I can see my house from up here!

This past weekend was quite a good one, though very relaxing.  Friday night, Katie and I decided to order Chinese, buy a bottle of cheap white wine, and watch movies/TV shows online all night. I ended up going home around 2, which I didn't expect to do. It was supposed to be an early night in, but we had a really fun time.  Saturday, I woke up early and worked on  my 3000 word essay, which is now finished (yay!). Katie, Becca, and I decided to go to the Edinburgh Farmer's Market around noon on Saturday, which was a really great experience.  I haven't been to a Farmer's Market in a while, and this one is right next to the castle, which gave really great photo opportunities.

Castle from the street before we got to the market

Becca and Katie. Super excited about food!

View of part of the castle from the market

The market yummmm

 So the market had everything from doughnuts to veg, like 6 meat vendors, and there was fudge and chocolate too. It was pretty awesome. We decided to get some angus burgers for lunch. They had cheddar and grilled onions on them. Basically the best thing I've had in a while. We also got amazing hot chocolate with like 1/4 cup of marshmallows in it AND whipped cream. And it was only £1.90. It was a really good deal, let me tell you. As we left, Becca got some caramel shortbread and I got probably the best chocolate croissant I've ever had. Super buttery.  Oh, I also would like to mention how many dogs I saw on Saturday. They were everywhere. The one below was probably my favorite.

There was a really weird guy in a cape. Hmmm

After the Farmer's Market, I had to meet up with a girl in the library for a project, but we decided to reconvene afterward and climb Arthur's Seat, seeing as the weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday.
Arthur's Seat. Extinct volcano that reaches 823 feet high (according to Wikipedia). I'm not sure how long it took us to go up, but it felt like a really long time. The way up from the west is made up of tiny, rock stairs which are windy and quite steep. I'm going to be honest, we took a lot of stops.

City of Edinburgh from the bottom of Arthur's Seat

Our Mission: To conquer that massive thing

Part-way up. That's basically Leith and the Firth of Forth

Katie with Edinburgh behind her

Becca with the Forth behind her

These are the Crags, another rock formation

It's a long way down!

Are we there yet?

On our way up, we walked past many different people. I realised that there are all sorts of people who come out when the weather's nice. There were people who were running up Arthur's Seat. Like cross-country runners. I don't get it. But there were also tourists- I heard Germans! And some guys were sitting at the top, smoking something

We also saw one guy who was just walking up by himself. There were so many people climbing, which was really cool. Now for some photos of the top!

Those big buildings in the foreground are the dorms or "Halls"

The Firth of Forth? The sea? I'm not sure

Edinburgh Castle in the middle

Did I mention that Becca's afraid of heights?

This doggy came all the way to the top! On our way down we saw more dogs going up

Dial at the top which points out landmarks and their distance from Arthur's Seat

One of the lochs in Holyrood Park

Small ginger child who didn't seem to have parents

We opted for the easier way down, seeing as those stairs terrified us enough going up. The way down also took us past some ancient ruins of and abbey circa 13th century. No big deal.

All that's left of the abbey

Becca looking super awkward

Me, trying to do my best model pose. Maybe with better clothes, it would look good

On our way home, we walked past Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen comes to stay when she does, which is rarely.  But yeah, that's different from the castle, which was basically just a fortress with lots of cannons and dungeons and all that good stuff. It was also built a long time before the palace.  I forgot to take pictures of the palace, of course, but it's right across the street from Scottish Parliament, which I did take pictures of. It's really controversial because it's super modern with a lot of bamboo. I'm not sure what they were thinking, but it's one of those, you either like it or you hate it things.

To end, the above picture is part of the Royal Mile. The downhill portion, I suppose. The buildings are all really nice, and as you can see, the sun was going down soon, and it was after 4:30! I get really excited now when it's still light out at 5 or 5:30, seeing as when we got here, it got dark at 3:30. Can't wait for Day Light Savings time! Alright well John's coming on Friday, so there will be updates next week of all our adventures. Bis dann!!

I'm Still Alive!

Hey everyone,
I know it's been a while since my last post, so I figured I'd give you guys a quick, or maybe not so quick, update. Right now, I'm doing a mixture of homework and actual work in Olive Cafe, which is about four doors down from my flat. I've been getting more hours there recently, which is great since it gives me spending money (very necessary). John's visiting in two weeks, but I have two 3000 word essays due the day after he leaves so I'm trying to get at least one of those completely out of the way before he gets here. In the UK, they calculate papers by words, not pages, so for those of you who don't get what 3000 words is, it's about 9-10 pages. It's really not too bad, but having two due right after John visits is a huge pain in the ass. I also have two presentations while he's here, which I'll be working on during our visit with my family in England. Fun fun. I've already had two presentations, which I found went really well, so I don't think it's as hard here as everyone makes you think. We'll see how I do on my essays, though.

Now on to the fun stuff. On the 5th, I went to Dundee with my friends, Katie and Monica, for the day. It was an £8 trip, which basically just paid for transportation up there. It was a pretty small city, but we had a good walk around and went to the free McManus art gallery/museum in Dundee. There were some interesting artefacts, such as merchandise that was made in Dundee, to ancient Pict ruins from near Dundee, to a hairdryer? I'm not sure why the hairdryer was there. It was kind of weird.

Old ship in Dundee. From my class, I've learned that Dundee used to be a big trading port. Fun fact.

McManus Gallery

Albert and Victoria. They're in every museum I've been to here

Katie pondering, "What is a museum?"

Pict skeleton

 The museum also had a lot of Scottish art. It seemed most of it depicted heroic Highlanders and very "Scottish" scenes. I think there was a big patriotic artist movement linked with the Jacobites, so that probably had something to do with it. Below is my favourite painting because I just love these cows. Soooo cute.

There was one thing that struck me about Dundee. There were multiple penguin statues around the city. I'm not 100% sure why there were penguins. We were all just so excited about the penguins, that the trip to Dundee was completely worth it.

Circle of Penguins

Penguin statues on a wall surrounding a church

Enough about Dundee. Last week wasn't very exciting, but it was Chiara's 22nd birthday on the 8th. Last Friday, we threw her a big birthday party, and all of her friends came over and stayed until about 2:30 am. It was a good party, but the clean up the next day was a pain. Luckily, Wendy and I had the forethought to clean up a bit that night. After getting some work done that day, I decided to go out with Katie and her friends from IFSA-Butler, the study abroad programme that she's on. A lot of universities at home don't have good study abroad programmes of their own, I guess, so they go through ones like Butler and Arcadia, which are through other universities. So all of Katie's friends are from different universities, not just University of Illinois-Chicago. So we all met up and went to the club on campus, Potterow, which has "the Big Cheese" every Saturday night. It plays music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s (aka "cheesy" music), though I was only told it played 90s music. I was a bit disappointed on how little 90s music they played. I wanted Britney, NSync, BSB, and Spice Girls all night. Instead I got, James Brown, A-Ha, and a bit of S Club 7. It could have been better. I'm going to go back to this club called the Hive to see what their "Big Cheese" is like. Hopefully more 90s music. Last night, Katie and I went to the Chocolate Society Chocolate House Building Competition. This meant you could make any structure out of the materials provided (square cookies, nutella, peach rings, gummy bears... that sort of thing). We opted for a bridge. It was pretty bad, but neither of us are architecturally savvy. The best part was basically eating it after the competition was done.
This week I'm trying to focus on writing my essays a bit. This weekend is Lara's flatmate, Felicity's birthday. That should be fun, and I'll try to give more updates on stuff, but it's been pretty uneventful around here. Keep on truckin, everyone!

Robert Burns and Other Tales (Searching for Nessie) Pt. II

I know it's been a bit longer than usual since my last post. I thought I'd wait until the next Burns' Supper to update. Since last week, not only have I attended another Burns' Supper and ate more haggis (yum), I also went up to Loch Ness with my flatmates and some Italians, and I might have found my favourite restaurant in Edinburgh. Let me tell you now, Loch Ness and the Highlands in general are GORGEOUS. I'm not kidding, it's ridiculous. I'll start with that then.

We got up early early Saturday morning. The sun was just coming up when we left the flat. That's how early. It's always rather strange walking through a city that early, especially on a weekend, because nothing is going on and it's just beautiful. We had decided to rent a car so we met up with Chiara's friends at the train station to get the car. Let me tell you, the driver was the boyfriend of one of the Italian girls studying in Edinburgh. He did not speak any English beyond "Thank you" and "Your welcome". The whole time, Chiara or Selene (his gf) had to translate the GPS (or SatNav as they call it here) for him. He also had never driven on the left side of the road before. It was an interesting experience to say the least but we made it there and back in one piece!
We took a long, scenic route to get there, which took us to the West coast of Scotland and up from there. We went through the Glencoe mountain range, which is apparently the narrowest mountain range in the UK. Interesting fact, I guess. I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

Chiara, my flatmate from Italy

I didn't know the sky could be that color!

Chiara was running for some reason. It was really pretty boggy here

Sign in Gaellic and English

The sign shows what everything is that you're looking at. But I'm pretty sure it was mostly in Gaellic. Helpful...

My flatmates and me. From L-R (Wendy, Chiara, me, Dianna)

So these are all pictures from the lovely drive up. We had a great time and all packed big lunches so we shared with each other and generally just had fun despite being cramped up in a car that just barely had room for all 7 of us. It took about 4 hours to drive up to Loch Ness from Edinburgh, so we got there around 1 pm. Again, I can't really describe how beautiful it was. The clouds came and went all day, so the light was wonderful all day.

Urquhart Castle

Chiara and Wendy

Part of Loch Ness. It's 23 miles long, so I couldn't really get all of it

Part of the castle ruins

The sun started going down around 4 so we decided to head home so it wouldn't be dark the whole time we were driving. I'm pretty sure we got back to our flat after dropping off the rental car and everything around 9. I would really suggest going up to the Highlands to anyone. The scenery was far beyond what my expectations were and it wasn't tremendously cold. I think maybe it would be better if there had been more sunlight, so probably going in March or April would be better.

Now for Burns Night pt II. Yes, it was a week after actual Burns Night, but no one really seemed fazed by that. Of course, I forgot my camera, but I'll just describe this one. The dinner was set up by Exchange 360, which is a society for exchange students, both on exchange at University of Edinburgh, and also students from Univ. of Edin. who have gone on exchange elsewhere. There were probably 10 tables set up for all of us, each with a few bottles of wine for us to share. I went with my friend, Katie, and two of my flatmates, Dianna and Wendy also went with, so we all sat together. Also at our table were a Norwegian girl, a German guy, and a French girl. They were all here for the year and lived in the same building. New friends maybe? Anyway, we had a nice band playing Scottish folk music as we sat there, and after a while, the haggis was brought out as a student was playing the bagpipes (not particularly well I might add) and the proper Address to the Haggis was given (better than the first Burns Night I attended where they couldn't remember any of it). We also had proper neeps and tatties this time. Overall, possibly a fancier version of Burns Night than last week, but I'm not sure if that means I actually liked it any better. I really should have brought my camera though.

Well, I'm sure you're wondering what restaurant I found, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Today, Katie and I got lunch at Red-Box, which is a noodle bar close to campus. It was only £7.50 for me to get 4 AMAZING dumplings, a noodle-box, and Sprite. I will be going there for lunch from now on. It was absolutely delicious. It is also Chinese New Year, so I had dumplings that Wendy made for dinner. Good thing I love dumplings I guess.
Until next time!