When I first moved here, I went flying into a local convenience store and after quickly skimming the tiny space I asked the clerk where I might find the batteries.
She looked straight at me, then tilted her head to the left and asked, “Batteries or butteries?”
I was happy to clarify, “Batteries.”
She tilted her head to her right and said, “Batteries or butteries?”
Again, I answered, “Batteries.”
She tilted her head to her left and said, “Batteries or butteries?”
This time I got it right. I answered, “Batteries. Electronics. Power. Can’t eat them.” To which she happily put her head back on straight and with a slight nod pointed to the stand where they were hidden in plain view.
This would be the first of many times that I would be misunderstood. I’ve made changes in some of my pronunciations for survival's sake (I got tired of getting a potato when I asked for tomato). I’ve also learned a trick or two…like I never go right into a question or a request when I enter a shop. I always start with a “Hello. It is a beautiful day today” or some such pleasantries. This is for no other reason than to let the person catch up with the fact that I am not a local. Well...and I am pleasant.
I was on the other side of almost that same exchange with my friend’s son last Sunday. It started with, “Are you Clyde or Clive?” and went three head-teetering rounds before I had him spell it. It is Clyde, by the way…in case you were wondering.
It does crack me up that whether it is me that is talking funny or listening funny, the resulting conversation has a corresponding and questioning cock of the head. It is the cultural equalizer and I wonder if it is possible to ask for clarification without the head tilt action in any language, any culture.
Footnote: For those of you who may be wondering what a buttery is, well…it is a local baked good made with, you guessed it…butter. Think of a rich, buttery, flaky croissant. Now pack it down until it is very, very dense and add a bit of salt. That is a buttery. You would hate to ask for a buttery and get a battery…that I can assure you!
Trying to find ingredients that I am used to finding easily in the states is sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack. I have a healthy understanding that things are different here and that I won’t find (nor should I!) everything that I am looking for, but sometimes you get homesick for the familiar. That having been said, I have had a great deal of luck in the past couple of weeks.
I recently found the following items in the wonderful grocery store of a local “spiritual community” (read: hippy commune) called the Findhorn Foundation:
I also luckily found pretzels the other day at a local grocery store…they are from Poland and I was so excited, I almost opened them before I got to the check out. Unfortunately, they weren’t Snyder’s Sourdough pretzels.
I am still on the hunt for corn meal for corn bread, graham crackers, and cherry pie filling in a can.
I had to give up on the idea of ever having a fresh baked bagel let alone an everything bagel. It might have been the lowest of lows when I “concocted” one recently. I basically mixed the “everything-s” (sesame seeds, pepper, salt, onions, garlic) into cream cheese and spread it on toast. I was sad and desperate and even sadder after I was done! The description of the event in my Facebook status elicited some of the most sincere sympathy from my friends back home I’ve had to date.
The flip side is there would be things that I will miss if I ever go home…like my single malt collection, Glen Fiddich liqueur, oatcakes, cheese and onion pasties and, of course, cullen skink (that’s fish soup for those of you who don’t know)…
On Sunday, I woke up and all I wanted to do was stay in bed, do very little, and read. My husband was working and I guess that I felt a little guilty—being unemployed is a strange place for me and I don’t know how to totally enjoy it. So, I thought, Well if he’s working, I should be doing something as well. But what…
I decided to take the dog for a 4 mile walk. I figured doing that one chore that is totally mine would make me feel less guilty. We walked the East Beach and up the dunes and back along the River. It was lovely. When I got back home, puppy was happy and I was ready for lunch.
After lunch the guilt returned and I thought…I better at least vacuum. I didn’t want to, but thought that I should. So I got up off my duff to do just that. Just getting up was inspiring…I ended up taking all the recyclables out. I even picked up the poo in the back garden (that's the "back yard" in Scottish-speak). So far, so proud. All the time Milton (the dog) was dancing around. As long as he was outside, I figured I would bring out the counter-top compost container and empty it in the garden container. Then I went back inside to vacuum.
Gosh, was I just a household maven. I plugged the vacuum into the dining room outlet and got started. As I was moving through the room I realized there were muddy bits following me around. NO WAY. It wasn’t mud at all. Apparently, in the time it took me to throw away the poo in the garden and go inside to get the compost, the dog had poo’d again (unbeknowst to me) and now I tracked it throughout the kitchen and the dining room. Now I had to clean the kitchen floor, scrub the carpet, hose off my shoes, and vacuum again.
And after letting the dog back in, I watched in horror as HE tracked brown stuff through the kitchen. It turned out to be mud, but the process had to begin again! Wipe, wash, vacuum.
By the time my husband got home, I was exhausted and remarkably guilt-free about being lazy.
Long before I met my husband, long before I saw the beautiful countryside of Scotland, long before I knew who I was going to be or what I was going to do, I longed to live in a foreign land. But the person I was (often fearful and way too practical) and what I did (nothing that made very much money) just seemed to narrow my scope through those young daring years of my 20s and 30s.
Growing up my dad (really mom) would pack up the station wagon and us kids in the wee hours of the morning and off we would start on a cross-country trip. This was before the days of seat belt laws and child seats, when we either sat in the back or the “way back” or on special journeys we would sit with the back seats folded down and travel in the “whole back”. We saw the United States that way. At least from New Jersey to Colorado.
My folks were not loaded. Vacations weren’t like they are today for many families, we didn’t jet off to some exotic place. We visited. And if we visited some relatives who had a pool, well, that was even better. It was the way my parents traveled…within their means and with meaning. And it was the beginning of a life-long passion for distant places.
So, when I left college and got my first horribly humiliating job with its pittance for pay, I started my travels as a single woman the way I knew how. I visited. I would hop in the car and go pretty much anywhere on the east coast. Eventually, new jobs brought me new opportunities to travel. I started to board planes and finally got past the Rockies. But I wanted more.
I wanted to go to Eastern Europe. I wanted to learn a language. I wanted to travel by train over many borders. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t go by myself. I was too scared. I was so scared that I never even got my passport. What could be sadder than that?
I eventually decided to apply to the Peace Corps. An organization that would sponsor my travel, teach me a language and watch over me while I was away—I was hooked. I went through the application and interview process and it even looked like they would honor my request to go to Poland, or at least Eastern Europe. I used to walk around my home saying “Uzbekistan” just because I thought it sounded really cool. Almost the same day my letter arrived saying that I would move on to the last phase of the selection process, my mother became very ill. That was that. I would have to wait.
Then I turned 30. Then I bought a house. Then my dad got sick. Then…then…then…there was always something to cripple my plans.
Then 9/11 happened and I woke up. I got my passport! My friend invited me to go on a bus tour of Italy. I followed that trip up with a trip to New Zealand. Then Italy again. Then England. And so on…
Now I live in Scotland with my husband in a former fishing village on the North Sea where he grew up. And I love it.
This adventure is what I will be writing about most, I suppose. It is my life and my experience as an American woman living abroad. I dreamt about being a "foreigner" long before I knew where I would end up…I just knew I needed to be far away.
