Shopping and Queues

Hello everyone! I discovered something great today.  Nobody goes to library on Saturday mornings.  This is what I did this morning.  I got up and went straight to the library to get some books (I think that I have my own personal library in my room right now) for one of my essays.  And I saw practically nobody.  The people out were on campus tours.  It was wonderful.  Usually the library is kind of crowded, but I guess nobody but me enjoys waking up on a Saturday and racing to the library.  (What can I say, I'm pumped to finish this essay.)  I basically spent my morning studying before meeting my friends to go into town to do some shopping.

I discovered where all the people were that weren't at the library; downtown Stirling.  First, let me explain that Stirling is a pretty quiet town.  There are never really a whole lot of people around.  It's kind of your stereotypical sleepy European town.  Well, I guess not on Saturdays.  Everybody was at the Thistle Centre (the mall: and note my cool use of the UK English language).  I much prefer quiet Stirling, but it's nice to know that people do exist here.  During our shopping, we stopped at a kilt store, because before leaving Stirling, Flat Joshua wanted to get fitted for a kilt.

Here he is deciding which kilt to choose. (In case you were wondering, the different patterns represent different families and different clans.  Flat Joshua just picked the one he like the best.)

After shopping, we headed to our fish and chips place for dinner.  This place I swear is one of the best places ever.  You get 2 huge pieces of fish and a pile of fries.  We decided to walk to the bench by the William Wallace bridge that we sat at on Wednesday and eat our fish and chips.

Here's flat Joshua enjoying his fish and chips.  (He got hungry on the walk to the park (it was kind of a trek), so he started eating before we could take a picture. I think he liked fish and chips.)

Once we had successfully eaten our fish and chips, we headed to Tesco before coming back to campus.  Tomorrow I plan on going to church and then fine tuning my presentation for Monday.

Here is something that I have learned in Scotland; people here take their queues (or more commonly called lines in the US) very seriously.  Now, I have become accustomed to the respect that people give queues.  People (unless they're the annoying brand of preteen and even most of them don't do it) don't cut the queue.  It just isn't done.  And I have to admit that it's really nice.  People don't push and shove to get on the bus, they just wait in line for their turn (I give Scotland an A+ on this).  This is one way you can tell foreigners.  We have been cut in line by a variety of foreign people (surprisingly I don't think I've been cut off my an American though) and everybody gives them death glares and complains about it.  It's a good time. 

This all is important to explain my story and why it's significant.  Today, we were waiting at the bus stop to go back to campus when we see this girl crossing the street in the midst of traffic like her life depended on it (or like there wasn't a crosswalk 30 feet away).  My first thought was, "Uh oh, here comes trouble."  Now, we're standing there in a clear line (with 2 ladies ahead of me and my friends) with all of our Tesco bags.  Right as she makes it across the street, the bus finally pulls up.  This girl walks past all of us in line and pushes her way on to the bus.  Proceeds to pass the bus driver (where you pay for your ticket, or show him your pass), find a seat, sits down her bags, walks back up to the bus driver, cuts off the lady who was first in line and already paying and digs through her wallet for about 10 minutes to find her pass.  This girl just might possibly be the most irritating person on planet earth.  This is why the Scottish respect the queue.