Good riddance to bad essays.

They're over they're over they're over!!  I think I had a small heart attack this afternoon when I suddenly realized I had to also print off a hard copy and turn it in in person rather than only the online submission (which I had turned in with plenty of time to spare) and so I ran to the library because that's the closest place with printers but the computers wouldn't open my files so I tried to find Macs but the library has a total of ten of them and two of them were broken and the other eight were in use so I had to run back to my flat to get my computer to change the file format and email them to myself and run back to the library to print them off with fifteen minutes until the due date/time and run to the philosophy building and sign the "I swear this is my work and only my work" paper and stuff it into the slot at 4:00 exactly.  And I hadn't showered yet so I was incredibly gross looking and I don't even want to think about how frightening I must have looked storming back and forth across campus and then of course I ran into one of my professors in the philosophy building who totally did a double take at me racing through the building like a crazy person so now he definitely knows that I'm the one who barely got their essay in on time.  Awesome.

But.  Now I've said some choice parting words to those particular essays and showered and everything and I feel so much more sane.  And...are you ready for this?...we have a new flatmate!  Crazy turnaround time, that.  She popped her head in this morning when I was in the kitchen in my pajamas and said she was looking for a new room and asked me how I liked living here, and I was honest in that it's kind of awesome, so she was convinced and moved in this afternoon!  She's American, from California, and I like her a lot.  She's bubbly, to say the least.  She goes to Scripps, she's in an a cappella group (so she also likes music lots in general), she misses home too, she's really interested in getting to know/doing stuff with the rest of us and she seems pretty down with our weirdness as a flat.  What's not to like??  Even though it could have been kind of awesome with only three of us in the flat, I kind of feel super blessed with this random turn of events.  Germany and Canada are faux-nervous at the Americans taking over the flat, but whatever.  :) 

To be honest, I was originally a little bummed because they tell you to try to hang out with locals, and if you tried to divide the number of total friends I have by those who are actually Scottish the answer would be undefined.  (Because you can't divide by zero.  Ha ha.  Get it?  Okay, it was lame, whatever.)  And I find myself hanging out with a suspiciously large number of Americans.  But that's okay.  I've met some Scottish people and they're chill.  They just don't feel like hanging out with yet another American.  And I'd rather hang out with people who legitimately want to hang out with me than seeking out Scottish people like I'm on some kind of freakish mission.  Anyway.  That's how it is.

In other news, I finally have (free!) international minutes on my phone!  Not that this really matters to most of you, because Skype is way easier and free for you as well as me and doesn't require me giving you a primer to international phone calling.  But if you really feel like you might desperately need to get ahold of me at some random time I can give you the spiel.  And my number.  You know.

I think I really need some food and possibly a nap.  Lots of love.

Will the writing never cease?

First of all: Happy 50th blog post!

Midterms are upon us, and I sit here at my desk laboriously composing philosophy essays.  Suffice it to say I am unimaginably bad at writing philosophy essays.  I'm literally fantasizing about the essays I got to write for Cognitive Neuroscience last year because even though they were difficult, at least they made sense.  I am so, repeat, so happy I decided to take both my remaining Philosophy classes here.  The prospect of being done with all of this in six weeks' time makes me absolutely giddy.  Proposed schedule for next semester: Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Developmental Neuropsychology.  It looks tough but I am honestly excited.  (But maybe don't quote me on that come spring midterms.)

I believe that's everything of any consequence that I have to say right now.  I'm going to have to go to bed soon because as I get closer to exhausted the tone of my essay moves from intellectual to straight-up sassy and I'm not really sure my professors will go for that.  Wish me luck.

LOTS of luck.

Love,
Mel

Please read and respond!

Sorry for the inundation of posts recently.  This will be the last one for a couple of days, I promise.  I have a matter that requires your opinions as readers.  I have the opportunity to make some petty cash with this blog by using Google AdSense.  This means there would be small ads placed either at the bottom of each post or in the sidebar or both.  The ads would be related to both content of this page and your personal browsing history.  I would get some amount of money for every time the ads were viewed, as well as every time they were clicked.  NOTE: I would NOT ask you to click on the ads.  If they're really interesting and you want to, go for it.  But I would never ask you to waste your time with them for my sake.  If they get bad or obnoxious in any way, I promise to take them off.  If they would bother you as readers to be there, I won't do it to begin with.  I know how annoyed ads make me sometimes.  I don't know how much money I'd make, but from what I hear, it can definitely be worth it.  If it isn't, I'll stop.  I'd really, really like to know if this would bother you.


So, thoughts?  (You may certainly post comments anonymously if you'd like.)

Thank you so much!

Postscript

I just found out that our youngest flatmate, the Scottish freshman, moved out today!  Apparently she's gone home to wait out a year on university.  (I saw her this morning and she said nothing.  Nothing!)  So please say a little prayer for her.  I feel terrible that I didn't make her feel more welcome; not that it would have necessarily changed anything, but still.  :(

Pumpkin extravaganza, etc.

This weekend was wonderful.  After last weekend with the Botanic Garden, our flat is officially collectively getting our rears in gear and doing 'cultural things' in Edinburgh.  This weekend's goal was the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official royal residence in Scotland.  Zomg excitement.

We meant to go Saturday, but various things occurred and it didn't work out, so we decided to go Sunday instead.  Having gotten all mentally prepared (and dressed and made-up and everything) for doing something, though, we couldn't just sit around.  Sooo we went shopping.  And that was how on Saturday afternoon I went to Topshop for the first time.  Topshop, if you don't know because you choose to fill your memory with more meaningful things than the names of women's clothing stores (*cough*weirdo*), is a highly fashionable but still relatively cheap women's store pretty much confined to the UK and New York City.  So I was kind of excited.  Just being in there made me feel really voguish.  I think I spent less than £10 in the end.  It was the experience that counted.

Our plans for Saturday night were foiled too, actually.  We tried to go to a ceilidh (basically a Scottish dance party, pronounced 'kaylee'), but when they finally opened the doors there were only ten tickets left for sale - and we were numbers ten, eleven and twelve in line.  Darn irony.  So we went to a really cute pub instead and listened to some live music and talked.  That was fun anyway.

Sunday: the palace!!  It cost a rather exorbitant amount to get in, and then (of course) you couldn't take pictures inside.  But it was really beautiful anyway.  The Queen was in Edinburgh just last month, when the Pope visited, and they had a couple of pictures of the two together standing in the very rooms we were walking through.  The decor was sumptuous but, somewhat surprisingly, tastefully sparse, relative to the small number of other castles I've seen.  Maybe they put more stuff in the rooms when the Queen is actually there.  It still made you think about how crazy it would be to be royal.  The silverware there has three thousand pieces.  What.

So after wandering around there for a while, taking some sweet pictures in the little guard booths outside, and obtaining the next clue in my ongoing scavenger hunt (yay!), we left.  I had dinner and went to church.  Church was unfortunately bad this time.  I was sort of shocked.  It was just a student thing - worship, prayer, a lesson, some free tea and biscuits; how wrong can it go?  Everything was good until the actual lesson.  We did an anonymous survey of our prayer/devotional lives, which was fun...and then the speaker proceeded to scorn our collective responses and generally tell us what worthless Christians we all were.  Um.  Excuse me?  He was speaking truth about the need for prayer and Bible study in any Christian's life, but the way he presented it was, in my opinion, frankly unacceptable.  He was borderline offensive and very patronizing.  The worst part was he's the head pastor of that church.  (And that he was American.  Way to rep it, dude.)  I was going to keep going there, but now I'm honestly thinking not.

Anyway.  Enough whining.  Finally we have come to our PUMPKIN EXTRAVAGANZA!!  When I got home from church, Germany and I decided to carve our pumpkin.  She wanted a vampire and I wanted something happy...and please forgive me if I think we came up with the cutest pumpkin ever.

He's better in real life.

So then we baked the pumpkin seeds and they were delicious and we put the innards in the fridge and then this morning I stuck them in the blender and made pumpkin puree and then made PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES.  So. Good. Oh. My. Gosh.  Not quite like Starbucks or even like Wash U, but it definitely has the right flavour.  Even if it also has some funky pumpkin stringies at the bottom.  I was ecstatic.  Germany was tolerant.  Whatever.  The best part is there's some left over for tomorrow.

And then I spent the rest of the day in the library writing my essays/getting headaches from trying to figure out the philosophy of Conceptual Role Semantics and compositionality and the analytic/synthetic distinction and my stance on all of the above.  And that is where I remain until it's time for small group in an hour.  Goody.

Love,
Melody

It's a bird, it's a plane...it's the weeks?

My time here is going soooo fast.  I have less than two months left until I fly home and I cannot believe it.  Next week is midterm, meaning I actually have stuff to do for once - a 1500-word essay for both my philosophy classes.  Ew philosophy essays.  Oh well...I've recently (as in twenty minutes ago) discovered the Education Library...delightfully quiet and light.  New study place fo sho.  I am currently theoretically drafting those essays.  More accurately, though, I'm drafting this blog post.  Priorities, people.

One of my flatmates and I went shopping yesterday!  It was so much fun - we took a bus to the part of town where all the rich people live, wearing their designer clothes and then donating them to the charity shops after like one season.  So, the part of town with the best charity shops ever.  I got two new 'jumpers' (sweaters) because I'm always cold, plus a skirt.  I'm still in need of a real winter coat, not having brought mine due to weight restrictions, but just haven't quite found anything yet.  Have found a lot of crazy vintage fur-trimmed tweed creations, but if you can picture me wearing one of those without laughing, well, kudos to you.

My twentieth birthday is a week from Tuesday...???  I kind of can't believe it.  In a philosophical sense, it's the end of an era, no longer being a teenager; in a realistic sense, I just can't believe I'm that old.  I have no plans yet.  I do happen to know that my flatmates have terrible schemes that I'm going to have to thwart somehow.  Heh heh.  As far as I'm concerned, though, the real celebration will be at the Boyce Avenue concert a couple of weeks later that I got a ticket for.  I am SO excited!!  So excited.  It's going to be AWESOME.

I have found a sufficient solution to the pumpkin problem.  While Halloween isn't nearly as big a thing here as it is in the States, they make a smallish deal of it, in my opinion mostly for the sake of the great hordes of Americans here.  Anyway.  For the past few weeks at our very favourite grocery store (Lidl, which is a German chain and sells things for ridiculously low prices) they've had a big box of 'cooking pumpkins' for sale for £1 each.  So, with the blessing of my German flatmate upon the idea of carving a pumpkin for the flat, I bought one.  We named him Alastair and he does not have a face yet.  But he will, and then when we carve him I'm going to take the little pieces of pumpkin from the eyes/mouth/etc. and bake them and make enough mashed pumpkin to make pumpkin spice lattes and then be done with it.  There's another American in my small group who's so committed to the idea of having pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving that she's going to bake an entire pumpkin herself and proceed from there.  I don't think I'm that committed.  Sorry.

Alright, enough procrastinating.  These essays are laughing at me.

Love,
Melody

Short update

Text a Toastie was pretty much awesome.  I recommend it to all small groups.  Always.  Seriously.

Also: this may or may not interest anyone at all, but I've decided this week, foodwise, is Greek Week.  My mass shopping trip this week included a lot of feta cheese, pita, tomatoes, cucumbers, yogurt, et cetera, and I'm cooking all Greek, all week.  (Said shopping trip also included my first meat purchase for myself, 500g of ground beef for moussaka.  Not going to lie, I'm a little bit scared of it.)  So far I've had a veggie gyro which was nice, and, with slightly more (read: LOTS more) effort, spanakopita.  Which was um sort of wonderful.  So.  Check back later for further success and/or failure on that.  Probably both.

Flowers, foliage and flatmates

Our flat (minus our lovely yet consistently MIA Scottish constituent)(seriously, I'm starting to wonder if she even lives with us anymore) went to the Royal Botanic Garden yesterday.  It was so much fun.  Flower season is ending, but the trees all over the gardens were changing colors, and since it hasn't rained in days (surprising, to say the least) there were crunchy leaves everywhere.  Our blooming three-way friendship means we're all becoming less concerned with keeping up appearances amongst ourselves, so we shamelessly crunched and shuffled through the leaves like little kids.  It was also 'Apple Day' at the garden, so there was a little exhibition of the ridiculously large variety of apples grown in Scotland, along with samples of some of them.  We tried all of the samples, and unanimously agreed on two points: that we hadn't thought about apples so much since elementary school/possibly ever, and that our favorite was...okay, I actually forgot the name of it.  It was some kind of Pippin, and it was crisp and mostly sweet but also a little bit tart and really delicious.  I'd never seen it in stores anyway, so it's not like I'll probably ever have the chance to buy it.  But it was good.  And the whole thing was just fun.

I really am incredibly pleased with the way our flat has worked out.  We all have our separate activities that we take part in and have friends through and run off to every once in awhile (me Christian Union, Germany archery, and Canada rugby), but then we come home and sit in the kitchen, where someone is always cooking something or other, and listen to music and chill.  Come an evening when all you want to do is make hot chocolate and watch a film, someone probably wants to do the same thing; come a night when you want to go out, generally the entire group is rallied to go with.  We're all really different, but we've meshed really well.  God's really blessed me with that.  And now we're all especially united under the common goal of going out and doing stuff in Edinburgh.  Next up is the Palace of Holyroodhouse, one of the Queen's many houses as well as the home of a lovely art gallery as well as the location of the next clue in my ongoing Edinburgh scavenger hunt.  (Did I tell you about that?  A friend from WashU set it up for me when she was in Edinburgh a week before I arrived.  I'm having ridiculous fun with it.)  The only way it could possibly get better is if we actually saw the Queen.  But somehow I don't see that happening.  I guess I'll live.

Tonight our small group is doing an outreach thing...it's called 'Text a Toastie'.  It's okay, I was confused at first too.  So the idea is that during a pre-set and pre-advertised time, we set ourselves up in a central location (i.e. my flat) with a toastie maker (aka panini grill).  People then text a given number with three things: a question they would theoretically like to ask God, their choice of toastie flavor (cheese, ham and cheese, or Nutella), and their location.  We then make their toastie and deliver it to their door within fifteen minutes.  As far as I can tell, the question is superfluous other than possibly sparking conversation at the door.  The point is to let people know about Christian Union and just generally do something nice for people.  I'm kind of excited.  I love my small group and I see this producing a lot of laughing and bonding.  Plus it's kind of a randomly neat idea.  Sweet.

All right, I'm off to the library to sit at eye level with the tops of the gorgeous trees and do some lab work/Philosophy reading.  Wish me luck.

Love,
Melody

British s'mores

We made s'mores tonight!!  My flatmates made so much fun of how excited I was.  Whatever, they're awesome.  They weren't quite as good as American s'mores, but they served their gooey chocolatey purpose.  They don't have graham crackers here (!!!), so we had to use digestives, which are these weird half-sweet, half-oaty biscuit/cookie things that the British are crazy about.  (I admit with some disgruntlement that they actually worked way better than I thought.)  The marshmallows were smaller and denser than normal ones (plus half of them were pink?), and the chocolate bar was thick and didn't break into the right size pieces.  And obviously we don't have an open flame, so we tried to roast them on forks in our grill (broiler, basically).  Predictably, that didn't work, so we put them on the digestives on the grill tray and let them get smooshy (due to the difference in consistency, they melted rather than toasted), and then put the chocolate on top to melt for a minute, and then burned our fingers pulling them out and squishing the other digestive on top.  It was all weird, but despite all of it they were totally close enough and SO delicious.  Germany, who we were attempting to expose to this uniquely North American treat, was only mildly impressed.  Oh, well, it was sort of fabulous.

This week has been massively uneventful.  This weekend is the first in almost a month where I'm not off somewhere, so I didn't spend the week up to my ears in train tickets and hostel bookings.  I got to practice harpsichord two days, which was blissful.  I kind of almost have a Bach prelude and fugue down.  Other than that, I decided I should spend my time doing some relatively productive things...I've actually started reading for my classes, finally, and I've been doing some work for my lab at home as well.  I've also started listening to NPR occasionally.  Heh heh.  It's pathetic how little I know about any news at any time, so even though it makes me feel like a dork, it's awesome to know what's going on.

I took a bunch of pictures of campus this week, but Facebook isn't letting me upload them.  I'll keep working on it.  It's kind of gorgeous here.  Just saying.

I've started getting emails about next semester!  It's so intimidating.  I register for classes in exactly a month - WHAT??  (I've totally started playing around with the registration worksheet.  That thing is just too entertaining.)  That means I have a little over two months left.  It's so weird...it still feels a little like I just got here, but I'm almost halfway through.  Yikes.  Still so much to do!

Tomorrow I'm trying my third church.  Even if this one doesn't rock my world or anything, I think I'm going to stick with it simply because I don't have that much time left and I actually know people who go to this one.  Unless it's awful.  In which case I'll go back to one I already visited.

Also tomorrow: the Royal Botanic Gardens!  Our flat is collectively on a mission to actually see the city.  I'm excited.  Flowers and fall foliage - what's not to love??

I feel like I should have cooler things to say.  Sorry.  I'll try to do more epic things in the coming days.

All my love!

More British vocab words:
pissed = drunk (NOT angry.  You can imagine the confusion this creates.)
chuffed = happy
hoover = vacuum
aubergine = eggplant
sultana = raisin

Beatlemania!

Guess what??  I now know the names of all four Beatles.  It's crazy, I know.  First and last.  Sheer madness.

But that wasn't even the best part of the weekend.  Oh, no.  Despite my misgivings about Liverpool, it was actually a pretty fun place to spend the day.  We (me and another girl and one guy, all WU students) got in late-ish Friday night after a semi-ridiculous train ride during which we had to fight for seats and occasionally had to stand in the aisles because apparently they frequently over-book that train and unless you actually reserve a seat you're out of luck.  Woo standing for two hours.  Not actually for all of that time, but for a considerable amount of it.  Ew.  Anyway.

So the first thing we did Saturday was a tour of the city in a 'Yellow Duckmarine', aka a WWII-era amphibious vehicle painted bright yellow.  They took us around the city on land and showed us everything there is to see about Liverpool, and then, to the delight of onlookers, drove straight into the water.  Best part.  So that tour gave us a good idea of what there was to see, so we could go and actually see it after.

[Favourite random sight on the tour: the office of the White Star Line, makers of the Titanic.  The tour guide pointed out the twin upper-story balconies from which, following the disaster, the owners of the line dropped the names of the survivors on slips of paper into the crowd below.  Wow.  What a picture.]

We spent way more time than I would have thought possible discovering 'the Beatles story' in an interactive exhibit complete with personal headphoned audio tours describing every. little. detail. of the Beatles' path to international stardom and subsequent fall.  It was really interesting.  Therefore I can now tell you, actually, way more about the Beatles than their names.  Go me.

Then was the Liverpool Philharmonic's 'John Lennon Songbook' performance, a journey through John Lennon's life via various songs.  It was...incredible.  I thought orchestra renditions of Beatles/Lennon songs would be ridiculous, but they were really wonderful.  The singers were good, the guy actually portraying Lennon and singing/narrating was awesome, the orchestra itself was phenomenal, and 'Imagine' at the very end brought me to tears.  It was just great.  Completely and wholly worth the £15 we paid for tickets in the very back row.

Add to that our extensive wandering, through the streets of Liverpool and into galleries and a cathedral and in search of food and souvenirs and live music and we had a really truly wonderful weekend.  Personalities grated but didn't completely clash, and all in all we survived.  First taste of England: success.

You busy this weekend?

My previous plan for the weekend was to do nothing and just hang around Edinburgh recovering from last weekend.  (Obviously this is very different from what I do most normal days...)  But then I had a class today with one of the WashU guys (actually, now I have one WU guy in both of my philosophy classes - different guy in each class), and in the middle of a terrible, terrible lecture (more on that in a minute) he asked if I was doing anything this weekend.  I said no.  He asked if I wanted to join a group trip to England somewhere.  I said sure. 

The initial plan was the Lake District (although after I told him my mud story, he expressed concern at me falling off a cliff.  Ha ha.  Unfortunately, he's probably right...).  I got super super excited about it...but then he found out that Liverpool is holding John Lennon's 70th birthday celebration.  1) It's terribly depressing to think that Saturday would be John Lennon's 70th birthday.  2) It's going to be MADNESS.  But really, it's still England, it's still going to be awesome, Liverpool is a place I should really visit, and when it boils down to it it's probably more about the people than the place, anyway.  Sooo Liverpool it is, with two of my WashU cohorts.  I'm kind of excited.  :)

This means my time to locate a new camera/fix my old one (not likely) is now reduced to tomorrow.  Sigh.

Okay, so back to the lecture thing.  I could have just completely forgotten, but I don't think I've really talked about my classes/lecturers (teachers at the university level here aren't all professors, so we're not allowed to automatically call them that.  So when I say 'lecturer' it means approximately the equivalent of professor but just not quite.).  My Philosophy of Time class is really and truly awesome.  If I've told you my lecturers are awesome, it's this guy I'm thinking of.  He's absolutely the most real-person-like philosophy person I've ever met.  In class he actually cares that we all know what's going on, he explains things in terms that make sense, and he doesn't ramble about things that don't matter.  It's wonderful.  I'm learning a lot and I'm loving it.  Example: part of Tuesday's lecture was on predestination - yes, in the Christian sense.  I'm pretty sure neither he nor half the class was Christian, but it really helped me solidify my views on the subject.  Anyway, that's off topic. 

My other philosophy class, unfortunately, is borderline horrid, a fact that has slowly been dawning on me and only just solidified today.  It's taught jointly by two very different guys.  Let e describe my first impressions of these men.  The first was a rather angry Greek man.  I spent the entire class trying to figure out who he reminded me of.  I finally figured it out: a long-haired cross between my brother and Jeff Goldblum.  Win.  Anyway, despite his intensity I think we'll get along.  He hasn't lectured yet.  The other guy is short, out of shape, has the most difficult British accent ever (The letter 't' does not exist unless it's actually the first letter of a word, and 'th' = 'f'.  So, for example, the number that I would pronounce 'thirteen' becomes 'fir-heen'.), doesn't really know how to operate PowerPoint and/or the computer in general, and I'm pretty certain has never actually seen his own slides before.  So he's constantly flicking randomly through them, stopping for a maddening two seconds to peer at the screen before switching to a different one, and then spending a maximum of ten seconds on any slide, not even beginning to sufficiently explain whatever he's talking about.  Half the lines in my notebook end in '???', and toward the end of today's lecture I pretty much just gave up and started drawing cube formations in the margins.  Whatever.

And Scottish Studies is just fine.  It's very much like the intro International Studies class I took freshman year, except instead of random Asian countries as examples, it's all Scotland.  I'm pretty sure he even cited a book I read for that class.  So that's kind of cool.  It's not the approach I was expecting, but I really like it.

That's all, friends!  Hopefully I will have photo evidence of this weekend.  If not, I'll steal some from the other two.  Woot.

How to eat fish and chips

I've had fish and chips three times since I've been in the UK.  But this weekend, on my third try, I think I finally got it right, as reinforced by observing the natives.  Here, in five simple steps, is the correct way to eat fish and chips.

1) The shop.  Ideally, you should be in a town near the ocean, or at least near water, so the fish is relatively fresh.  Note that this is really not difficult in Scotland.  But wherever you are, it seems that any good, real fish-and-chips shop is going to be mildly sketchy-looking.  It's basically a metal fast-food counter in a very small, very sparse shop.  Although fish and chips are delicious and perhaps healthier when eaten from a legitimate sit-down restaurant, this is not the legit way to do it.  Which leads us to Step 2...

2) The mindset.  What you are about to consume is really, really not good for you.  You'll be okay.  Don't think about it.  Just do it.  Not every day or anything, and probably not if you're diabetic or pregnant or at serious risk for heart attack or something.  But otherwise, yeah.  Just go for it.

3) The order.  Look for the thing that seems freshest.  If there's anything that says 'catch of the day', go for that.  Stay away from fish sticks.  Ick.  Make sure you get chips as well.  (Note: 'chips' are french fries.  You probably knew that.  But just to clarify.)  And then when they ask you if you want salt and vinegar on top, say YES.  Unless you're one of those people who don't like vinegar or salt or something.  In which case I guess you could possibly say no.  But you're missing out.  Oh, and grab a bunch of napkins and possibly a fork.

4) The location.  So now you have in your eager hands the package of deliciousness.  It might be in a nice cardboard or Styrofoam box, or it might be wrapped up in newsprint.  It doesn't matter.  It's warm and it smells good and you've got it.  Don't, I repeat don't, eat it in the shop unless it's pouring down rain (which is, admittedly, highly possible) and you absolutely can't stand to be outside.  If you followed Step 1, there should be some kind of dock or pier area relatively nearby.  Otherwise a park will suffice.  Walk there quickly because your meal is getting less crispy by the second, find a bench, sit down, look out at the cool boats coming in, politely kick the seagulls away, and appreciate it.  Briefly.

5) The eating.  The time has come.  Open up the packet of goodness, put ketchup on your chips if you were lucky enough to locate some (good luck), and proceed to devour that delectable deep-fried pile of British culture.  Yummm.  Oh, and when you're done and you've thrown your trash in the garbage can and not at the pesky seagulls, take a walk.  Good for digestion and for starting to burn off the zillion calories you've just consumed (that you're still not thinking about) and for exploring some more of the incredible country you're in.

:)

Oooohhh, you take the high road, and I'll get dropped on the side of the road...

This weekend was, without a doubt, exciting.  Not always exciting in a good way, but exciting, nevertheless.

First of all, I'll be completely honest.  I'm pretty much done with the whole travelling by myself thing.  It's just more fun with other people.  It was cool in the beginning, and I do like not having to worry about anyone but myself and just being able to do whatever I want, but it's really just too lonely.  So.  This was my last solo stint.

The trip started well: I did not miss my first bus.  Even though it was at 6:35 in the morning and I got mildly lost on my way to the bus station.  (Even though I've been there before.  Don't judge me.)  Unfortunately, I got on the bus and realized my iPod was dead.  This is BAD.  It was especially frustrating because my earbuds broke last week (!!!!) so I had to borrow some of my flatmate's, so I was really counting on the iPod working, at least.  Nope.  Okay, that's fine...I'll just...pray a lot...or something.

Okay.  Made it to Glasgow on the bus.  This was where the real trouble began.  I got on the bus, showed the driver where I needed to get off, and he was like, 'Okay, well, this is my first day on the job, so I don't really know where that is, so you'll have to yell when you want to get off.'  Um.  Yeah, okay.  Obviously I have no idea where it is either.  I probably should have said that, but it didn't seem like it would do much good, so I just let out a meek 'Okay' and walked back and found a spot as the group in the front of the bus had a good chuckle over the look on my face.  I'll make a long story slightly shorter and give you the obvious outcome of this situation: I missed the stop.  I ended up walking back the way we'd come, with another young woman who had also missed her stop, after the two of us were dumped unceremoniously by the side of the highway in the pouring rain by this bus driver who tried to make like it was our fault we didn't know where he was supposed to stop.  [Surely, Mr Bus Driver, they give you a map of the stops or something.  Somehow all the other drivers know where to stop.  Whatever.]  At least there was a nice walking path, with several meters and a fence separating us from the cars zipping by at 60+ miles per hour.  And it was right along the 'bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond', which were, actually, pretty gorgeous, even in the rain.  Ten or so minutes later, when both our Keds were soaked, we reached the other girl's destination, so I asked for directions to mine.  The lady at the desk of the Loch Lomond Lodge gave me a pity-filled look when I told her where I was headed - 'It's just over five minutes...by car,' she said.  Lovely.  So I started walking.  It took a little too long for me to realize that if the speed limit was 60 mph that meant my destination was at least five miles away.  Great.  But oh, saved - a bus stop!  Right there!  With a bus that goes to Balloch [desired destination]!  In five minutes!!  I am never this lucky!  That's right...I'm never that lucky.  Fifteen minutes later, I saw the small print that said the bus only ran that route until 27 September - it was 1 October.  Of course.  So I went back into the little village I'd just passed through, found the number for the singular taxi in said village, and got a ride to my hostel that cost me more than my round trip bus ticket.  Grrr.

And then.  I'm standing outside of this hostel that looks like a castle, wearing Keds and definitely not walking clothes (tights and a skirt - I thought I was just going to be on the bus), all soaked because it is still raining, ready to drop half of this crazy-heavy backpack of stuff...and there's a sign on the door saying the hostel is closed between the hours of 10 and 3.  It's 10:50.  OH.  Okay.  So after laughing at myself and standing there debating for a few minutes, I went into the woods, hid behind a tree, and changed clothes standing on my raincoat.  In the rain.  And then, slightly more appropriately dressed, I set off.  It was actually a fairly good day after that.  Lots of walking with a heavy backpack through incredible scenery and incredible amounts of rain.  I crashed into bed that night.

Saturday I explored Inveraray Castle, which was beautiful and historical and represented £30 million of amassed fortune by the Campbell clan.  Wow. and hiked up the hill behind it, which gave an incredible view.   I can't even describe it.  I learned a few things about Clan Campbell as well.  (Mom - ask me about it later.)  I saw the entire rest of Inveraray that evening - it literally took me ten minutes to walk slowly from one end of town to the other.  By Sunday I was tired of wandering around small towns and of walking in the rain, so I decided I wanted to do something inside for the day, which required going to a slightly larger town that had inside things to do.  Town of choice: Oban.  It turned out to not be very big and to not have many things to do inside, but by noon the sun was out and shining fiercely.  Oban is this adorable little port town, so I climbed a couple of area hills to get a good view - and it was a really good view.  Unfortunately, the second hill I climbed, though it was lovely with its Colosseum-like monument on top, was the site of my major disaster of the weekend.  Inside the Colosseum thing was a little grassy hill, which was beautiful...but it had been raining, and grass is exceedingly clever in covering up MUD.  I tried to walk down the hill...my foot slid out from under me and I found myself sliding on my butt alllll the way down.  It would have been almost - almost - fun, had I not ended up, predictably, covered in mud.  All over my shoe, up my leg, ALL over my backside, halfway up my arm...oh yeah, and completely covering my poor darling camera, which I happened to be holding in that hand.

That was the true tragedy of the weekend.  I let the mud dry, praying praying praying that it would be okay, and then this morning I gently brushed and picked and blew the dirt off all surfaces and out of cracks, and it worked!!...for half an hour.  Now it's giving me the same error message it did the last time I did this to it (at Big Break two years ago - I got sand stuck in the lens).  The end of that story was me replacing the lens for an inordinately high price.  I don't know what to do.  This is so NOT the time for me to be needing to replace my camera...but I can't spend the rest of the semester in Europe without a camera.  Plan number one is to find one of those pressurized-air things, like you use to clean keyboards, and try to blast the dust out of the lens area.  If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do next.  It pains me how AWFUL I am at holding on to ALL electronics.  Why why why??

I'm back home now, with my beloved flatmates, hanging out in our kitchen as usual, and it's surprisingly sweet.  What a weekend.  I'm happy!  Don't get me wrong!  It was stunningly beautiful, and I can't wait to salvage the pictures and show you.  But oh, what a weekend.