Loch'd: Goodbye, Edinburgh

This past weekend, Becca had a friend visiting who had been living in Germany for a year and was now on her way home, but was traveling a bit before she went home. So we took her around Edinburgh. It really made me realize how much I'm going to miss this city. It's so beautiful. We went to Calton Hill, I'll post some pictures of that below. It was a gorgeous day. I definitely plan on coming back to Edinburgh one day. I leave a week from tomorrow. I'm beyond excited to be finally going home, but I'm equally sad about leaving the friends that I've met here. I really hope we can see each other in the States sometimes. I'm fairly certain I'm going to cry when I goodbye to them. Hard to believe it's almost over...

Things I can't wait to eat when I get home: Leona's, deep dish pizza, Ollie's, meatloaf

Things I want to find a way to bring home from the UK: Kinder chocolate, Irn Bru (for my brother) and just all the chocolate here in general (especially Kit-Kats!)!

I love the UK, I had an amazing time here, but I'm glad I was born and grew up in the States. I dislike the education system here, if only because the U.S. system is way easier. I'll be very grateful when I get home for professors who actually care about how you do in their class. I'm glad I now have knowledge of what life is like here, it was a great experience. It's also sort of strange to think that people grew up around all of this beauty, and that's it's normal for them. I wonder what they think when they travel to the States. As weird as this may sound, British people aren't just characters anymore. The UK is no longer a fantasy land.

I really miss Chicago. Edinburgh and Chicago are both beautiful cities, but in completely different ways, Edinburgh is so old and breathtaking, while Chicago has the lake and the huge buildings and parks.I miss the Sears Tower, I miss the shoreline of the lake, I miss Lakeview. I can't wait to move back in with my best friend, and I even miss UIC! haha. And Sycamore...I can't wait to go live in my parent's house for a few days and just hang out with my family. And definitely go to Ollie's. Maybe twice.

On the 30th of April, we went to Beltane, a Celtic fire festival, sort of like Celtic May Day. It was pretty cool, although sort of hard to tell what we supposed to be looking at at times, because there was a lot going on in different places. They had a parade, with lots of fire, of course, ha. I'll post some pictures below. It was sort of cold that night, so we didn't stay very late but we got to see the sun set from Calton Hill, and that was gorgeous.

I haven't been doing much else of note, I've been done with the semester since April 22nd, but all of my friends still have finals to study for, so I've only been able to hang out with them here and there when they're not studying. I was pretty sick about two days ago, anyway. I think I had a fever, it was not fun. Now I'm just sort of congested, I hope it goes away before flying home. I wanted to come home before this (since I was done with school so early), but Virgin Atlantic doesn't have flights to Chicago until May 9th, and I booked through the IFSA-Butler travel agent, so I have to fly through them. And then, by the time I wretched this information from the travel agent, all connecting flights to London were booked until the 19th. So I'm landing at O'Hare at 1:55pm on the 19th. Finally.