Fajita Failure

This weekend I went to a Highland Cattle show. I love those "hairy coos." As many of you can imagine I was super excited to trek out to the park in the early hours of Saturday morning to watch a parade of cows... I'm not so sure my cow-companion was. It was decided that we wouldn't arrive at the cow show at the start, because some believe Saturday morning is for sleeping and in this instance I agreed. After parking the car and strolling through the entire park (There was a free tram for a reason! But, it was much nicer to walk) we discovered that we were the only people over the age of 12 without a child accompanying us. Our walk through the park led us by the Park's cows (featured in "Cows and Cathedrals") giving us a nice warm-up to the full-blown cattle show. The actual show grounds had been turned into a swamp from the previous night's rain and both mine and my cow-companion's footwear were not suitable for this type of extreme weather. After plodding through ankle high mud we made our way to the dog herding demonstration, appropriately titled "The Drakes of Hazard." While we came for the cattle show the duck show was absolutely the best event of the day. Once the duck show had come to a close we plodded our way back through the swamp and explored the craft tent, the information tent, the horse shoeing booth and took our seats for the main attraction. Having attended quite a few local and state fairs in my time I knew what to expect during a cattle show.However, my cow-companion was excessively underwhelmed by the show and I believe was relieved when it started pouring rain and we had to escape early to partake in Spanish tapas rather than more cattle viewing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T70jjEUr4c8&feature=related

This youtube link shows you a bit of the "Drakes of Hazard" show.

              In addition to the actual cows there were other animal displays including predatory birds.

The particular group of cattle that we witnessed were young enough that the time spent in the show was the first time spent away from their mothers. They were quite distraught.

                  If you look to the sky you will see the cloud of doom that ruined the cattle show.

This was one of the food stations. They were serving Highland Cattle burgers... too close to the actual food source for my taste. I love to live in the delusional world in which all meat comes from the meat section at the grocery store not from cute little hairy coos.

Sunday was a big day for Glasgow. It was the first Old Firm match of the year. As you may have guessed the Glaswegians love their football (yes, soccer). In fact, they love it so much that the city has two teams, the Celtic and the Rangers. Remember, the Rangers has an "s" the Celtic do not... don't ever say Celtics. Ever! I overheard a girl say that once and was practically killed. As you can imagine there is a fierce rivalry between Glasgow's teams but it goes beyond just kicking a ball around and scoring goals. The Celtic represents the large Irish Catholic population prevalent in Glasgow. Whereas, the Rangers are representative of the Scottish Protestant population. Now obviously, you have fans for the Celtic who aren't Catholic and fans of the Rangers who aren't  Protestant. But, it's the principle of the thing, family and country pride you might say. The Rangers and Celtic play eachother four times a year in the Old Firm. This day brings about lots of beer, football chants and intense police security.

Even though I had been warned I forgot it was Old Firm day and wandered down to the City Centre. Of course the city centre was packed.. although it usually is. If you ever want to see men in kilts, hear bagpipes playing or see any other Scottish stereotypes in action head down to the city centre on an Old Firm Day (just so you aren't disappointed I will tell you now the Loch Ness Monster isn't there... but every other Scottish stereotype will be represented).

I'm slowly working my way through all the free Glasgow museums. Again, let me state how much I love these free museums! On Sunday, I went to Glasgow Green. Glasgow Green is a large park minutes from the city centre. Within the park you have the People's Palace, a museum dedicated to the people of Glasgow. Attached to the museum there's a wonderful indoor garden with a cafe. And, outside the People's Palace is my new favorite part of Glasgow, The Doulton Fountain. The fountain is the largest terracotta fountain in the World and is an artistic representation of British Imperialism (How helpful would this have been during the unit I taught on imperialism in my world studies class!). Queen Victoria stands at the top of the fountain and surrounding her are dipictions of a man and woman from four of Britains colonies: India, Canada, Australia and South Africa. After falling in love with this fountain and the garden cafe I realized that fountains and cafes are always my favorite parts of cities, especially when they are right next to one another!

After wandering through the palace and the gardens I made my way over to the Barras. The Barras is a historic trading district that has a huge flea market every weekend. Now, remember that I went over there on Old Firm Day, mistake. The flea markets were closing and there were loads of people sporting their team colors filled with fried food and beer. Fortunately, I was in a neutral zebra print sweater and was not sucked into the craziness that is celebrating or mourning the results of the match (Rangers won). I quickly made my way back to the safety of the busy city centre.. but absolutely want to return to see the flea market in action. 

I somehow have a great talent at living in places with disasters for kitchens. Both my house in Emporia and the flat here have extreme oven issues. The first night I tried to cook in the flat was a disaster with the oven. But, it seemed as though my flatmates and I had gotten the issue under control and could safely and efficiently cook in our kitchen once again. It was my intention to have a fajita dinner last night. I had run around town picking up all the different ingredients (Mexican food materials certainly aren't as easy to find here as they are in the states) and had chopped up all the peppers, onions and chillies to make cooking a breeze. But, when my dinner date arrived the wrath of the horrible oven decided to strike again. After sitting for hours (probably minutes) waiting for the burners to warm up nothing was happening. After laying our hands on the burners, flipping every probable switch in the kitchen, opening and closing lots of doors it was decided the food would be microwaved. This brillant idea was cut short when the microwave wouldn't start. It was at this moment the flatmates were called in for backup. It was figured out that the oven switch for some reason was shorting out all the sockets in the kitchen. If the oven was kept in the off position the rest of the appliances would work. A work order report was filled out and barbeque chicken microwave wraps were made instead of fajitas. It was a total fajita failure, maybe this is why the Scots don't make Mexican food.

Scotlish Lesson- A Glasgow Kiss= A headbutt... you may or may not want a Glasgow kiss.

***** 95% of the photographs in this blog post (not the entire blog!) are productions of the amazing, talented and highly underrated photographer Mr. Stuart Forsyth. (I was told if attribution wasn't given I would be sued.. this little blog can't afford such legal action so early on)