Pictures of my room, finally. And discussion of food.

I have the beginnings of a cold, or maybe it's just allergies, or maybe it's the plague (as my friend Becca calls it). Anyway, I'm trying to not let it ruin the fun. My weekend was rather uneventful, other than finishing up my essays and turning them all in on Monday. Now all I can do is wait. I'm really scared to get them back. On Saturday night, me and some girls I go out with quite a bit went to an organic, gluten free, sort of health food resturant. It was a tad expensive, but very, very good. I had a frittata, it was delicious. They also had blended juices, I had one with blueberry, passion fruit and apple. I think me and Becca may go back sometime to get juice and a dessert, we didn't try the desserts when we were there on Saturday.

Last night my Aunt Mary and Uncle Rich took me and my friend Julia out to dinner. They were in town because Rich was on a business trip in London, but before that started, they drove up here to see first the Lake District in England, and then come to Edinburgh and see me. We were going to go to a Scottish restaurant that we had picked out on the Royal Mile, but when we got there it was closed. I'm not sure why, because I checked the hours before we left. Anyway, we picked out another place which I had actually heard of before, called Angels and Bagpipes. It was amazing. I had some sort of fish in a cheesey hollandaise sauce or something, and it came with crab ravoli. And the dessert! I had toffee sorbet and chocolate cake that was warm and delicious. It was so great to see them, to see a familiar face in Edinburgh. We had a great time, telling them about our time here in Edinburgh so far and suggesting places for them to go when they explored Edinburgh the next day. A lot of the places I suggested I haven't actually been to yet, like the Castle and Holyrood Palace. I'm going to go see them when my family comes to visit in mid March.

On Sunday, me, Becca and our friend Logan went shopping on Princes Street. My belt had recently broken, and I'm also looking for a new pair of trousers (you can't say pants here because that means underwear...so it gets you into awkward situations sometimes) because one have ripped and another one has a stain from the broken washing machine...grrr. Well I didn't end up getting trousers, but I did get a belt. The problem with shopping here is that mostly everything is quite expensive, and I am so cheap. When I go out shopping again on Thursday, I'm going to try the charity shops and hope I have luck there. Otherwise I'm just going to have to suck it up, because I have have two pairs of jeans (you can also say jeans) left.

Something I thought was sort of weird: Mexican night in the dining hall. I don't know why it was Mexican night, but they had decorations (posters that had sombreros and  the word Fiesta! on them) and everything. On Chinese New Year, they had Chinese food, so that made sense. And Scottish food on Burns Night. But I'm pretty sure this was random. They had Mexican rice, nachos, and burritos. It was all actually pretty good. Especially the Mexican rice. And it was very popular. I have never seen the dining hall so crowded, there were lines for everything.

I'm going to add some pictures of my room here, because I realized I haven't done that yet.

My room =]

I have my very own sink

Posters! Thanks to my parents, who sent them to me.

My desk and shelves.

Pretty building outside my window.

And the path outside my window.

Cheese, but not the kind you think

Let's see, this weekend wasn't all that exciting. Our friend Graeme showed us around the Cowgate area of Edinburgh on Friday night, showing us some of the cool pubs. It was fun. Many of our friends went to Sweden that weekend, so it was just me and Becca with Graeme. Saturday I started work on my first essay. As of right now, I have two and a half of the three done. But even the ones I have done I'm quite nervous about. Luckily I have an amazing English major boyfriend who is nice enough to help me on them =]  Saturday night we went to The Big Cheese, which is something they have every Saturday night (I believe) at one of the Student Centres, where they play lots of "cheese" music, which is just 70s, 80s and 90s. Some Spice Girls, some disco, Britney Spears and the like. It was really fun, actually. I went with a bunch of IFSA kids and my friend from high school, Julia.

Monday was Valentine's Day, so me and AJ had dinner together via Skype. It was really nice. I wanted to have a burrito from this place I found last week (their burritos have salsa but are not spicy, and I love it), but it was closed when I got there. A lot of places here close around 5. It's sort of annoying. But the cafe where Julia works was open, so that was good. After our date, I went and hung out with some friends and ate chocolate. Yum. It's been a chocolatey week. Last night was Chocolate Society, of course. It was just me and Julia that went, and this week's meeting involved building a structure out of chocolate! I wish I had brought my camera, we made a bridge. With little gummy bears for the people. It was really cute. And yummy. But it was so much candy, we didn't finish it all. We also didn't win the competition =[  

So last night I got really excited because I found out that The Decemberists concert on March 5th in Glasgow (only 50 min away by train) wasn't sold out. I was all set to go, and actually bought a ticket, but then I realized that's the same weekend as the IFSA Argyle Forest trip. That's the trip where we get to go caving and canoeing and go on a night hike. And we've already paid for it in our study abroad fee. So I luckily was able to get a refund for the ticket, even though I had to walk up to Princes Street, find out that I could just call a number, and then walk back home. In the rain. But at least Becca was nice enough to come with me. And we stopped at this amazing place on the way home, called Piemaker. They have mostly meat pies. I had a Lasagna one. It was only 95p (about $1.70). And it was delicious. I can't wait to go again.

Argh, essays

Summary of my week:

Tuesday was ChocSoc, so me, Becca, Logan and Hanne headed out to eat some international chocolate. They had like four different plates filled with different types of chocolate from around the world and we were supposed to guess where each chocolate was from. I didn't eat the dark kinds, I don't really like dark chocolate. But I would say the best ones were the German ones. One was called Kinder, I think that was my favorite. It was really smooth and had cream in the middle. The other kind I really liked had a raspberry (or some kind of berry) taste to it, and I think that one was German too. I totally overdosed on chocolate that night, but it's hard not to at ChocSoc since I don't get it very often. I try not to buy candy for my room, cuz I know I'll just eat it like crazy. But I did buy some to give out for Valentine's Day, I bought assorted Cadbury roses, which are just little wrapped chocolates of all different flavours. There are ten different kinds in the box, ranging from dark to milk, caramel to hazelnut, etc. For dessert in the dining hall, we very rarely have chocolate. It's usually some sort of crumble with fruit or sponge cake. Last night was rice pudding. One time they had chocolate pears, but the chocolate was terrible, like they put too much cocoa in it or something. Okay I just wrote a whole paragraph on chocolate. I'll stop now.

Last night was our IFSA-Butler (my study aboard program) reunion meal. The meal itself was quite delicious, but walking there literally took 45 minutes. The place they had it at was really close to their offices, the Butler people, but very far for all the students, especially those who live in Pollock (the dorms). In fact, the dorms are pretty much far away from everything. It's strange. Anyway, we walked there in the light rain and by the time we got there we were starving. I had the bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes) just because the other options both had something I wasn't too crazy about. Like mushrooms. Or creme fraiche (gross). For dessert, I had chocolate fudge cake and ice cream, which was amazing. From the above paragraph, I'm sure you know how much I love chocolate. After the dinner, we went out to a few pubs with some people we got to talking with at dinner. This was the first time I'd ever been on Rose Street, which is supposed to be a pub haven. It pretty much was, and it was one of those streets where the street was just a wide sidewalk, no cars could go on it. It was really cute, actually. The second pub we went to that night is supposed to be where writers hang out, it was really cool. And classy. It had ornate decorations and looked to be quite old.

So next week is Reading Week. This means I don't have class all week. I know what you're thinking: ohh how wonderful, you'll get to relax! Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I have three 1500 word essays to write in that week. I'm going to start tomorrow, I hope. They give us this Reading Week in order to catch up on reading, but that's sort of silly because our midterm essays are due on the Monday after reading week. So most people in 3rd year humanities classes will be writing their essays, I presume. Many 1st and 2nd year classes don't have midterm essays, they have more homework assignments throughout the term. And my friend Becca, who is a Physics major, has class all week next week, since there aren't too many readings or essays to write when you're taking Physics.

I got my UK railcard in the mail the other day, it was 26 pounds (about $41) for the whole time I'm here, and with it, I get 1/3 off on all train tickets. AJ is going to get one when he comes to visit, we plan on going to London for sure, hopefully for the Royal Wedding in April. We'll see. If not, he's coming during the first part of my Spring Break, and we plan to travel. Apparently the card pays for itself in one round trip from Edinburgh to London. Seeing as I also plan to travel to Liverpool and maybe Wales, it was a good investment.

Penguins and Chocolate

I'll start with my weekend, which really wasn't very exciting but I did go to Dundee. Dundee is about an hour and a half north of Edinburgh. I went with my friend Julia, just for something to do this weekend and I figured, why not? It was a trip through the ISC (International Student Centre). So on the way to Dundee, we were told that it was a very good place to eat cake. So we wanted to find some cake. But first we needed some food. We went to a pub and I ate my first Scottish burger! It was delicious. I missed burgers. Then we went to an art gallery that was pretty cool, it was free. I found some paintings I really liked. After that we went shopping, Dundee had alot of shopping. Alot. But finally we ended the day on finally finding a bakery and got some sweets. I didn't get cake, but I did get an eclair that was yummy. We're thinking that Dundee being known for its cakes is a thing of the past. The best thing about the trip was finding penguins all over the city! There were lots of statues of penguins, and we took lots of pictures with them. Since I love penguins. Another penguin related fact: the Edinburgh zoo had a penguin parade every day at 2:15pm. I plan on attending this with AJ when he comes to visit. And taking lots of pictures (and a video). Apparently they just open the gates and the penguins reign free. What could be better than that? Probably nothing.

The weather here lately has been a bit more like I imagined it would be before I got here. It's been raining every day for a week (except for today) and yesterday it sleeted/snowed. But last week we had a really intense rain/wind storm that soaked my friend Becca as she was walking home from class. She came into our dorm and knocked on my door when she got back, and she was soaked to the bone. She had to wring her jeans out in the sink, ha.

Tonight is Chocolate Society, I haven't been in a while because of other prior commitments, but tonight is an international chocolate tasting, so it should be good. ChocSoc is the only soc I actually officially belong to, of course. Chocolate is important to me =]

Penguin!

Me and Julia in front of the art gallery

My favorite painting from the art gallery

More Penguins! Yay!

Address to the Haggis

I decided I would write a new post, even though I haven't really done much lately. On Tuesday night I went to a Burns Night Supper even though Burns Night was actually January 25th. Exchange 360 was having theirs, so me and my friend Julia went with some of her flatmates. Exchange 360 is a society made up of Edinburgh students who have gone aboard, and they put on things for visiting students at Edinburgh from other countries. It was set up like a wedding reception almost, very fancy. They fed us the traditional meal of haggis, neeps and tatties. Neeps are turnips and tatties are mashed potatoes. It was very good haggis. They also had the traditional whiskey. They even did the address to the haggis, with bagpipes and everything. It's almost like reading an ode to the haggis. It's a Burns night thing. Burns night is to celebrate Rabbie Burns, a poet who was Scottish and they seem to love. He popularized Auld Lang Syne, so we sang that at the end. Burns night, to me, just seems like an excuse to be really really Scottish. Which is fine with me.

It's been storming like crazy outside for a while now, I didn't have class today so I didn't get caught in it, but Becca came back from class completely drenched. She literally had to wring out her jeans in her sink. It's some of the most intense wind I've ever heard. I guess it's our version of the blizzard most of the U.S got on Tuesday. So it's not a very good night to go outside, but I've been reading in my room all day, and sort of getting cabin fever, since my room isn't very big at all. On Saturday I'm going to Dundee (north of Edinburgh) with the International Student Centre trip. I guess there's some good shopping there and a ferry to go on. I would also like to climb Arthur's Seat, maybe on Sunday. But that's weather permitting. I would prefer not to blow away while climbing.