Isle of Skye

This post is a long time coming, but we wanted to highlight another part of our trip to the Isle of Skye. Our cousins took us on a one-day road trip to Skye, over the bridge (seen below) and to the main city of Portree. We were a little worried about the weather, as we often are out here, but it turned out to be a pretty good day.



These are some of the mountains on Skye, called the Cuillin Hills. As you can probably see, they are known for their jagged edges and climbers come from all over seeking to transverse the ridge.



Here is the town of Portree. This is a main destination for Summer travel, but by this point in the season it was pretty quiet. It was a good size for a little town that far out.



The town is built around this harbor, which is the reason the town exists in the first place. It is the main jumping off point to some of the other islands off the western coast.



As always, we had to stop and talk to some highland cows. This guy wasn't terribly impressed with us. I tried to talk smack but he refused to look our way. There was a large herd of them on the hill side around him though, including this charcoal greyish one that looked pretty wicked.



Well, that was our trip to Skye - well, not all of it - but enough to give you a feel for some of what we saw. Hopefully we'll have more updates coming soon. Keep an eye out!

Eilean Donan Castle

So, our cousins suprised us with a visit to Skye last Saturday. En route, we stopped at this castle.

What is going on these days?

Well, it is now Autumn.

And we're still drinking coffee...

We have actually seen quite a bit of sunshine; however, the winter coats are making their way out of the closet.

The weeks are zooming past without much reflection. I will eventually post some thoughts about the beginning of my first semester of teaching, but right now I'm just thinking about our adventure to Inverness tomorrow. We will likely enjoy the train ride, and then have a relaxing weekend with the cousins. I'm sure we'll have some fun and random stories for you!

Curry Night

One of the first food realities you are hit with when moving to the UK is that Indian food is as central to their diet as Mexican food is to ours. You often here, "Lets go for a curry," when someone wants to go out to eat, or instead of a pizza night at church you often have a "curry night." I, as you can probably imagine, have been slow to take up the curry mantel. Admittedly, we started making some korma chicken at home, which is the standard meal for the non-curry-baptized.

But, after enjoying korma for many months, I decided to take the next step and actually order "real" curry. Now, this might sound a lot more impressive than it is, but for me, all it meant was ordering korma in rather than making from a jar. But I had three korma options, which was a bit distressing, and went with the one that sounded less weird than the others.

To take this plunge, we carried out from Blue Moon:



They always throw in these poppadoms which people dip into chutney or whatever else. They weren't bad.



We had the curry with our friends Alister and Renee (secretly trying to spur on her pregnancy with curry - a common cure), and here is Al with my favorite part of curry - naan bread. Naan is so good.



Naan is so good in fact that I had to put on my tearing-naan-face.



So here was our curry: a little rice, some chutney (I'm afraid of chutney, mostly because it is called chutney, so I stayed away), chicken, veg, and of course, naan...mmmmmmmm.