Some stuff that has happened ...

Hey everyone!!!
I know I haven't posted in ages ... I'm terrible!!!!

Things have been pretty crazy since my last post in July!!! I'll try to write it all - in order - for you ...

Sometime around my last post my two Lithuanian friends found out they had to go home in August to go to uni. They started the same day I did and were also expecting to stay until October, so it was a real shock for everybody!
The day before Nora and Tomas left we got two new staff and were expecting another girl a few days later. The first week without them was possibly the hardest week of my life. I took over doing breakfast from 7.45 to sometime after 9 for the B&B residents (which Nora had been doing). You all know what I'm like if I have to be conscious before 10am, right? Somehow I actually managed to wake up and be there on time, although I skipped a couple of breakfasts and in order to get enough sleep I skipped dinner a few times as well because we finished packing up the restaurant after 9pm. In total I worked about 69 hours across 6 days.
Which is basically why I got sick.
Not quite two weeks after Nora and Tomas left the two French staff were due to go back for uni as well. They'd come in July for just two months. That two months went so crazy fast and was so much fun!!! So it was really sad to be saying good-bye to them too.
Just before they left I took most of a day off sick. I had a fever and felt nauseous and dizzy and just plain awful. I had been fighting colds for the past few weeks but this one was a really nasty one. I took lots of tablets and got a little bit better each day, but I had barely any energy and a really painful cough that, when it got really bad, made me retch quite violently. It was really not fun.
Work was insanely stressful as we were short staffed (one of the part-time waiters had appendicitis), still training the new people and the restaurant was quite busy. And of course, being sick was just making it so much harder.

So that's basically why I left.
I've been staying with Mum's step-dad in Stirling for a little over a week. The doctor put me on antibiotics for a chest infection and I have mostly gotten better but I still have a small cough.

I registered with an admin recruitment place and they found me a temp job at the University, which I started yesterday. I'm doing the reception for the careers advice centre which is a pretty interesting place to work. Everyone's really nice and I really love being back in an office (which is kinda sad), doing dull tasks like cutting cards and putting them in envelopes (which is possibly sadder).

I miss everyone in Pitlochry and everyone who left before me to go to their respective homes. It was definitely the right thing to leave, though. My health has improved and I am generally much happier. I don't know how long I will be doing the job I'm in as it is to cover sick leave. And I have no idea what I will do next!!! But that's okay :)
Love you all!!!
xoxo

PS. I have slightly a lot more time now, especially on the weekends, so if anyone wants to skype/IM please let me know and we can organise a time! I miss you all and would love to hear what you've all been up to!!!

A New Post: Now With Pictures

So I must be going to blog around about once a month. Okay then.

I found some photos on my phone and camera that I thought you all might be interested in. So ... Pictures:

This is a Robin I made friends with at Pitlochry station one day while I was waiting for a train. I couldn't work out if the thing it's standing on was a rock or a very rotten sandwich ...

I went to Edinburgh with Ralph a while ago. He had some meeting or something, so I just wandered around. I was walking down one of the main streets and from a few blocks away I saw a shop that could have been a Build-a-Bear Workshop, but just as easily might not have been. Sure enough, when I got closer, it was. I swear I wasn't looking for it! It found me!! So I bought Monkey-Moo a UK-themed outfit to add to her collection of clothes from around the world.

This is the main road where almost all the shops are found (along only four or five blocks).
I live just a little bit further up from where this was taken.

Here is one of the MANY gift shops on the main road. They are all full of over priced souvenirs and pretty things.

I'd really like to go to this cafe one day. It looks tasty!! Here is the website: http://www.hetties-tearooms.com/










I found these matches in a drawer in the staff kitchen. They freaked me out because I've only ever seen red matches. They really don't look right!!!

This is the kitchen in the restaurant (part of it, anyway). There are a few other rooms through the doorways at the back there. Because this place has been running for over 50 years (and it's Britain so all the buildings are ridiculously old, anyway), there's lots of bits that have been added at different times and squeezed into odd places so everything on the property is a bit of a maze.
In the B&B there's a corridor that is less than a metre long, separated by two insanely heavy fire doors (there are really heavy doors everywhere, it's really annoying!!). The corridor could be something to do with fire prevention or maybe it's a teleport to an alien city on Pluto, I don't really know what it's for other than to be weird.


Anyway, that's all the photos I have at the moment, but I will try to take more soon.
If you have any questions or suggestions of posts, leave them in the comments!! I will try to post again soon!!
xoxo

CAKE!! And some other stuff that has happened since I last posted ...

Okay, so i suck at blogging. That's pretty obvious. I have a few draft posts that I haven't finished for various reasons. Mostly, I got bored of them so I figured you all would too.
Some possibly interesting things that have happened in the last month (sort of in chronological order):
I went to Glasgow
I saw The Little Shop of Horrors at the Pitlochry Theatre
We got a stove/oven thing in the staff accommodation so we can cook real food rather than fast food and microwave food
I cooked rice in the microwave (several times, now) and it didn't fail!!
My boss has started calling me Matilda because of Waltzing Matilda ... (I'm worried that I'll actually start answering to it by the end of the summer!!)
My mum sent me some rice bread which has been awesome and yummy
Baileys is possibly my new favourite alcohol and Nora (the other waitress) and I discovered that it is amazing on vanilla ice cream
I found the most amazing chocolate cake

Which brings me to CAKE!!!
Tomorrow is my day off. I always try to do something nice, like go out for lunch, go to another town or city. This week I've saved up heaps of the money I set aside to spend on food, etc. because I decided to stop buying junk food and eat nice, healthy, fructose and lactose free meals (for those who don't know, I'm fructose and lactose intolerant).
I decided to go to one of the cafe/restaurants that I really like for dinner. Partly for fun and partly because they have free wi-fi and I bought LA Noire from Steam this morning because it was 75% off and the internet on my phone is way too slow to download 12GB (turns out the free wifi is too ...)
Anyway, I got crumbed calamari to start which was really nice and tender and not too oily or anything.   Then I had lasagna because almost everything else on the menu was fish, and I didn't feel like more seafood. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was yummy, though.
Then the waitress plonked the dessert menu in front of me. I looked through it and debated whether I wanted more wheat and sugar and dairy and all that stuff that I've been avoiding for the past week. Since I had gone out as a special treat and all, I convinced myself to try the chocolate cake. It had a really tasty name ... something to do with chocolate fudge something. I got Baileys and milk, too, because the tasty name of the cake sounded like it would go well with Baileys.

It does taste as amazing as it looks.
I'm sure you all know that I am a complete snob about my baking. My cupcakes are the nicest in the world and so id my chocolate fudge mousse cake.

This cake was equal to or better than my chocolate cake.

It was warm and fudgey and creamy and melty. It had warm sauce in the middle that was rich, but sweet enough to balance the richness of the cake.
I actually wanted it with cream, but I think she heard me wrong. i'm glad, though. it was proper ice cream. It was really creamy and had real vanilla bean! It tasted just like the first ice cream I made, but only my parents had that. For the rest of you, it was sort of like the other vanilla ice cream I make, except creamier and with more vanilla flavour. IT WAS SO NICE!!!!! And it did go really well with the Baileys.
As you can imagine, after all that high fructose and lactose food, I have a TERRIBLE stomach ache ... But it was SO worth it!!
Anyway, that is Cake. And now I must sleep to recover from cake.
I will possibly post again at some point ... We shall see ...
xoxo

Day 22

Hello everyone!!!
I've been in the UK for three weeks, so I thought I'd better actually start this blog I told people I'd start. It's a little too pink at the moment, but I will make it look awesome when I get around to doing some more web design stuff.
I am in a little Scottish town called Pitlochry. You can check it out here: http://www.pitlochry.org/. It's full of old stone houses and quaint gift shops. It's a tourist town so there are heaps of accommodation-type places. I am working in the restaurant here: http://macdonalds-pitlochry.co.uk/. It's fun most of the time. Except when the stupid computer-gadgets we use to take orders stuff up. That's not so fun. Especially since it always seems to happen when the bosses are around ... Stupid computer-gadgets ...

Anyway. I'm not really sure what to write on this blog since basically all I do is work and buy food in my break (I will do a post about food sometime), so please ask me questions and give suggestions for posts in the comments.