Snow!! Beautiful, scenic, lovely, wet, cold, accident-causing snow. We had quite a lot of it.
Tuesday, November 23rd, I told my grandmother, "I can't believe Uncle Rusty [her brother] said you were crazy to come to Scotland in November." I continued, "The weather has actually been quite nice. I mean, it's a bit chilly, but for what you would expect, it's not bad at all."
November 24th. Snow. Needless to say, my parents' visit might have been picturesque, but it was far from ideal (at least when driving on the "wrong" side of the road and trying to sight see).
My parents miraculously got out of Aberdeen and even more miraculously they drove the uncleared roads from Edinburgh to Aberdeen (what turned out to be a four hour trip when it's normally two and a half). But everyone was alive, though possibly worse for the wear.
A week later, as I tried to go to Stirling with friends all the trains had been stopped. They were stopped for about a week. And we were actually "trapped" in Aberdeen.
And the most amazing thing of the snow was the Aberdonians seemed quite surprised by it. One would think this kind of thing happends every year and a batallion of snow plows would be dispatched as soon as it started snowing, but that was far from the case. The Aberdonians seemed just as surprised by the snow as the American exchange students. On the rare chance you would see a snow plow, but for the most part the city close to shut down.
In response to this mass "freak out" due to the snow, an exchange student from Idaho said, "Don't they know how to deal with snow?!" Earlier that day the sports gym had closed due to the weather because the snow had knocked down one of their walls-- or something like that. The student continued, "Why would you make a building here that can't withstand snow?"
It was actually pretty amusing to see the reaction to snow. You would think they would be prepared, considering they're on the same latitude line as upper Canada (the inhabited part), but not so much.
But, all that said, in complete selfishness, after about sixteen years of un-white Christmases, I finally got a white Christmas season. Despite the hazards and complications caused by the cold white rain, it made for a beautiful December.
