Back in Scotland

We (D and I) just got back a couple hours ago. What a tiring week! Everything was great though, and I have to say Roma was the best part. The Collesseo was brilliant, along with the Vatican and Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. It was all more than I could have imagined. The theme of the vacation was "When in Rome" and we tried to live that up in the amount of wine we consumed (PS, they do NOT eat cold beans!), but it was all in good fun. We also did a pub crawl there, and it was EPIC! It was just so much fun. I even managed to learn a little Italian, but not much more than hello, goodbye, sorry, excuse me and do you speak English? Heck, it is more than the amount of French I learned!

We are going Halloween shopping for D tomorrow (and I got a small crook but I want a bigger one for my Bo Peep costume) and then we have a Halloween party at the palace on Thursday, and we are hitting up Edinburgh on Friday. Should be a pretty busy week, but I should be able to post about the zoo and the trip on Wednesday.

It was great talking to everyone on Trevor's birthday; I'm glad I was able to do that. Oh, rotten news. Delta pushed my flight back to leaving at 8:10pm from Edinburgh, so I won't get into MSP until 10:30pm central time. I am going to try to call them and figure that out, but that is the deal for now. That would be terrible.

Talk to you soon!

Hola de Barcelona

I am here in Barcelona right now. I just wanted to say hi quickly, and tell everyone I am having a great time.

I leave on Tuesday for Roma, then on the 24th to Paris.

We did a pub crawl last night, and it was AMAZING. I am also loving the siestas, I am going to try to bring them to the UK/USA. More later.

Hasta luego.

Long-awaited tour of Dalkeith House!!

I think this is just going to be easiest if I post pictures and say what they are. Let me know if you have any questions about anything!

This is a crappy view of the field right in front of the palace. I took pictures at dusk, so the outdoor ones didn't turn out great. You can see to the left all the construction stuff for the roof.

Here is the front of the palace. You can see all the scaffolding. It used to be so much prettier without all that. Hopefully when I come back (which I will!!) I will be able to see it with it all off.

This is the servery where our meals are served (duh) and where we prepare our own food on weekends.

I snatched this picture from the Wisconsin in Scotland website. This is how the palace should look. Isn't it just beautiful?

This is the marble hall. We don't do much here besides wait for crappy dinner to be served. The statue is of the Duke of Wellington. It is pretty cool. Leah always calls him "Dukey" and says hi to him when walking by.

This is the dining room. Pretty self-explanatory. The walls are lined with pictures of previous groups, from the first one in 1986. Some pictures have spilled out of the room, though, because there is not enough space.

The marble hall looking the other way. There are a couple people that constantly, or so it seems, play the piano. It gets so annoying! P put a sign on it once that said it was out of order, but that only delayed the inevitable. There is nothing worse than hearing mediocre piano playing almost constantly.

This is Willie's Cafe, a place to hang out and eat or watch movies or TV. Unfortunately, cable doesn't work in there right now. Not that I have tried to watch any TV really.

This is my windowsill, with all my books and school stuff on it. It is currently not this clean.

Here is a view of the room. Misty (our other roommate) has the first bed, then D on the left and Leah on the right. I am tucked way back in the corner. I really like it, but sometimes people don't know I am in the room because they can't see me.

This is the entrance hallway. Nothing too exciting here.

This is the area outside the computer lab and library. Leah has to clean this area, along with the computer lab.

This is the ballroom. They put springs in the floor to make it easier to dance, but now that they have chandeliers downstairs, we can't really dance anymore. Darn electricity.

The library. My library.

Infamous ping pong room. I played my first game of Beer Pong here last weekend. My team won! Not that drinking games are healthy or anything...

The pool room. When we first got here, this was broken so we never went in here. Now it is fixed, and we have played a couple games. Leah beat me twice, but only because I shot myself in the foot by screwing up the 8 ball. (Or in British pool, the black ball. There are no solids and stripes, just red and yellow, and you can put the ball anywhere on a scratch).

My bed! It only looks this good about once in a blue moon. I guess some things never change.

My little vanity. Mom, having this only makes me want one even more at home. I just love it!

I will also say something here about my host family. They are Paul and Mindy Quigley, and they are really great. P (Peter) is also with me to see them. They have a little girl named Alice who is just about the sweetest thing ever. She is less than 3, I believe. They first had us over a couple weeks ago, and I failed to post on it. Mindy made a great dinner for us, which consisted of Salmon, couscous, green beans and apple tart. It was hands down the best thing I have eaten since I have been here.

Paul is originally from northern England, and Mindy is from the states. They met while they were both going to school in North Carolina. Paul is a American History professor at the University of Edinburgh. They just moved to Scotland last year.

They also took us to the zoo last Sunday, and that was really fun. I have not uploaded the pictures to my computer yet, so I will do that soon, but probably not until after my 10 day break!

Besides that, school has really picked up over the past few weeks. I have had two papers and two tests, so I have really kept busy. We have gone out in Edinburgh a couple nights, and continue to hit up the pubs and Kebab Mahal in town here.

I actually got lost coming back from Edinburgh last Saturday, and called John at 3:30 in the morning for help. I got on the wrong night bus. I needed to be on the N3, but got on the N31 because the 1 was not flipped all the way up. When John answered, he was actually with Patty and Nat (Patty is our director, and Nat is her girlfriend). They helped me through it, and I eventually got a cab back to Dalkeith. It was so scary, because I was with another student, Aaron, who was really drunk and it was the most stressful thing in the world. I am glad I decided to take the night off from drinking or things would have gotten really bad.

John had me check in with him when I got home, and I'm glad he did because I don't think I even realised how scared/worried I had been. I just started crying as soon as I walked into his office, and he stayed up pretty late (this was all happening after I got home at 4am) talking to me, which was really nice. I contend that this was my worst night of my trip so far, but I figure one out of a month and a half isn't bad. I should have never gone out. I just wanted to sit at home and watch the Wild season opener. It all reminded me of a show called How I Met Your Mother (which is super funny) and one of the episodes is themed around "nothing good ever happens after 2am." That is exactly how my night was!

So now just a quick note about my ten day. I am going to Barcelona, Spain for 5 days with Jesse, Leah and D. After that, D and I are going to Rome, Italy for three days. We will end our trip with a few days in Paris, France. I am so excited!! This will be my first really long independent trip, so I hope it is fun. I am procrastinating a little bit, D and I don't have hostels yet in Rome and Paris, but I am sure everything will fall into place. So that is all the latest news! I will post again after my vacation! Hasta luego, amigos!

Dunoon and some other stuff

So I have decided, as it is apparently impossible to get my blog up to date, I will just kind of skip stuff that has happened over the past few weeks (believe me, it hasn't been much) and start off with what is going on now. The only thing I will add is some pictures from our house trip to Dunoon.

Dunoon is a former resort town on the River Clyde coast. It was a pretty fun trip, and we got to take a ferry over there. That was pretty neat. Once in Dunoon, we went to the Castle House Museum, which has a portion on the American occupation of the River Clyde for a naval base. Unfortunately, it was not very interesting.

After that, we went up to where the old castle used to be. It is called the Castle House because it was built using pieces of the old castle, and up on the hill there are only some grassy lumps that show where the castle used to sit. This was a very pretty view of the river and town.

After that (time for brutal honesty) D and I were pretty bored, and there is not much to do in small towns, so we went to the pirate pub. Literally, it was called Sinbad's Pirate Bar. We went with Erik and Peter, two of the guys here. It was pretty fun. We each had two pints, I think the guys were drinking Guiness (they went to Dublin for our first break and apparently have a taste for it now) and us girls were drinking Blackthorn cider. I prefer good old Strongbow.

After that, it was pretty much time to leave. On the ferry ride home, Gerry sat with us and made some recommendations on good whisky and cider to try, so that was excellent. I am supposed to order some Brothers Strawberry Pear cider. I will have to try that one. I have been trying to look for it but can't find any. Now, time for the pictures:
A view from the old castle spot.

Leah, D, me and Sara
A view up the road of Castle House
This is the start of my experiments with the color-accent function of the digital camera
The shores of the Clyde
Outside Castle House
D, me, Sara and Leah on the bus. Sara and Leah are roommates back in River Falls.
The four of us again on the shore of the river
This is a large group shot than ended up not very good. From left it is Leah, P (short for Peter) is behind her, Sara is in front next to Jesse on the right. Behind Jesse is D, then me and finally Erik.
Jason, me and Erik on the ferry
Me on the shore. It was more than a little windy.
More color accents
More shore.
Another view of the River, with bonus color accents.
The River with blue color accents. You can tell I really thought this function was neat.
Finally, a full color shot of the river and ferry port.

London! 25-28 September

Here it is! The official review of my first independent trip!

We left for London on the evening of the 24^th. We took a night bus there, operated by MegaBus, which got to London around 7:30. The ride there was fine, and it went pretty quickly because we slept most of the time. Once we got to London, we found a tube station and rode it until Russell Square, which was the closest stop to our hostel. It was really easy to use once we got the hang of it, but the first time was confusing. We weren’t sure how to get tickets, or which train to take, but someone helped us, and we got there just fine.

The hostel we stayed at was called the Generator, and it touted itself as the “premier party hostel in London,” and that is why we chose it. We got there before 11:00, and we could not check in yet, so we put our stuff in the luggage room (which was more than a bit dodgy) and went to the park at Russell Square to have lunch (which we picked up from Tesco Express) and tried to plan out our day. We ended up going to the British Museum, which was really cool. It is a free museum, and pretty much just houses things England has plundered from other countries over the past forever. We pretty much only saw the Egyptian exhibit, because we were so tired that I was practically falling asleep on a bench, and wanted to sit on everything (including ancient Egyptian tombs, which Leah and I got yelled at for doing). I wanted to see the mummies, but they were on the fifth floor, which seemed too high. From there we made the great decision to go to Starbucks and I had a much needed cup of coffee. We planned out what we would do, and then off we went to Kings Cross to see the Platform 9 ¾ for Harry Potter they have there. It was disappointing, like most of my London experience. I’ll post some pictures of it, but it was a really sad thing. The handle of the trolley was broken off, and we seemed to be the only ones interested in it, but that’s ok.

By this time, we could go check into the hostel. We did so, and got kind of lost on the way to our room, but eventually got there. We were in a 14 person room, both men and women. We were so pooped that we took a nap, and then woke up and went to the bar in the hostel (we had free drink coupons). Once there, we settled in to some fooseball and drinking. Later in the night, we were challenged in pool by two guys from Vancouver, with whom I got in a large fight with about the Wild vs. the Canucks and hockey in general. They got boring really quick though, and Leah made us some other friends from Michigan who we ended up hanging out with at the hostel for a couple days. Leah went to bed around midnight, and D and I went in search of food. We started off going to Tesco, but I got it in my head that I wanted a kebab, so I walked into a tandoori restaurant on a street. They looked closed, but had an open sign in the window and they said they were open when I asked, so we went in for kebabs. There were like 6 Indian workers there, and once we ordered the kebabs, we just kind of sat there feeling awkward, a little buzzed in this seemingly nice restaurant, with the staff looking at us. To make everything worse, the kebabs were not good at all. They were not even what I was expecting. They were like grilled lamb sausage, and were just gross. We actually gave mine to passerby because I literally couldn’t eat it. Not cool. So we ended up getting food from Tesco anyway.

That was it for our adventures on the first day. On the second day, we woke up around ten and went to the complimentary breakfast in the hostel. That wasn’t very filling, though I was excited to have sugared cereal. My Frosted Flakes were delicious, but my milk was not cold so it was also kind of gross. From there, we got ready and went to a chippy for lunch/breakfast. I had another kebab, and it was better than the first, but not great. We took the tube to Piccadilly Circus and walked around the theater district for a little bit, and then wondered into and around Soho. We browsed a couple shops, and bought some accessories from H&M. By far the best thing in Soho, and possibly London, was this really awesome toy store called Hanley’s. There were 6 floors, I think seven total including the ground floor, and it was so neat. They had workers dressed in costumes and demonstrating products, and each floor was different. There was a games floor (interactive and board), stuffed animals (an entire floor for them), little kids, girls (it reminded me of the old FAO Schwartz at MOA with the Barbie store. It was amazing!), boys (Leah and D played slot cars there, and there was a ton of awesome memorabilia from Batman, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings there. So awesome!), a Lego floor and probably more. We were there for over an hour, and I called Mike to see if I could get anything for Hailey, his niece, there because it was just so cool. Too bad I don’t know many more little kids to buy for. Everyone is growing up! We went down to the games area to see if they have any cool Nintendo memorabilia, but they didn’t. They did, however, have a Wii set up with Mario Kart, and Rock Band. Leah and I played Mario Kart for a little bit first, and then all the dudes there were sucking at Rock Band, so we took that over and schooled everyone. It was brilliant.

From there we met up at Wellington’s Arch in Piccadilly Square for a free tour our hostel recommended. Our tour guide, Mike, was really good. It is not really free, they work on tips, but it was still a really good deal. We went all over and saw all the major sights including Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, Trafalger Square, St. James Park and more. The guide was really funny, and told us lots of interesting things. One of my favorite quotes he told us was by Winston Churchill, who apparently liked whisky. A socialite said to Churchill, “Sir! You are drunk!” and he responded with: “I am drunk, but you are ugly, and in the morning I will be sober.” Pretty hilarious. I was able to take part in the tour, where I helped to demonstrate what being hung, drawn and quartered was. I think I ruined it halfway through the demonstration by asking, “Isn’t this what they did in Braveheart?” but it was neat none the less. It was what they did in Braveheart.

From there, we wanted to do a pub crawl, but it just got too late. The tour was not over until around 18:00, and the pub crawl was starting at 19:30, so we just kind of got some food and got ready leisurely, and then the doorman at the pub, who was an Aussie, told us to go to Walkabout, the Aussie bar. We did, and when we got there it seemed fun, but we were obviously out of place. It was also super expensive. The doorman actually showed up, with a hilarious friend. He was obviously at the least drunk and at the most strung out on something, but he showed up in a shirt and tie, and from there, he took off his tie, wrapped it around his head and took off his shirt so he just had his under T shirt on. Then he started outrageously dancing. It was so funny. Besides that, the bar was kind of a bust, and we left early. We were going to go to a club called Fabric, but the cover there was 16GBP, which is like $30 so we just took the tube back to the hostel. It was a good thing too, because we were on the last train of the night.

Day three was more of the same. After breakfast, we went to see the Tower of London and the Thames River. It was really neat. We walked so much! We pretty much walked most of the east bank of the river and stopped at some neat places, like a cool market we found and the Globe Theater. We also went back to Westminster Abbey and by Big Ben and Parliament again. My favorite stop though, probably my favorite place in London, was the National Gallery. It is a free art museum housing hundreds of works. I went straight for the Impressionism (duh!) and saw some of Van Gogh’s paintings for the first time in person. It was amazing. I know it sounds so stupid, but I literally almost cried they were so beautiful. I did cry while looking at one of the Passion. It was really, really beautiful, but I can’t remember the painter. I wasn’t there long, we got there less than an hour before close, but I am sure I will go back when me and Erin hit London. I bought Trevor a postcard from there. It was a cool one of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

After that, we did some shopping (I bought 4 dresses, all for less than 10 GBP. Such a steal!) and went back to the hostel and got ready for another awesome night at the hostel bar. We had to get up pretty early to make sure we caught our bus home, which left around 10. It was pretty close. They were already boarding by the time we got to the station. The ride home was terrible. I was with a crappy seat partner, and he did not scoot into his corner properly. It was mega long and uncomfortable. No matter how much it costs, I don’t think I will be taking a bus again. As Patty, our resident director would say, your time is worth something, and nothing is worth that again. Oh, but I did do some gambling at one of our rest stops and won like 30 GBP. Not bad!

We got home around 19:00. Jesse, our little brother, was so happy to see us. It was really nice. Everyone was around when we left, and same thing when we got back. There are really good people here. All in all, I really didn’t like London. My first night there, all I wanted to do was go back to Edinburgh. People were not nice, and it was just so expensive. I did like the tube, though. I think next time it will be better, because I will have a better idea of what to see and do, and a more realistic expectation of how much money to plan on spending. I have already been plotting in my head what Erin and I should do there, and I think next time it will be a huge improvement. It will never be Scotland, though, but I guess nothing else will.

Here is all three of us with a solider during our walking tour. They really don't do anything but stand there, not moving or talking or anything. It is really kind of pointless, because nothing they are guarding seems like a big deal (even at Buckingham Palace...they have a big fence and other guards, so why do they need this guy?) I did feel terrible for posing with them, though. I was kinda just like, "Thank you... Sorry..

Here we are in front of the Tower of London. A woman took it for us because she mistook D for her own child and yelled at her. It was kinda funny, but we got a nice pic out of it.

This is by the mall where there is a cavalry display for the Queen's Official Birthday. This is a funny photo because some passerby took it, and it is the most legit picture ever taken by a stranger. He lined it up so there is an extra stump on both sides, and if you zoom in, my face will be exactly in the center. He did a great job!

I know you can't see it well, but there are pelicans out on those rocks. King James would always get exotic pets from visiting dignitaries, and keep them in there. Now, only the pelicans remain. They eat pigeons. I'm not lying. There is a You Tube video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PO5ifLzLYiU. If that won't work just go to you tube and type pelican eats pigeon and it will come up. It is awesome.

This is Trafalger Square, the center of London.

This is my bird friend I made on the way home. He was so cute and was digging in the dirt. It was adorable.

This is the National Gallery

This is the Tower of London. We did not go in because we have seen so many castles, and this did not seem awesome.

This is me in front of the Tower Bridge. It is really pretty, much prettier than the London Bridge.

A view of the Thames River.

The London Eye. We didn't go on it because it seemed boring and was expensive.

This is a view of Big Ben and Parliament.

Westminster Abbey

More Parliament.

This is a random building next to the Tower of London. We originally thought this was the Tower, and were wondering why it was not very busy. That is because it was indeed not the Tower of London.

Wellington's Arch

Me and another guard.

Guards walking around the street.

The fountain at Trafalger Square.

10 Downing Street. This is where the Prime Minister lives. You can't really see it or get close because Margaret Thatcher has a wall built because everyone hated her.

The three of us on our first night.

These were the random dudes we gave the gross kebabs to.

Our gross kebab box on the floor.

Me with mini Indiana Jones.

Leah with big Indiana Jones.

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.

Part of the Sphinx. It was his beard.

The outer wall of an Egyptian tomb.

The outside of King's Cross station. Rail, buses and the tube all meet here.

Me being angry at the Canadian dudes for dissing the Wild.

Me and D before our bus left.

Me and Sara, my bus partner.

Our first Tube experience.

Pigeons bathing in the fountain at Russell Square.

And finally, the inside of the British Museum.