Happy Birthday Gerald!

Today is a special day. It's Gerald's 29th Birthday and I just got word from Gerald that our shipment has arrived in Aberdeen. We have to wait another 3-5 days to receive our items since it has to go through customs and all, but I'm going to be a super happy woman when my Heavenly bed gets here!

Anyhow, we've had a pretty long weekend packed with lots of activities over the last week. I attended my first AWA (Association of American Women of Aberdeen) meeting and met some very friendly women. Most of them are older but I did connect with one girl from Oklahoma, who's around my age. We hung out yesterday and I enjoyed having someone to talk to, have lunch with, and accompany me at the malls. There are about 100 or so members here in Aberdeen and they do different activities every day/week/month so I'm looking forward to joining the club and getting to know some of the other Americans.

We also had a CVX event on the same day and I finally got to meet some of Gerald's coworkers. We had a BBQ at the Ardoe House with a few glasses of wine and played boules. Gerald and his director are the only Americans on the project so it was funny sharing stories about the 2 cultures.

The big event this weekend was our road trip to Inverness and Isle of Skye. We traveled about 500 miles within the 3 days and saw some beautiful scenery. We probably drove a total of 10-12 hours that weekend but didn't notice it because there was so much to look at and take in. It also helped that we had the Glee Soundtrack going on the iPad. Gerald and I thought about buying one of those iTrip things since the radio stations here suck and we don't have any cd's but it was like 50 pounds and the guy told us that it was hit or miss with the radio reception. Instead, I came up with the genius idea (okay,maybe not so genius) of blasting the volume on my iPad and using it as our source of music. It worked perfectly!! I was surprised by how good the sound was.

Here are some highlights of the trip:

Loch Ness Cruise

Urquhart Castle

Eilean Donan Castle

Fairy Pools in Glen Britle (about an hour hike down to the pools in the mountains, we could have gone longer if we were better prepared; designer jeans, polo shirt, and asic running shoes just wasn't cutting it)

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Portree

We stayed at two lovely Bed & Breakfasts. This is Gerald's and my first time staying at B&B's and we loved it! The Bed & Breakfast in Portree was owned by a young couple with 3 children. It was so nice and homey, I felt like I was living there =) At one point the daughter was crying really bad and I almost wanted to go out there to see what was wrong with her...hehe. Supposedly she knew guests were over and wanted to try to have dessert before dinner. Kids...haha.

The weekend was definitely an experience!

Right now I'm cooking Gerald a nice birthday meal. I won't share with you the little hiccup I had in preparing this meal, but I hope it turns out delicious.

Appetizer: Stuffed Mushrooms courtesy of Girly Recipes =)

Main: Braised Short Ribs with Chive Mash Potatoes

Dessert: Strawberry Shortcake

Will post pictures later if it comes out nice =)

Also, Happy Birthday to Geraldine & Justin Nguyen who share this birthday with GP!

Bye Now!

Friday Dinner Date Night #3

The first 2 restaurants we tried were rated #2 and #3 in Aberdeen per Trip Advisor (our source for all things travel). This week, we opted to try a restaurant recommended by Gerald's coworkers, Bistro Verde, #20 on Trip Advisor's list....

They're known for their seafood dishes so of course we had to give it a try. Because we're in the UK, and everyone here loves curry, we started off with Curry Fried King Prawns. Who would have thunk to put curry in your batter =) They came out excellent. Gerald has a thing for eating whole fish, eyes and all, thanks to our dear friend Rob, so he got the lemon butter whole sole and since I was craving crabmeat, I chose the Halibut with crab and cream sauce. Delicious!

Did I mention that Gerald liked his fish a lot...haha.

No meal is ever complete without dessert so we had to try their molten chocolate cake with local vanilla ice cream. Something that took 15 minutes to make, Gerald and I devoured in 1....Our Polish waitress didn't want Gerald to eat more of the cake than me, so she gave me the bigger spoon. I felt loved.

We ended the night at Soul Bar and Casino. The building was once a Church of Scotland that was converted into a bar and casino. If you want to find the Asians, just visit one of the casinos. Here we met a Filipina and a Thai women. Both married to Scottish men and brought here to Aberdeen. Funny, the Filipina didn't like it much but the Thai women did. Guess it makes sense that the Filipina was working and the Thai women wasn't. Makes a big difference I suppose.

Hooray for Internet!!!

I'm blogging about finally having internet at the house because I can! Although I'm going to miss hanging out at Starbucks and the-coffee-house, it'll definitely be more convenient now to do things online =) What would we do without technology!

Drum, Crathes, Craigievar, and Dunnottar are names of....

CASTLES!

On Friday, we brought home our new car, the gps that we ordered from Amazon got delivered, and we were ready for one of our many road trips to visit the Castles of Scotland. There are over 2,000 castles in Scotland. We became members of the National Trust of Scotland and Historic Scotland to take advantage of

the unlimited castle tours for the next year. We've been in Aberdeen for about a month now and up until Saturday, we were pretty much confined to the city since we didn't have a car. It was nice to finally see the beautiful countryside; and when I say beautiful, I'm not kidding. With the white clouds, blue skies, green pastures and colorful flowers, I'd have to say that the happiest cows are in Scotland...haha.

Here are some pictures from the castles we visited.

Drum

Crathes

Craigievar

Dunnottar

We also took advantage of another beautiful Sunday and spent the afternoon in a town 15 miles south of Aberdeen called Stonehaven. It's amazing how you can drive just 15 miles and have such different scenery. I'm loving it!

We are heading out to Inverness on Thursday to find Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster =)

Sunny Day!

According to www.aboutaberdeen.com:

"Mention the phrase Aberdeen Weather and most people will think of rain throughout the year and when it is not raining it is snowing! However that is not the case. The weather forecast in Aberdeen often predicts sun and Aberdonians and lucky tourists often experience sunny days. Some Scottish people even fondly nickname Aberdeen as the sunny city. When you look at a typical 5 day weather forecast for Aberdeen such as the Aberdeen BBC weather report it usually features a sunny picture."

This is news to me, considering the past 3 weeks that we've been here, it has rained at least once a day. We always have to carry an umbrella and a jacket with us since you never know what the weather is going to be like. I've noticed that per weather.com, the temperature here is almost spot on to San Francisco weather, minus the rain. At least for this time of the year.

Anyhow, we woke up to a beautiful sunny sky on Saturday morning! To celebrate, we spent the day at the Aberdeen City Beach and Duthie Park. The beach was nice and clean, no seaweed or junk everywhere. Water was freezing cold but nonetheless, beautiful! There's a boardwalk on the beach with cafes, shops, and an amusement park. It kind of reminded me of a cheesy version of Kemah or maybe Kemah was a cheesy version of this place? haha. It was called Sunset Blvd and

seemed pretty Americanized to me. Definitely a change from the granite buildings we've been around in the city. Being the Americans that we are, we had lunch at TGIFridays! Babyback ribs with the Jack Daniel's sauce still taste like back home.

To take advantage of the sunny skies, we headed to Duthie Park for a stroll. Mental note, perfect place for a nice picnic. The park was green as ever with kids everywhere. At the park, there is a nice Winter Garden that houses a variety of flowers and plants. The garden is open year round and people say it's nice to visit during the winter, when it's cold, since they keep the garden pretty warm for all the flowers. My favorite was the Tropical House. Here at the park, you can ride your bikes, play cricket, and even kayak on a little man made pond. Lots to do here as you can see.

I'd have to say, Scotland is a beautiful country. I can't wait to start exploring the countryside. We bought a car and will get it this Friday so I'm excited. Still kind of nervous having to drive on the other side of the road but I'm sure we'll figure it out soon enough.

Friday Dinner Date Nights #1 & #2

Yes, I know it may sound cheesy but Gerald and I have decided that Friday will be our dinner date night. Every Friday, we will choose a new restaurant to try and make a night of it. We've done this twice so far and I'm pleased to say that both restaurants were wonderful. They may not have Vietnamese food here, but they sure do have a variety of other cuisine. We started with my favorite, Sushi! There's maybe 3 sushi restaurants here, so we picked the one that was rated the highest on Trip Advisor, Yorokobi. Yorokobi specializes in Japanese and Korean cuisine. Of course we had to try both when we visited. I had the sushi sampler and Gerald had his favorite prawn (they call shrimp prawn here) tempura roll and we shared the Bulgogi. The menu was very limited but that's the norm around here, limited menu since they have limited fridge/freezer space and cooking space. Either way, the fish was fresh and the meat was tasty so we will definitely be returning here.


This past Friday we went to Rustico for Italian. I'm not use to making reservations for a restaurant but it was recommended that you did for this particular one. I called on a Thursday and the only time they had available for Friday was 8:30 pm. We've been eating pretty early here (6pm), so 8:30 seemed a bit late but it was worth the wait. The owner is from Italy and all the waitstaff are from around the world: Poland, Czech, Russia, etc. The food was definitely straight from Italy, fresh pasta, seafood, and sauce! We had a wonderful Calamari starter with balsamic drizzle, Gerald had their seafood pasta with white wine sauce and I had their chef's pasta of the day with fennel sausage and creamy mascarpone sauce. The best part of the meal, however, was their Tiramisu! Gerald was craving ice cream so he asked for a scoop of vanilla ontop, which was icing on the cake!!

Anyhow, since we usually cook dinner at home every night, I'm definitely going to look forward to our Friday dinner date nights. I get to experiment with my cooking during the week and enjoy a tasty treat on Friday =)

Things I Like....and Things I Miss...

We're hanging out at a local coffee shop and I was pitching a cupcake idea to the owner and it really hit me...I can't have Sprinkles, Crave or Sugarbabies cupcake when I want. It's okay though because I really don't need the extra calories, but be warned, when I'm home for the holidays...I will be eating my heart out:)

Things I Like about Aberdeen

1. Current cool weather
2. We can walk everywhere
3. Sun doesn't set until 10 30 pm at this time of the year
4. Tap water here is nice. Saving the planet with no bottled water or filters.
5. No crazy traffic. Population 120,000 is nice and quiet.

Things I Miss

1. Big washer & dryer. Takes me 2hrs to do one wash cycle and then I have to hang dry and iron.
2. Good Vietnamese food! Pho and spring rolls mainly.
3. Dim sum.
4. My bed & couch. Furniture is not very comfortable at the house.
5. American TV. Everything here is a rerun or I just can't seem to find the right channels.

Obviously I miss having family and friends around too! These are in no particular order, it just crossed my mind as I was thinking.