Scottish Borders Trip!

I spent Saturday touring the Scottish-English borderlands. This is where a lot of the fighting went on while Scotland was still trying to remain an independent nation, and England was having none of it. It's a really beautiful part of the country. Most of it looks a bit like this:

Lot's of Sheep! Mom would love it. 

But then every so often before you know it you're in a quaint little town with these amazing ruined Abbeys and instead of sheep you're staring at this:

Melrose Abbey, burial place of Robert the Bruce's heart. Not him, just his heart. 

It also had some really really cool old gravestones:

But the coolest part of Melrose Abbey?

That's right, it's a Hog playing bagpipes.

 All those hypothesis about God being an Arkansas Razorback Fan? 

Apparently the monks thought so...

We also visited the longest continuously inhabited house in Scotland. Complete with secret passageways and a hedge maze!

We visited a few more sites as well. Including Dryburgh Abbey, where Sir Walter Scott is buried, Smailholm Tower where he stayed, and his favorite view of the borders. 

So here's a few more pics:

Sir Walter Scott's viewpoint

My favorite nook at Melrose Abbey

At the top of Melrose Abbey

 Part of Dryburgh Abbey

  

This is where I live... in Scotland

So I had a discussion with a friend the other day about how adding "in Scotland" to the end of something automatically makes it seem better. The topic was: I spent 5 hours doing laundry because the machines were all full and all the fresher boys had their mom's here to do their laundry... in Scotland. 

So here's home... in Scotland

Darroch Court

The door to my Block- #7

This is what my flat looks like- all white doors and red carpet

Kitchen!

My room. The wall was boring so I made myself a headboard out of magazines and sticky-tac. And some frames to go above it =)

Close up. I currently have a fascination with origami roses. 

But the best part about my room is the view:

In case you can't tell this is this cool hill thing you can climb that's on the back of Arthur's Seat.

This is kind of hard to see but it's the sea!

The view from the kitchen isn't bad either:

I haven't figured out what this park is yet, but I'm going to find it one of these days. 

So there it is, my home for the next 9 months... in Scotland =)

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

So yesterday I finally made it up to the top of Arthur's Seat... twice. It's a bit of a hike, and it's super windy and cold, but it's totally worth it once you make it to the top. It's so beautiful and you can see all of Edinburgh and further. I'd been wanting to go up all week, so Julian, Caroline and I decided to go for it. 

Part of the trail going up.

Later that night after an awesome flat party hosted by Julian, Luke, and Euan, and several hours of dancing at Espionage, a club in the city, someone had the brilliant idea to climb up and watch the sun rise. The boys loaned us sweaters and we all headed up. It was completely freezing, but also almost more beautiful at dawn than it was in the middle of the day. Thankfully classes don't start till next week, because by the time we made it back down and home it was already almost 8 am =)

Sunrise in Scotland! 

The perfect end to a perfect night. 

Settling in.

So I'm finally starting to settle in here in Scotland. I've met a super cool group of people ^^^ that I've been spending time with a lot this first week. We held an impromptu 21st birthday party for Katie (the girl with the cute red bow) the other night. When the drinking age is 18, turning 21 isn't quite as exciting, ON THE OTHER HAND, all your 18, 19, and 20 year old friends can go out and celebrate with you!

Most of the people I've met so far have been Americans and Fresher's (Freshmen). Most older students move back this weekend before classes start on Monday. My roommates are all very cool. I live with one other American my age and 3 Scottish girls who are all first years.

Alright, time for a few nostalgic pictures:

Baron "helping" me pack. 

Which entailed laying on top of any pile of clothes that looked like it might be getting more attention than he was. 

Saying bye to Sawyer before he headed off to school and I headed off to Scotland.

Me and my mom at the airport. 

And all this time I thought Oompa-Loompas were fictional....

And all this time I thought Oompa-Loompas were fictional... it turns out they're not only real but speak in thick Scottish accents and are significantly more crude than I expected.

So I needed a few things for my flat, and headed out shopping with some other girls who live in my complex. We saw a very orange man with a green wig walking down the street we were on. I made some comment about not having known about the Oompa-Loompa population in Scotland, only to turn the corner and see a large group of moderately intoxicated Oompa-Loompas outside a bar. We asked if we could take a picture and they said I should get in it, I didn't think much of it until one of them picked me up. In case you can't tell from the picture I was a little shocked. Not quite what I expected out of the afternoon to say the least.

Jet lagged, but here!

So I got here on September 8, which, for the record, is 8/9/10 here, NOT 9/8/10. They're very particular about the day being in front, which actually makes a lot more sense if you stop and think about it.

The past few days have been orientation. It's all been kind of a blur, I can honestly say I barely remember anything about the first day after being up for more hours than I could calculate due to intricacies in time zones and unexpected layovers.

I love airports for lots of reasons, interesting people going interesting places, random samplings of food and merchandise, lots of crazy emotions, but I really get a kick out of airport bathrooms! There's just something about all the technology that's been developed so that you don't have to touch ANYTHING that really cracks me up. From automatically rotating seat covers, to automatic faucets and soap dispensers, to hand driers that strip the water off almost as well as a paper towel. And I have to put it out there, NWA may not have the biggest or fanciest airport, but the restrooms are kind of sweet!

j

Okay, so enough about the loos and on to Scotland. It's really really beautiful here. I haven't had too much time to explore yet, at least more that the cheap cell phone stores and "PoundSaver" which is the equivalent of DollarTree. I walked the Royal Mile a few times, from castle to castle, and to the base of Arthur's Seat, which I intend to climb in the next few days. It's so cool to have this huge natural feature in the middle of the city. 

I moved into my flat yesterday. I haven't had a lot of time to unpack or decorate yet, so that may be how I spend the afternoon. It's... different from what I'm used to, but really very nice. I'll post pictures as soon as I take them. I was the first of my roommates to move in, so I had it all to myself last night. I think more people are moving in today. They don't even give us names here, so I have no idea who to expect! A girl in my program lives right down stairs, we actually ended up on the same flight from Paris to Edinburgh, and sitting next to each other on the plane, so we split a cab. She seems really sweet and we're actually about to go shopping for necessaries.  Posting a pic of Arthur's Seat below, picture this right in the middle of a city!

"In America they think 100 years is a long time, and in Scotland they think 100 miles is a long way."

So much to do, So little time.

I can't believe I only have 2 days left in the states. 2! Today flew by. I went to BestBuy to find a new camera, so I don't have to use my cell phone for the whole trip.

James, the salesperson, was very tolerant:

me: Can you help me find a camera?
James: Well, that is my job, what are you looking for?
me: Well... I need a small camera that... well... takes pictures.
James: Anything else?
me: Well, I tend to drop things, so it would be good if it was somewhat tough, and er... small.
James: How about these two, they have similar qualities including: *insert a few technical sounding things I didn't understand here*
me: Those sound good. Which one is better?
James: I'm partial to the Canon myself
me: What are the chances of it being waterproof?
James: Um... not very good.
me: Oh, well, how about the other one?
James: Also not very good.
me: That's okay, thought I'd ask.

James was very nice, considering my completely inadequate knowledge of anything to do with cameras. It turns out he studied at Cambridge a few years ago and had a really wonderful time. He was also a Classical Studies major at the U of A and especially enjoyed Latin and Greek.

 *Note to self: Classical Studies degree = Job @ BestBuy

So....I didn't purchase a camera. Although I fully intend to go back tomorrow and actually make up my mind.

*****

I also got to go to dinner with my brother tonight. I have to resist the urge to call him my little brother, because he's actually a good bit taller than me now. We were going to get Mexican, but the football game ended just in time to make traffic impossible, so we pulled in and grabbed Pho instead. Sawyer insisted on paying, to the point that he stole me credit card when I tried to anyways (have I mentioned that he's bigger than me now? It makes it significantly harder to do things like pay for dinner). So anyways. He's still the coolest ever, I got pretty lucky!

He gets all his good qualities from me =)

This is one of my favorite pics, Duchess totally photo-bombed it. 

(She doesn't know she's too big to be a lap dog)