and memories with it. Suffice it to say that we're much happier to be one year into this where we can look back and laugh at all the chaos and confusion that clouded our first few weeks here!

These past few years have held a lot of change and transition, a lot of hellos and goodbyes. It feels good to know we'll be here for another 3 years, though its a bit weird to think that by the time we finish we'll have been here longer than we've been anywhere else since we've been married. Our hearts are still tied deeply to the kids and work in Peru and I'm still trying to find the emotional and practical balance of how to manage that while moving forward with our new responsibilities and involvements here. Looking back over the last year I think we were in a bit of holding pattern, trying to adjust to life here and prepare for what would be coming next. Now that Tony's received funding and we know we're staying for 3 years we've been taking many more steps to connect with our new community here. We're excited about what the next 3 years may hold and are ready to jump in!

As mentioned above, we've been doing a lot of laughing and reminiscing over the many things that we found so confusing when we first arrived here one year ago. While English is obviously our shared language with the Brits, we did have a learning curve for certain terms and phrases. A few examples:

Knock on wood = touch wood
Six and one half dozen of the other = a six and two threes-ies
Sick = vomiting (something I caught onto after getting a panicked look from my coworkers when I said I was sick! "Ill" is their term for feeling sick.)
Dinner = tea
Expensive = dear
Knock up = wake up
Sleep in = a long lie

We recently took a quiz on American vs. British English to test our progression over the last year. Take it and see how you do! US vs. UK Vocabulary