irony, 1. english, 0.
i tried to settle in last night and do some cooking but i was thwarted by the veggie grocery store near my house, which claimed to be open from 9am ’till late, but in reality is only open ’till 7pm. i’m trying to figure out under what circumstances does 7pm constitute ‘late’. sux.
unfortunately, i had no plan b, because i had to put all of my effort into plan a (going out, finding the one store i set out to find, coming home). it was also dumping rain, as it is wont to do in edinburgh in march, so i ducked into a conveniently-located thai restaurant.
i know less than 10 phrases in thai, one of which gets some use: i am vegan. it is phonetically written something like ‘ahan jay’, which in english is three syllables at most but in thai is something like seven and contains the queen mother of all diphthongs. usually when i mangle this phrase, thai people look at me like i just meowed at them, but last night the waitress said, ‘you’re vegetarian? me too.’ this was only funny to me because i went to the superstore (supermarket) yesterday at lunch and had to repeat myself three times when speaking english to the cashier.
yesterday was my first bike commute. it’s 10 miles each way, some of which is on wet cobblestones. i can’t believe that they hold bike races over those things. butchers. the rest is on really potholed rural roads and nicely-paved bike paths, which i think were old railroad lines. it was gorgeously sunny on the way in and wet at the start of the ride home but quickly dried out. the countryside here is even more lush than i thought it would be and is full of the old-world charm. i saw an incredibly bright double rainbow, a pack of shetland ponies, and heard some farmer scaring crows off with what sounded like a small canon.
it’s pretty cool here. i’m glad i got some sun yesterday. i was kind of worried that i wasn’t going to see any until i got back to seattle.