An Edinburgh New Year

After our first week of winter break spent in the rural, snowed-in town of Caldbeck (The Lake District), we ventured to Edinburgh for the second week, including New Year's Eve. Edinburgh is known for its New Year's Eve celebrations, in addition to being a beautiful city, so that sounded like a good place to go. Also, our Aunt Debby from southern California was going to be in Edinburgh to give a story telling performance. And to round things out, our cousin Todd and his new wife, Ruth of Scotland, live in the area and since we hadn't yet met Ruth or her incredibly wonderful family and hadn't seen Todd in many years, off we went.

Edinburgh is indeed a beautiful city, with the skyline punctuated by many monuments and tall, old churches. But standing above everything is the castle, which rests on the top of an old volcanic core. It is quite an impressive, beautiful, and imposing site, in sun or snow or rain and we had all three in six days. On one end of the Royal Mile is the castle and on the other end is Hollyrood house, the official residence of the Queen when she is in town. We took a tour of Hollyrood house and it was pretty amazing to see how the house is both decorated and laid out to let guests know how and where important people and activities can take place.


Here are Tala and Noah with Aunt Debby outside the castle with Edinburgh in the background.

And cousin Todd joins in as we wander about through the old town, making strategic stops to a fudge store and "Chocolate Soup", a cafe that specializes in some incredible chocolate drinks.

Here are Todd and Ruth. We spent parts of three days with them, which was great. We had a really nice evening hanging out with Ruth's family, took a freezing cold and windy tour of Queensferry, and just enjoyed the time together.

Tala is adapting to European style quite well. Her birthday trip with Mindy to Paris in November helped. (We'll see what her February trip to Spain will add.)

The New Year's Eve celebration, called Hogmany, pays tribute to old pagan solstice rituals. The night before New Year's Eve, the Royal Mile was lit up with balls of fire, which looked really cool and kept everyone really warm (it was -6 Celsius).

Fireworks were lit above the castle and it was the most amazing fireworks display we have ever seen. It was so stunning and beautiful. There was a full moon, we were at the base of the castle looking up at the castle and the fireworks just exploded above our heads. We barely even noticed the large number of incredibly drunk people around (another future blog post will address the drinking culture here).

(This is not our picture and is from 2009, but you get the point.)

And here is proof of a few things: 1) The parents are having fun too; 2) Marc does exist (he is the main photographer); and 3) Marc's hair continues to thin and recede. Cheers!

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!

Holiday in the Lake District

During our winter break we decided to take two one-week trips of very different styles. The first week we went to the small town of Caldbeck in the Lake District in the UK, rented an amazing cottage, and promptly got snowed in for the entire week, which was just fine with us. For us, this region in the UK is always snow covered in December, but according to the people we met along our many walks across farms, it almost never snows, so we were lucky to have this snowy paradise.

The setting was incredible - snow covered farms, rolling hills, stone buildings, and very off the beaten track.

Each day we went for a nice hike through the snow covered farmland through the network of public footpaths that gives the public the right to traverse private farms. It was so incredibly beautiful and fun.



When we weren't wandering among the sheep and horses on the farms, we wandered a bit around the tiny town.

We are still enjoying the small things as well, like the different types of town names and the different signs that are used to regulate our behavior.

And each night we watched DVDs, ate more chocolate than should be legally allowed, slept late, sat by a fire, and enjoyed being out of wifi and mobile phone range. We only barely saw a lake one day (this was the Lake District), but we didn't care at all - it was a week of relaxing family time embedded into a year long trip that is already very rich with family time and adventures.

Our kids have been amazing adapting to a new place and getting on in school so seamlessly and this week to Caldbeck was a celebration of those accomplishments.

Merry Xmas

When Tala's religious education teacher wished all kids in class a Merry Christmas, we knew there was something different here. Noah and Nissa had a full Christmas agenda at their public school , including Christmas parties, Christmas concerts, Christmas assemblies, and even Christmas discos. Christmas actually lasts a full month in the UK, so there was plenty of school time devoted to it. Nissa became quite fond of Christmas carols, often asking us to read over the lyrics while she sang so she could make sure she was singing them correctly.

Mindy did get asked to come into class to talk about the Jewish holiday of Passover (!), not Channukah. When asked why Channukah, the teacher explained that the national curriculum called for finishing up the Old Testament in December so that they could teach the New Testament in the winter (which would allow it to coincide with Easter). It's hard to think of asking someone to give a presentation about Easter in December, but so it goes. When the kids told their friends they didn't celebrate Christmas because they were Jewish, their friends were incredulous.

So, after a couple of days of being perplexed and a bit angry, we came to appreciate the separation of church and state we've grown up with. We like that Christmas isn't an American holiday (like it is a British holiday here), although it sometimes feels like that, and that being Jewish isn't so completely an oddity back home.

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We celebrated ours in the Lake District (next blog post) where our rented cottage had our very first ever Christmas tree (picture above).