Tea-time in Scotland

"Yes, that's it!" said the Hatter with a sigh, "it's always tea time."
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland  

Thanksgiving in Scotland
...can be a lovely thing. The School of Divinity Postgraduate committee (of which I am part) put together a dinner in what I like to call our Great Hall. So far as traditional Thanksgiving fare goes, it was a valiant and lovely attempt, featuring as it did a stack of fruitcakes, an admirable selection of fine cheeses, and microwaved stuffing which I plopped out of its plastic containers onto trays I found in the PhD kitchen.

The pictures don't do it justice, I think because it's a dark room with rich colors and high windows, but it really does look like a (slightly) smaller version of  the Great Hall.
 

All this talk of food brings me very naturally to...

Grocery shopping in Scotland
I recently switched my grocery habits to Lidl, which is cheaper than Tesco but much more frightening, as it bears far less resemblance to an American grocery store in both size and structure.

They are terribly keen on self-checkout here, and also on bringing your own grocery bags (which cost 5 pence otherwise.)

When you make a mistake in self-checkout, the machine makes a loud croaking noise, and the light at your station flashes red. You have to wait until a clerk comes to reset the operation, then you stand there looking sheepish while he does so.

This always happens to me at least two times every single time I use the self-checkout.

 

This section is usually full of fresh pretzels, chocolate twists, and Nutella-filled crescents. I usually buy three to four.



I splurged on this monstrosity to go with the soup that I will make with the leftover turkey and gravy.

Scottish grocery stores don't refrigerate the eggs. I have no idea why.

This butter is terribly tasty, but I still don't know how it compares to US measurements, which is one reason that my cookies come up differently every time I make them. The girls on my hall still like them, though, and one classmate at the Thanksgiving dinner ate no fewer than seven!


I have been eating Muesli for breakfast, which is a Scottish staple - one of those oat-and-raisin concoctions that makes you feel very healthy while eating it (only it tastes like cotton, so I add fruit-flavored yogurt.) With the onset of cold weather, I am switching to porridge with Sultanas (see below).

The main reason I now shop at Lidl is because they carry an off-brand of Stopwafels (ie cheaper - I am actively representing an experimental "do Europe on a budget" research study. Inquire within to make a non-tax-deductible contribution.). They are a round, caramel-filled, and highly addictive waffle-based treat to be eaten with coffee or tea.

Where Stropwafels are concerned, I always consider it tea-time.

Back by popular request: Abu Hamid

Many of you will remember someone who I will call Abu Hamid, from a previous post. He is a Syrian refugee who arrived in Scotland one year ago, and he is now living, working, and studying for a bachelor's degree in Edinburgh, although his family remains in Turkey.

Here is more of his story, back by popular request:

He reached out to me via WhatsApp to ask for help with his first writing assignment. We set up to meet at the University of Edinburgh library on a Wednesday evening (with some difficulty - if you struggle to make sense of my texts in English, you should see it in Arabic!). We found a spot in the library cafe, and he pulled up his document, a fairly simple, 500-word reflection piece.
It was quite a shock! The words were - in the most technical sense - English, but the structure and grammar of the piece was Arabic مية بالمية (100 percent)!
I began by line-editing, and we discussed how some of the words used were functionally correct but indicated "street language" rather than academic writing; others were idiomatic Arabic with no real equivalent in English. He took notes on the grammar rules as I explained them, asking me to write down Miss Gibbar's trusty FANBOYS mnemonic for all the conjunctions. (I refrained from singing him the song on that occasion.)
I knew we were making progress when he pointed to the juncture in a compound sentence and said, "Put a comma right there!"
He shook his head in some bemusement. "You really like commas, Lucy." 
(What can I say? Commas are my first true literary love, but like nearly all forms of punctuation, they make for rare finds in proper Arabic writing.)

When we needed to add a new paragraph, I offered to type while he dictated, which was still a bit rough on his laptop (aside: why are the keyboards different in the UK anyway?!) To my surprise, asking him to dictate in English all but solved our previous problems, as it forced him to think - and therefore formulate his ideas and grammar - in English.
An hour and a half in, we stopped by the library cafe for a quick break, and I saw a set of LDS missionaries waving at me from across the room. We walked over to greet them, and they explained that they were about to begin a lesson on the Word of Wisdom with a Chinese masters student who I knew - would I care to join?
I thought fast, then held a quick conference in Arabic with Abu Hamid (this caught the missionaries a bit off-guard, I am afraid. I don't think they had believed me when I told them I spoke Arabic).
I explained that these were friends from my Christian church, who were teaching an atheist student about God. Would he mind if this was our break? He seemed amused but unconcerned, and I made the introductions for the still-bemused elders.
"Where are you from?" they asked him.
"Syria," he replied.
"Syria," said one elder. "So what brought you to Scotland?"
Abu Hamid spoke slowly. "There is a war in my country," he said.
The elder continued to probe, "So, just here for studies then?" 
He glanced at me with mild incredulity, while I covered my mouth to stifle a nervous laugh. "I am a refugee."

Fortunately, that was our only "Aleppo moment," so to speak, and the lesson went smoothly. Abu Hamid noted that the Mormon health code was almost the same as one he follows as a Muslim. He nodded approvingly after I translated the word "commandment" into Arabic for him.
But I knew we were on thin ice, and I was praying internally the whole time that my faith that God puts different people in the same place for good reasons would prove correct.
My prayers would not stay silent for long. The Chinese student asked me to offer the closing prayer, and the missionaries asked to hear more Arabic.

It was the least graceful Arabic prayer I have ever sent heavenward. Nervous in the extreme, I prayed for the Chinese student's studies, his family, and his faith. I prayed for the missionaries' work, for our families, and for the influence of the Holy Spirit.
But I hesitated to mention the one person present (besides God Himself) who actually understood the words I spoke, lest I offend him with my stumbling Christian prayer.
When I closed, the missionaries and the Chinese student nodded approvingly, but the Syrian refugee to my right asked, "What about Abu Hamid?"
I launched quickly back into a prayer, asking our Father in Heaven to bless him in his studies, to help him to feel the love of God, and to bless his family in far-away Turkey. This time when I closed, he smiled and said, شكرا (thank you).

As we left the library, he told me how much he loved being able to study at the University of Edinburgh, and he used a rather beautiful word هبع- new to my still-so-limited Arabic vocabulary. To help me understand the term, he described several examples, using the word to describe his feeling of awe, gratitude, and wonder at God's bringing him to Edinburgh.

But to really help me understand, to really make his point, he added, "هبع - it's the same feeling I had just now, Lucy, when I heard you praying."

Transitions: Are you there yet?

Many kind friends and family members, contacting me from across the Atlantic Ocean by means of the bountiful technology we are blessed to have at our fingertips, have been asking me the same question of late.

“How is it?” they ask. “Do you feel you have transitioned yet?”

I write in an effort to respond to all these kind enquiries (note the British spelling!) at once, because I am quickly getting terribly behind, for reasons I will note below, and I must admit, that my first, gut response is, “Of course not!”

It’s been three weeks last Saturday, and I left my funny little house in Boston, and friends and family, and country and custom and – some would posit – the English language itself to sit inside a small, enclosed space and embark on a completely different sort of life in a foreign country where I knew precisely nobody just one month ago.

True, I have found the grocery store, discovered that the power outlets here have to be switched on individually, registered for classes, and figured out how to use the funny little oven at my dormitory accommodation (admittedly, I did burn the bread on Sunday. It really is a funny oven).

I have a bank account (except they misspelled my last name somehow - do you think I should trust them with my money?), basic hygiene products, a doctor (called a GP) around the corner, a working knowledge of the streets and running routes around the University of Edinburgh, and some really lovely people who I tentatively but affectionately call friends.

My to-do list for the week is long and intimidating, but it includes things like studying Arabic, taking a classmate to church for the first time, doing coffee (in a broad sense only, I promise) with several potentially lovely contacts, and reading a book about the ongoing spread of Christianity into Africa.

So I am content.

And perhaps this means that after three, intense weeks, I have indeed “transitioned.” 

 

But the truth is that it is 11:53 p.m., and I attempted sleep at twelve after 10 because it was a very long day, and I was too tired to finish preparing for the two class presentations that are happening tomorrow, whether I am ready or not.

The truth is that I still have a rotten cold and my clothes are drying on the space heater (don’t tell the warden) because the washers don’t work very well, and money and job plans are bumping about uncomfortably in my head but I can't currently access my bank account from the UK, and I have to decide whether to apply for a PhD by November, and I actually don’t know whether my classmate meant it as a compliment earlier when he told me I was “doing a great job at playing the naiive American girl,” and transitions can be tough.

I am not asking for sympathy, not by a long shot, but I worry sometimes that Younger Readers might get the wrong impression if I restrict my writing to the Highland vistas and short them on the moments spent in a Scottish pharmacy, trying to decide which of a baffling array of products will stop me from coughing onto my professors.

 

To you, Young Readers and Young-at-Heart, I say: Even if you have stopped stock-still nearly every day of the last three weeks – sometimes amid a busy street-ful of Scottish traffic – to marvel at the grace of God and the miracle of being in Scotland for this masters program, and even if, like me, you can’t think of anywhere in the world you would rather be right now, nor anything you would rather be doing, and even if you overloaded you course schedule (apart from old habits dying hard) in an effort to express gratitude for the exquisite gift of this experience through hard work – transitions can still be tough.

People don’t tell you that your insides can take weeks to adjust to the new diet – and they respond accordingly. They don’t describe how lost, unimportant, and above all, lonely you can feel in a new city. 

 

They don’t tell you that culture shock is a real thing, or that the British educational system differs from the American one in some rather unexpected ways.

But there are other things they don’t tell you either, and so this is my paltry offering of wisdom for anyone who might move to a new city, start an educational program, serve a mission, switch countries, or simply try something so new and different that the little “Inside-Out” people in your head start to ask, “Would I have done this if I’d known it would be this hard?” or “Can this ever be worth it?”

I want to tell you that if you have to ask your Chinese flatmate for her name three different times she will forgive you eventually, as will the Arabic classmate who tried to befriend you, but you were waiting for the Ibuprofen to kick in and could hardly think straight until it did. 

Even when your friends and family are scattered across the globe anywhere from two hours ahead to eight hours behind and no one is answering your Facetime, there is One who will always pick up.

And He will tell you that it’s OK if it’s hard. That transitions are meant to be tough. That many of the people around you who seem to know just what they are doing actually want to call their mom tonight. Or buy a chocolate twist at Sainsburys. (Did you read “pastry” as in one? Because I meant three. Plus a box of chocolate-dipped Swiss rolls. Scotland really has good pastry.)

And if you keep smiling at the strangers next to you, and asking for their names yet again, and eating something other than pastry now and then, and making the hike to church and reading your scriptures, and showering at least every other day, it will get better. 

It will be better than you, looking at the glossy photos from your bedroom at home, could ever have imagined. And what you learn – and who you become - will be completely, utterly, totally worth it.

Harry Potter World

“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

― Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 

It has come to my attention that some people, upon seeing my photos, doubt that I am living in a real city, rather suspecting that I have entered some painted park or, like Alice, slipped through a window to a fantastic wonderland.

This post makes no attempt to disabuse them of that notion.

The beautiful city of *Edinburgh is where J.K. Rowling was living, working as a single mother, when she pinned "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in a cafe called the Elephant House.



...which also makes a delicious marshmallow hot chocolate.

It's easy to identify places where she would have found inspiration. Just across the street from the Elephant House cafe is a cemetery where, rumor has it, names like "Tom Riddle" and "McGonagall" can be found.
 

Edinburgh also has an alleyway, a stone's throw from the School of Divinity at New College, that bears alarming resemblance to Knockturn Alley.

The discerning Potter fan might also experience castles for all occasions...

 
...suits of armor
 
...OWLS
 
broomsticks...
 
...and song.

 

“Ah, music," [Dumbledore] said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!” 
Many in Edinburgh make wild claims about how Scotland inspired Madam Rowling's creative wizarding world. Surely this gothic, picturesque place, they say, needs a very few literary embellishments to be transfigured into a full-scale land of enchantment.

And I agree with them.

* One of my Scottish friends bids me inform you that Edinburgh is quite different from the rest of Scotland. I don't know what he means by it. But that's my only disclosure!

Falafel in Edinburgh

Tonight, I felt like a bit of a jerk. 
While buying a falafel sandwich for dinner last week, I overheard someone speaking in Arabic to a hummus-buying student. When my turn came, I brought my best, rusty Arabic to the forefront.
And so tonight, the worker I met last Friday picked me up after class. We drove around the beautiful city of Edinburgh (which was terrifying - imagine sitting in the passenger's seat on the left side of the car moving down the wrong side of a street that looks too narrow to admit cars while the driver shares his views on the Middle East!).

 He also shared his life story.

He is a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, working and studying in the UK while sending money to his family back in Turkey. Most of his friends are dead or missing, and he left his home country for the first time to avoid joining them, as military service is now compulsory for young men like him.
He talks about missing his friends and family, especially his sister and mother, who sacrificed to help him leave the country and start a new life here in Scotland. He told me how his mother stayed up with him through the night while he was studying for his entrance exams to the university. He misses asking her advice about decisions, girls, and life in general.
"Our moms sacrifice so much, and we never even realize it, until we get older," he says.
The process of reaching the UK and obtaining asylum was lengthy and arduous, but he is glad he came to Scotland, which he says is welcoming and kind. Edinburgh, with its castles and narrow streets, reminds him of Aleppo, although he finds the lack of religious observance puzzling and concerning.

He spent his first months working long hours to both situate his new life and send back to his family. He received his driver's license and bought a car, which - notwithstanding my having a minor panic attack every time we turned right on the left side of the road - he drives with deft skill. (I declined his offer to try driving.)
He is now working part-time so he can study. None of his certifications from Syria or Turkey transferred, he says in resigned frustration, but his English is improving steadily. He is going to have a marvelous Scottish accent actually. We practiced saying, "We'll get it sor'ed for ya!"
He laughs easily, tells me jokes in Arabic that I sometimes understand, and asks about my studies and family with interest. But we keep coming back to Syria and the war he views with pained, but not bitter, resignation.
"All we wanted was a little freedom," he says. "We didn't know that other countries would come in and start a war."

We drive up Arthur's seat, and he teaches me the Arabic word for duck. Then he buys me dinner at KFC - which is why I am a jerk.
I try to prevent it, honestly, but as my Arabic professor once told us in a cutting hyperbole, "I can't even imagine a situation in which an Arab would allow you to pay for food. You'd have to kill them first."

And so over French fries (which he reminds me are properly called "crisps" in Britain), he tells me that Syrians would return to the days before the war - that they don't need freedom this much - if only they could.
"America and Russia are fighting a war, did you know that?" he asks, dipping a Kentucky-fried chicken thigh in ketchup. "But they are fighting it in Syria, and there is no doubt which is giving the most support."

Helplessly, I listen as he tells me that Europe and America are marvelous places, where you can make life better if you only organize yourself, plan, and apply yourself. In Syria, he says, both now and before the five-year war that killed 300,000 people and counting and scattered millions like him across the globe, no such opportunities exist.

. 
He asks for help selecting a pair of glasses, then he drops me off at my church for an evening meeting.
For the refugees remaining in Middle East, he says, "All we can do is pray."

Onward to Britain!

"I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh." - Jane Austen

You know that scene in the Keira Knightley version of "Pride and Prejudice," when Elizabeth Bennet first sees Mr. Darcy's estate, and she obstructs traffic while giving a ladylike giggle?
Picture me doing that - over and over again on Monday - but especially when I first saw New College, which is where the University of Edinburgh houses its School of Divinity.

As Keira Knightley says, "He he...hem!"
Because that means Lucy J. Schouten of Payson, Arizona, is receiving a postgraduate education - in a castle - with this view...

...living in a house that looks like this...

...with people who dress like this.

(I jest, this is a statue of the great economist Adam Smith, located on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.)

Here is a short recap for those who are still (understandably!) confused about the strange path of a small-town Mormon girl who grew up here...

....then went to school here:

1. I arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Saturday. I left Boston one week prior, bidding farewell to dear friends (love you all - keep in touch!), a dysfunctional train system, and the best ice cream in the world. I spent a week in Arizona, then departed for the United Kingdom on Friday.
2. I didn't decide to come until July. Late July. I had felt spiritually guided in this direction from the beginning, but only a surprising series of events made it financially and logistically possible. I am still not certain how it's all going to work - financially and logistically. But when the Lord opens a path using a gate you didn't even know existed, you step through even if there's a bend several feet (I mean - meters) ahead.
3. I am attending the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh (hence the castle), but I am still a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons - would you like to know more?). In my case, Divinity School simply requires studying a religious topic. 
4. It's a fairly new field, so if you don't remember anyone studying for a masters in World Christianity with an emphasis in Arab Christianity, it's because it hasn't really happened before. I am attending the University of Edinburgh because of its unique expertise. The lecturer I will work with on this topic is new to the university, and the program is just commencing for masters students.
5. My research is based on my undergraduate honors thesis about Arab Christians in Jordan.

After all, this is what we're going for here: