[LOCUTOR]

Track thirty-two, unit fourteen, all things are difficult before they are easy

KATHI KAMLEITNER

[…] What was it like to adjust to living here? I can imagine that the climate is very different.

LISA WILLIAMS

So, when actually one of my, when I first was first living here, and I told a man on the Royal Mile that we'd moved from the Caribbean, he was like "Are you on the run from Interpol? Like why would you leave the Caribbean and come to Scotland? Are you crazy? He said the weather, you're not going to be able to deal with it. I said I'll be fine. Absolutely fine. And then it got to February. The first February was fine. The first February was a novelty. Yes, we were cold. Yes, it took two years to adjust to the climate. And then my poor son was probably wearing hats and scarves and full shoes and a whole uniform. And it took him, for the first time, and it probably took him about an hour to get dressed in the morning age of eight because of grappling with mittens and things he'd never seen before. Erm, and asking me, "Mommy, why am I going to school in the middle of the night", because I'd brought him here in, in December, and it's pitch black, he's having to walk to school in the dark with all of this uncomfortable clothing. So it took a little while to adjust and for me to readjust as opposed to those things being back in the UK. And also adjusting to…. Caribbean people are quite friendly, quite boisterous, quite loud and very used to like I said, greeting people in the street or walking into a room of people even if you don't know them. So you might walk into a doctor's office and you walk in "Good morning" and everyone replies "Good morning". So sometimes I'd be addressing people in maybe groups that I was teaching or going into a school and saying good morning and not getting that response, and I would sometimes make it into a bit of a joke, saying in the Caribbean, people reply and they answer, but that's just not the culture here. So it's getting used to those things. The other thing is getting used to as well is a certain level of politeness in Edinburgh society. […]