I'm home!

I don't know if I'm going to dive into posting about the trip straight away - but I wanted to let everyone know that we're home and all four flights were successful :) We actually got home last night and I was falling asleep at 9:15pm! When I woke up this morning, bright eyed & bushy tailed at 5:20am I was happy to realize that I think we didn't mess up our internal clock too much and I just hope I'll be able to fall asleep & wake up so easily indefinitely.

Here's a short list of what I'm going to miss and what I'm not going to miss from Scotland...

I'm NOT going to miss:

• The smell of gas on all the streets. It appears that despite all of their commercials about saving the environment they don't have very strong smog regulations in place, at least not in comparison to California that has some of the strictest. I know that everyone complains about smog checks and all that, but I'm now very grateful. Being able to walk down the street - or be in the vicinity of cars without gagging on fumes - is nice.
  
• Lack of toilet seat covers, and toilets that flush the first time. Before everyone starts in about the toilet seat covers, I know that there have been studies that prove them next to worthless - but that doesn't matter to my piece of mind and I'm just glad to have them back in public restrooms.
• Driving. Enough said.
• Banking hours - for EVERY business. I'm an American and a Californian, the fact that I can't find hot food at 1am is appalling and was very frustrating as we couldn't adjust to the time change despite waking at the crack of dawn for our included breakfast everyday.

• The sky. I'm going to miss those thick sweeping clouds that moved faster than us and spotted the hills with shadows. Playing peek-a-boo with the sun was a big game that we never get to play here.
  
• The wet weather. Everywhere we went, people were apologizing about the weather - and everywhere we went we said, "This is what we came for!" I'd like to point out that it was in the high 90s (° Fahrenheit) with a chance of burning alive while we were gone from our home area.
  
• The sight of livestock everywhere. I was telling my dad when he asked if we saw sheep, "We saw them everywhere - and up to the very end I shouted 'SHEEP' or 'COWS' every time we saw some!" :) I don't know much about sheep, so I'm just going to assume it's our luck, but there were lambs everywhere. I felt like I was browsing cute overload 24/7!
• The easy access to fresh, affordable produce. The reason I don't eat as many fruits and veggies as I'd like is because everything that looks good and fresh, is so expensive! Since we had to feed ourselves a lot because we missed the open hours of so many places, I began to rely on these stores. I <3 Sainsbury!
• The open, open landscape. I'm going to miss this one the most I think. Everyone had boundaries to their properties - it just wasn't as loud and foreboding as it is here. Short rock walls and tree lines seemed to be all they needed - and that's what I'm going to miss. If I never saw another chain link fence again - I'd be ecstatic.