Swans, hedgehogs and haggis.
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Saskia
05 September 2015 | Verenigd Koninkrijk, Gateside
After four days of working here, I thought I’d put up a post about what’s going on. The first day I tagged along with a guy who works here, I’ll nickname him mr. Cat. Nice guy, though. We fed and cleaned the swans, cygnets, doves/pigeons and foxes. It’s actually more fun than it sounds. Especially fox feeding/cleaning is kind of fun. There is a pair of foxes here, McDonald and Dora, who are the compound’s biggest “failure”. This is because they’re just like dogs now. McDonald will come up to you to greet you, jumping up like a dog. Dora’s more subdued, but after a while she’ll come out to say hi as well.
The jobs I do regularly are cleaning (scooping poo that is), feeding (soaking bread with water, disgusting) and sorting food. It’s quite neat actually, the people here are very laid back. The job I like doing most is the quarry. It’s about 200 meters down the road, and the view is just stunning. The leftover scraps of bread and fruits and veggies are taken up there to feed to the wild swans and gulls. On Wednesday, we weighed the swans and cygnets. I learned two things that day. When swans are scared, their hindquarters explode with poo. The biggest one actually reached 1,5 metres. My colleague learned not to stand behind a swan when it’s going to be weighed. The other thing I learned is that if the legs get loose, put your swan down or suffer the consequences.
For the last three days I’ve been working in the hedgehog hospital. There’s about16 hedgehogs at the moment, and while they’re awfully cute and grumpy, they’re the most disgusting animal around. They’re quite rude as well. Yesterday I cleaned one of them out. Not five minutes later it looked at me, defiantly, and took a poop in his food bowl without breaking eye contact. I swear I saw him smile afterwards. Grumpy bastards.
I’ve been to my first pub in Glasgow, Drams. Culture shock to the max. Delicious foods, good music, awesome pub quiz. I’m definitely going back there with mr. Cat. Yesterday, mr. Cat actually forcefed me haggis. It was surprisingly good!
And now for some school stuff..
I have learnt a lot of bird names (gannet, sparrow, sterling, oystercatcher, lesser black-backed gull, herring gull, herrin etc.)
I have also learnt that haggis is actually quite nice.
The main problem I have run into is that people talk really, really fast here, twice as fast as I do. I have solved this by listening very carefully and just ask if they can repeat it when I didn't catch it. Everyone now knows I'm not English, so they generally slow down when I don't catch what they mean.
Here is the list of new words I have learnt:
Dunnock
Passerine
Peg
(to look) lean
To hit the headlines
Husbandry
The back of …
I have not included all the bird names in my portfolio, because that would cause my entire portfolio to consist of bird names.
See you next time!
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09 September 2015 - 09:03
J Brijder:
Dear Saskia,
You're not the only one who learned a lot of birdnames...:-) I did too, reading your first entry.
Good to read you're doing well!
Kind regards,
Janet Brijder
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley