Here goes...

I’m sure this comes as no surprise to any of you, but we still don’t have the internet. Ian has spent a large number of hours calling our ‘provider’ – IF you can really call them that – to find out what the problem is. We have been told at least 5 times that we will have the internet in 10-15 days and always to no avail. One guy told us he wouldn’t even estimate how long it would be because he didn’t want to lie to us.. Seems like he’s the only one concerned about that. But as of yesterday, we have been told yet again that we will have the internet in 10-15 days. Do we believe them? Not really. Are my hopes up anyway? Definitely.

Well, way back when it was Reformation Day/Halloween we had a celebration that involved eating some German treats, drinking some German/monk-related beer, and watching the movie Luther with some friends.
Here is a picture of the spread that we had…

First you see the German ‘Heidesand’ cookies. They are like a butter cookie with a light sugar coating – yes they were homemade, and they were tasty! Then the pile of chocolate stuff is a plate of German no-bake cookies. I don’t know what makes the recipe German, but that’s what it was called so we went with it. They were REALLY good. I made them Scotland style, so I had to substitute a bunch of things that were supposed to be in them, but they were very delectable. Then you can see Vanessa’s hand cutting into some Stollen that Pete and Jo brought. It’s kind of like a fruit cake, but it’s soaked in rum and all kinds of other stuff and is quite popular around here.. It’s German too. And lastly you can see a little round chocolate cake. Not, as you might think, a German chocolate cake, but let me show you a close up…

If you look closely you can see this is a chocolate INDULGENCE cake – very relevant to the Reformation :) And very clever work by Pete and Jo.

Then we have the beers.. We had Augustijn (Belgian), Kapuziner (German), Warsteiner (German), Jacobite (nothing to do with the Reformation, just one Ian wanted to try), and Blackfriar (Made in Scotland, but had a monk on the front)

Ian picked out these 5 and everyone had a taste (well, not exactly everyone, but most) of a few of them. Ian’s personal fav was the Jacobite.

Then we decided to take pictures of our friends who were there to show you that they do exist, they’re not just in our imaginations!

This is Pete and Jo. They are the ones who had us over to their house where Ian fed the horse. Jo is working on her PhD and she is from Darbyshire (I think, wherever Jane Austin said was the prettiest place in England). Pete is finishing up his undergrad degree and I think he’s from Washington (you can tell I’m really good at remembering details) and wants to be a pastor. He works at a local coffee shop called Zest. They are cute little newlyweds and the newest newlyweds of the group :)

This is Will (from D.C.) and Vanessa (from Texas). Will is working on an MLitt just like Ian, but in the divinity department, not the philosophy dept. Vanessa is working at a bakery in town where you can get the very tasty, chocolateless fudge donuts. We basically lived the same life all summer preparing to come here, we both have a deep appreciation for ‘The Office’, and we spend a lot of our time with them. We went to Edinburgh with them on Wednesday, which I will post about as soon as I get the pictures on the computer. Will and Vanessa are also newlyweds. Hence this picture…

And finally, here is Kelly and Elliott. Sometimes they are called Kelliott. They used this cute little name as their email address and now we can’t get it out of our heads! I started calling them that jokingly, and now I’m often confused when talking about them and say things like ‘Elliott and Kelliott’.. Makes for some good times :)
Anyway, Elliott is from Alaska and Kelly is from Oregon. This may be surprising since you might assume they met out West somewhere, but they actually met at college in Michigan. They are both working on MLitts here and Kelly is expecting a baby in early April, just like Hope. Kelly and I often commiserate about never feeling like we have enough recipes and help each other come up with ideas. They are also newlyweds.

To sum it up, we love all of them and spend lots of time together. Ian and I are basically the old married couple of the group :) They all have some pretty great, sometimes hysterical meeting/dating/engagement stories too.
I’ll have to get pictures of some more friends so that we can introduce you to some others as well.

Oh and here is Ian and I at the party – Ian’s got his beer, his Heidesand cookie, and his girl… what more could you want?

In other news… Ian and I are officially Historic Scotland members.. How cool is that?! This deal is much like the Young Persons railcard, in that, when you buy it you feel like you just paid half your savings for it, however, it pays itself off very quickly and then saves you all kinds of money. This one applies to castles and sites, however, not to the rail. So, we paid GBP 52.00 for both of us and can now go into any Historic Scotland site we want for free! We also get a 20% discount on any silly souvenirs we want, and 20% off of some sites in England, and a bunch of other stuff. So far, by purchasing this, we have saved GBP 50.00 because of our 2 visits to St Rule’s tower and the castle here in St Andrews, and our visit to Edinburgh castle. I’m thinking it will pay for itself many times over. Also, every time you go somewhere, you get a cool stamp saying you’ve been there! That’s our favorite part :)

Finally, we are looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with our ‘Scottish Family’ The Ellis family!!!! We already have big plans thanks to Katie’s organizational skills and are going to head to Dunnottar castle while we’re there. I’m also really excited to revisit Poundland (EVERYTHING is only 1 pound) and I’m excited because when we get back I get to start decorating for Christmas! I didn’t think I would really care about it all that much, but I am so excited this year to make some decorations – should be fun!

So, I’ll work on posting about our time in Edinburgh, as well as our time with the Ellis clan, and you all just keep praying that we get the internet soon! We love you!

We win!

I think we can officially be declared the worst posters ever!!! yay! everyone cheer! :) Seriously. This is me feeling so guilty about leaving our beloved family and friends in the dark. I promise I will work on a post and put it up this week! Still no internet... In case you hadn't noticed

Happy Reformation Day!

Yes it’s true, the Church household does not celebrate Halloween, we celebrate Reformation Day. We’d like to thank Brian Allred for initiating this and let him know the tradition continues… We’re having a get-together to watch the movie ‘Luther’, drink German beer (though we all know I won’t be drinking it – gross!) and eat German cookies together.. We’ll let you know how it goes :)

Ok, we’ll admit it.. we’re not very good about posting on the blog. We still don’t have the internet – they say we’ll have it Monday but even my optimism is having trouble believing it after all this time. We’ll see.. Anyway, we realized that in our lack of internet we’ve actually forgotten to post about a few things that we’ve done since we’ve been here. For example…

Very early on in our time here, I went with my dear friend Hannah Phillips to a little town called Broughty Ferry. While it turned out that what we were looking for was not actually in that little town, it was really fun and we got to see a castle and go into some great little charity shops.


This is a view of one of the streets, right across the street is the sea.


This is Brought Ferry castle and Hannah and I went as far up as we could possibly go inside that tower and found rooms that were meant to entertain children that entertained us very nicely. There was also an observatory with binoculars that said you could see dolphins, but sadly there were none.

Another thing we did while the Ellis’ were here was climb up in St Rule’s Tower. The tower is on the cathedral grounds and is taller than the cathedral spires.


It’s tall!


This is a picture of the stairs you had to climb – Ian’s foot is there to give you an idea of the narrowness. It was a tight squeeze and a whole lotta stairs, but totally worth it when you came out on top! The climb to the top made you feel like you were back in the 12th century when it was built – fortunately in our safe 21st century there is now a hand rail to pull yourself up with :)


a view of town from the top


Ian and Brannan found a nice person to take a picture of them at the top!


This is a picture the guys took of Katie and I while we were looking for them. We had separated to look around the cemetery and cathedral grounds and next thing we knew, we couldn’t find the husbands! Eventually they yelled loud enough that we found them and when they came down we learned that some other nice person had given them the tokens to get into the tower for free.


Finally, this is a picture of our building from waaaay far away at the tower. Way to go camera zoom! (if you follow the buildings coming our from the lower right hand corner, it's the last one sticking out - grey stone, cute, that's the one!)

I mentioned a while back too that Ian and I have begun cooking whole chickens to save money…


This was my first attempt and it was deeelicious! We served this dinner to Will and Vanessa Kynes a long time ago :) Since then I have cooked many a chicken with many different flavors and it’s our new favorite. Here is dessert..


It’s called brownie pudding.. also very good.

This is a picture from a day that we went for a walk in early October…


This is a zoomed version so you can see the SURFERS out on the water!


I just have one thing to say… insane.
I don’t care if you’re wearing a wet suit or not, it is waaaay too cold to go surfing.

I think that’s all that we did that we failed to mention previously..

We went over to some friends’ house for lunch after church on Sunday and found ourselves eating the most delicious meatloaf (yes mom, you read correctly, I LIKED, nay LOVED the meatloaf). After eating we went for a walk because they live on a farm. There was a horse out that was very friendly that Ian naturally named Uncle Jason (long story) and proceeded to feed any grass or weeds he could find. It was very amusing but sadly we didn’t think to take the camera, so you’ll just have to imagine.

If we have the internet by Monday as they say we will, I’ll be posting to show you that there are already Christmas decorations up throughout our little town and tell you about some other things going on…
Until then!

It has been a while since we have posted any updates, so I naturally have a lot to say. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time available to give a detailed account; I have over 100 pages of Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man that I should try to have read and fully digested before tomorrow.

CLASSES
I have been going to class for several weeks now, and it has been pretty darn intense! I have already given a presentation of David Hume’s skepticism (scepticism), and I’ll be giving another presentation next Monday on Thomas Nagel’s chapter on knowledge in The View from Nowhere. In addition, I have constant reading and writing to occupy my time. I am sincerely having a blast! Sure there is lots of stress and busyness, but I am really enjoying it all. This last weekend, I gave my paper “Epistemic Perspectives and the Externalist approach to Peter Unger’s Certainty Requirement” at the department’s graduate student outing. The outing, called a reading weekend, was held in Raasay House on the island of Raasay, which leads me to the next section of this post.

RAASAY
The combination of natural beauty with stimulating conversation made for a wonderful reading weekend experience. I was able to get to know many of the department’s faculty and fellow postgraduates on a much more personal level, and because I presented a paper I was able to get personal feedback on my research. Now, on to some pictures of this adventure:

In case I didn’t know what my general latitude was:


I never saw a single monkey


From the conjunction of this sign with the sheep on the cliff in the background, I think I can infer how the rocks get knocked down


This was a rough path to go on


No playing on Sundays


Cemetery Orchard?


As you might guess from the background, Dalwhinnie was nothing like Las Vegas


This was the first sheep I encountered. I named her Buster-Sue. I tried to pet her and…


This is Buster-Sue running away


These are some other sheep I found; they were just walking down the road (yes, i took lots of pictures of sheep, but that is because Corrie really likes them)


Here is a picture of me with some of my hiking cohorts


Here is a picture of me with the Raasay House dog Thom.


Here is a picture of the whole reading weekend gang (thanks to Mark W. for the picture)


And finally here are some landscape pictures: