Many thanks to Peny Turner, AGAIN, for gently encouraging me to update my blog and keep everyone in the loop.
Last you heard, I was leaving Mitchell's and beginning a new journey at the Ardgowan Hotel as their Reservations and Marketing Manager. I can tell you with 100% confidence now that I was crafted by God for the customer service industry. Throughout my time in restaurant management, I was constantly torn between absolutely hating it and loving it so much that I couldn't leave. It's hard to explain, but those who love serving people can probably sympathize with me.
I thought for the longest time that I wanted a desk job - completely the opposite of managing a restaurant. Nobody to bother me, I
could just plug away at my work and be done with it. With this new change of
pace though, I've realized that I really just love customer service... and at the
Ardgowan, I can have both. I can sit at a desk and I can run around doing things for people. I can serve and help people, but not at the expense of my sanity.
Not only do I absolutely love my job, but I have been able to help all kinds of people from all over the
world. I've met the President Emeritus from the University of Georgia, and he "called the dawgs" with me (and hopefully, secured Clay a job after PhD). I've met the owner of Taco Mac in Atlanta. I've been
able to help parents from all over the US feel at ease about dropping their 18 year
old freshmen off in a foreign country thousands of miles away. I get
to pretend that I have connections with restaurants to get groups of golfers
reservations on a Friday night. And I feel like, unlike when I worked in a restaurant, people really appreciate when I go above and beyond.
Let's be honest, nobody respects you when
you work in a restaurant. I had a Masters Degree, 7 years of experience, and was making more than most
teachers when I finished at Chick-fil-A, and still, people looked at me like "that poor girl. she probably couldn't do any better." Like, somehow, I had made a wrong life decision along the way and ended up at a restaurant because it was the only job that would have me. Some people just love to serve, and that's why I stayed for so long.
But all of that aside, things are good here at Castle Rowe. Clay has a week before he turns in his dissertation, and then we pray and pray and pray that he gets the marks to send him on to PhD. He has been getting lots of positive feedback from his supervisor, and he slowly feels better and better about it. We I go through waves of confidence and terror, and the great thing about it all is that we won't find out if he got the marks until about a month after his PhD starts. Yeah, I know. It doesn't make sense. But then that leaves us with a very short amount of time to find the money to reapply for visas and student loans. Have I mentioned the exchange rate is terrible right now?
I know I know. God is going to take care of us. He's done it over the past year and he'll continue to do it. Did you know a year ago today, we got on a plane and came to Scotland? We didn't have phones, we didn't know where we were going to live, we didn't even have directions from the Manchester airport to St Andrews. We just got on a plane and ended up here. It still blows my mind that we actually live in Scotland.
Tomorrow, we have reservations at Maisha, the Indian restaurant where we ate our first jet-lagged and hangry meal in St Andrews. I'd say the last year has been crazy and great.
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| our living room with furniture, finally |
July was literally the sunniest and warmest I've ever seen Scotland be, but August has brought rain and shorter days. Hurricane Bertha was nice enough to scoot on by the UK, making it rainy and windy, reminding us that 1) we can never escape hurricanes, and 2) winter is coming. Scotland tricks us with long, sunny summer days, to the point where we aaaaaaaaalmost forget how bad the winter was. It's coming.
New Park, our little "neighborhood," never ceases to amaze me. When we first moved in, we loved the colors of the trees around the house, then as winter moved on, you could see the hills beyond the trees and watch the haar roll in over them. As the sun came out in the spring, the whole yard was full of daffodils and now, we have blackberries beginning to ripen. We found an old abandoned stairway leading from the back of the property down to the Lade Braes, and I can't help but wonder what this place looked like in it's prime over 80 years ago.
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| a nice place to put a chair and creep on people walking down the Lade Braes! |
Here's hoping the next year in Scotland is just as good as the first!
I'll leave you with a picture of what Clay would look like if he had (my) hair and was a hipster worship leader. I can't believe he sat there and let me take pictures of this.
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