Nothing and Everything is Exciting All at Once

So just like that, summer is over.

Early Sunday morning 2 weeks ago, we all set our clocks back one hour, and while it was nice to have the sun come up an hour earlier, it means sunset is now officially 4:16pm and we're losing 4-5 minutes of daylight every single day until we get to the shortest days of the year in December, which are just shy of 7 hours long.

The courier says this weather phenomenon has been
haard to bear... wah wah waaaaaaaaaah.

Over the last 2 weeks, the haar has been out of control. Imagine the thickest fog you've ever seen. Now imagine it in Scotland. Welcome to Haar, and lucky for us, most of it can be felt in our living room. Clay and I made a pact after our first winter in St Andrews, when we left our gas heating on CONSTANTLY and racked up over £400 in utility bills over 2 months, that we would suffer through the cold until the 1st of November, and would ONLY turn the heat on then. ADULTHOOD.

Right now, we're in limbo again with the University. For those of you who don't know about our precarious time in St Andrews, I will try to give you a short summary:

 

It was literally like this for 2 whole days

August 2013 to March 2014 - Clay was doing the 1 year MLitt Masters to transition to PhD over the summer. He worked on his PhD thesis proposal with a certain professor, tailored it to him, and then when the time came for professors to pick their PhD students, this guy went on research leave... for like 4 years. Soooo, none of the other professors were really interested in Clay's topic, plus his grades were not the best, so we just kind of hung there for a few months. They finally gave him a conditional offer, but he fell just short of one of the conditions. Luckily, the head of the school of Divinity took him on as his supervisor, said they would make him a 2nd year Masters student, and then the next summer, would evaluate him again for PhD.

March 2014 to May 2015 - Clay trucked along, working on his 10,000 word GRO (1st chapter of his proposed PhD thesis) reeeeeeaaaalllly liked his supervisor, and submitted in the Spring in the hopes that they would upgrade him. In May, we heard back that one of the markers of his GRO was not really happy with it, and just said to let him finish the Masters and be done. No PhD. We were devastated, and also terrified, because we love Scotland and have put down roots here, and didn't really have a plan B. Fortunately, Dr. Supervisor told Clay, "Don't worry. I want to keep you here. Finish your 40,000-word Masters dissertation, and then in September, we'll evaluate you to upgrade."

May 2015 to Present - So Clay wrote a billion words in 4 months, submitted it (in spite of his Mac dying 4 days before his submission date!!!) and Dr. Supervisor has now said that Clay will Viva (fancy University speak for 'Defending his Paper') on the 10th of November in order to upgrade.

It's autumn, yall.

So this is our precarious situation. God has come through for us in every obstacle and we are so so thankful to still be here. Scotland has been such a fun time for us, and I'm sure everyone thinks everything is all sunshine and rainbows, and while it definitely IS, it certainly has not been easy. And this only scratches the surface of the issues we've had here - from not having a place to live, to Visa problems to bikes being stolen (yep - Clay's birthday bike!) to job issues. Despite all of this, we are content here.

Little Mr. Fiat Panda!

In other more positive news, Clay is on track to be licensed with the Baptist Union of Scotland hopefully sometime in the Spring, so he will be able to do full-time ministry! Since we left The Lord's Church, Clay thought he was meant for academia, but he has slowly realized that his heart is still in ministry, so we have pursued that avenue as well. We were also given a CAR by the lovely Becky Keating at church, and we're in the process of getting licensed to drive that around as well. Woohoo!

Now, we're just waiting to get through the next 2 days so we can finally have some stability in our situation. I kind of liken us to Mr. and Mrs. Bates on Downton Abbey. Oh yay, everything's good - wait, the police are here. You have to go to jail. No wait, everything's fine now! Nope, the police are back. Back in jail. Feels like that sometimes.

But we are content.

Carm