It has been quite some time since I have written a blog post and I thought it was necessary to catch up! The last time I posted, I was about to head to a football game and that seems like ages ago. I have been extremely busy and find myself in my room minimally, which is a good thing and a bad thing all at the same time.
The football game was a lot of fun. We were quite late and had to kick some people out of our seats, but after that we could watch an extremely uneventful game. The score ended up as 0-0, but the experience was memorable. There were thousands of fans packed into one stadium and they all cheered and booed in unison. How awful would it be to be booed by over 75,000 fans?
The rest of last week and this week is a blur with not a lot of memorable things happening. If it wasn't so far away maybe I'd have something more interesting to talk about, but unfortunately I can't think of many things that happened that were worth mentioning. One of the main things that I have been doing is writing papers and walking through Regents Park in my free time. The papers are a lot more work that what I originally intended. I have 8 papers to write for this semester, which is a task that is becoming more daunting everyday. I have been trying to buckle down and work on them, which makes my life quite boring. However, I am hoping to finish them early so that I can enjoy my last few weeks here and be free for when Chelsea comes to visit!
This past weekend the CIEE group and I took a trip to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. I was excited for the trip on Thursday night, but was desperately trying to finish the bibliography of my paper. I ended up going to sleep around 2 in the morning. In my tired state, I had tried to set my alarm for 7:00 in the morning, but apparently I failed to do so. The cleaning lady was banging around in our kitchen at around 9 on Friday morning and I believe that is the first time I since I have been here where I am thankful some random noise woke me up! My group was scheduled to meet at Kings Cross to catch our train at 9:45. I got up faster than I have ever gotten up in my life and began running around my room and flat gathering everything I could think of for our trip. I threw on some decent clothes and proceeded to power walk as fast as possible to the station, which is about a 15 minute walk from my flat. I thought I was walking fast at first, but then a lady that looked about 60 passed me on the sidewalk. I was in awe and slightly amused so my new goal was beating her to my destination. I won, but probably looked like a fool in the process!
After getting lost for a short amount of time in the huge station, I found my group and a wave of relief rushed over me. We boarded the train and were off to Scotland! On the train, I tried to take a nap but was unsuccessful. I began talking to the other girls in my group and trying to find something to do. After a short while, I had the feeling that someone was watching me. I looked around the train to find a boy about the age of 9 staring at me. I thought it was amusing and told the girl I was sitting by about this awkward situation. After what seemed to be about 10 minutes of this kid staring at me, I began staring back. He then decided to write me a note and told me to quit looking at him. I was very surprised and took a pen and paper out of my bag and wrote him a note saying, "you started it."
I went back to talking with my friend, Ellie, when out of the corner of my eye I saw the kid and his sister waving at me. He threw a paper airplane my way. I took apart the folding and the note inside read, "Nice shoes. Not. You look like you just came out of the bin." I started laughing and couldn't believe that this kid was passing me rude notes, not to mention he noticed that I took about 2 minutes trying to fix my hair before running out the door that morning.
I wrote him back that my shoes, called Toms, helped provide a pair of shoes to a child in need. Then I told him to learn how to make a better airplane and to stop talking to me. I proceeded to fold another airplane and sent it back. To my pleasure, it hit him in the forehead and landed in his lap. I then got up as quickly as possible and went to talk to some friends who were in a different part of the train. I wanted to get away from that kid as soon as possible and was sick of acting like I was 10 years old. When I got back to my seat, I found a pile of paper airplanes on it. I was slightly amused but decided to ignore him to the best of my ability.
When we FINALLY got to Edinburgh after a 5 hour train ride of avoiding eye contact with a kid, we left the train station and almost immediately heard bag pipes. I was extremely pumped and knew that this was going to be an amazing weekend. That night was full of hanging out with the CIEE group and not doing much sight-seeing, but it was fun and much needed. At 9:30 we decided to embark on a graveyard tour. The tour guide was really funny, but other than that, it was not as scary as we thought it would be. The graveyard was creepy and apparently between 250,000 and 400,000 people were buried there during the plague. No ghosts were seen by my friends and me, but some people in our group "felt something" and wanted to talk to the tour guide about it. Bogus if you ask me!
The next day we got up and found some breakfast. I wanted to find a poncho because the night before I had been stuck in the rain without an umbrella or water resistant jacket. Alonzo and I set out to find ponchos and after finding them quickly, we decided to walk around and take pictures. We eventually found our way to a "peak" or mini mountain thing called Arthur's seat. We climbed the 850 feet up to the top, which was kind of a challenge because I hadn't packed the right shoes. However, the climb was definitely worth it. We sat at the top and looked out for miles on some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. It was truly amazing.
After we decided to climb down, we made our way towards Edinburgh Castle. We got there and took the tour, which was interesting, but not mind blowing. We got to see the Crown Jewels of Scotland, which was probably the highlight of our visit. Learning the history was interesting, but nothing could compare to the amazing hike that morning.
That night we went on a pub crawl and had a lot of fun hanging out with each other. Yesterday morning we headed back to London. I was surprised at how much I missed "home" and was very excited to finally be back in my room. The weekend was a ton of fun, but I was ready for some down time.
Today has been pretty uneventful. I have made a trip to the library and grocery store and am about to start on another paper. Hope it goes by quickly!
Miss you all,
Lorinda
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