Rugby!

After spending a nice day relaxing and doing some homework on Saturday, Sunday started early. Some of the people here decided that it would be a good idea to attend church in Edinburgh and then make our way to the rugby game from there. In theory this is a great idea. The only problem, finding the church once you are in Edinburgh. In the states if a building looks like a church it is a church. Not so here. They may have started out as a church but now they could be anything from a theater to a library. Not to mention there are not that many ones that are Catholic. We had looked one up online but due to a longer bus ride than anticipated we were late for that one and then to top it off were not even able to find the church. We decided to work our way back to the Royal Mile and attend service at St. Giles Cathedral. It was gorgeous and they had a section of seating that had heating grates under the seats.

 Not only was the building beautiful, we attended the service with an amazing choir.
After service we got lost once again trying to make our way to Murrayfield. We had directions but they were from the Palace not the Royal Mile. Eventually we found a line of people dressed for the game and followed them. It was very interesting because they were not Scotland fans, they were fans of France! We walked all the way there amidst the French who broke out in song every five minutes.
It was crazy the stadium can hold 60,000 people and the game was sold out. I could not see any open seats and there were people everywhere.

Rugby is huge, there was flames shooting into the air as the players came out of the tunnel!

It is an interesting game to watch and by the end of it I think I understand it. I was not really able to ask the people around me about the game because they spoke French and I do not, but it was fun to listen to them talk. There were a couple highlights to the game:

• Scotland scored the first goal and was up 10-0 at one point
• There was a major injury to one of the players, I think he broke is leg
• Towards the end of the game one of the French fans streaked all the way around the field before being caught.

If you did not guess from the fact that it was a French streaker, Scotland lost. It was still a good game and a lot of fun since it was well played. If you ever have a chance to go to a game, go they are worth it.

Glasgow Here I Come!

It is amazing the difference 60 miles can make. That is the distance between Edinburgh and Glasgow and you would think that they would be very similar. I knew that Glasgow was more of an industrial town and Edinburgh more of an intellectual city but the differences are amazing.
Both cities have some astounding architecture in the older building but in Glasgow there are few areas with these characteristics there are more rundown neighborhoods. We visited the Celtic Stadium and it was beautiful. The grass was being cut for the game the next day and looking around you would never guess that the unemployment rate in Glasgow is estimated to be at 40% for males.  Yet, when you walk outside and look over the city it becomes apparent. The housing that I saw the most of was "four in a block" that means four family dwellings in one house. Two floors and two seperate residences on each level. There is also an abundance of closed shops as soon as you are a few blocks away from the main shopping district.
While there we also visited some very cool museums. We saw a transportation and an art museum after our tour of the stadium. It was interesting how the transportation museum was in a new building with a very modern design and the art was designed in more of the Victorian age. The museum each had their own flare and were quite interesting. After spending some time in the museums we had two hours to ourselves to walk around the shopping center of Glasgow. It was fun just to be able to walk down the street and see an Apple shop in an old building complete with pillars.

 These are the two oldest cups in football history. They date from before 1900.

 Lael, Me, and Erin at standing just of the Celtic field. See "Celtic" spelled out in the seats behind us along with the man mowing the grass between Lael's and my head?

 A zebra that was at the transportation museum. Did you know that zebras have stripes because a certain type of fly likes to land on solid colors and the stripes confuse it?

The view from just outside of the museum. Can you tell it has been modernised recently. Glasgow is preparing for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. It is where all of the once territories of Britain come to compete in athletic events.

The front of the Art Museum. There are two wings that come off to either side but they would not fit in the picture.

Here is a picture of the Giant Irish Deer. It was massive and it was also in the art museum which was interesting. On the bus ride back to Dalkeith I saw my first large wildlife in Scotland. There were three deer grazing along the side of the road. Sadly they were not the Giant Irish deer.

London's Calling

I have had quite the whirlwind weekend. We left Dalkeith bright and early on Friday to make it to our train ride into London. There was plenty of time to relax and look at the scenery during our four and a half hour train ride. Then once arriving in London at King's Cross Station we were all packed onto the "tube" or subway to reach our hostel, The Generator. Once we unloaded our luggage there we had the rest of the day to ourselves. Being the nerd that I am, I traveled to the Science Museum with some friends. It was huge and there were kids everywhere.
We started at the top with medical history and are so glad we did. While in the veterinary history room a little girl and her father walked in. There was a life size model of a horse to show some of the internal structure of the animal. While looking at the horse the little girl, in a British accent, said, "Daddy, have you ever seen a horse die?" The father quickly responded that no he had not seen a horse die and exited the room. It was all we could do not to burst out laughing. In my opinion the top floor was the best we spent over an hour on that floor alone and it is a five story building. There were rooms for almost everything, but the lower you went the more kids there were and the more fun games there were. Only after we had touched almost everything on the Materials floor did we realize that all of the kids from all over the world had touched all of those things as well. Needless to say we quickly washed our hands and no longer ran our hands along the wall. All in all we spent over five hours in the museum, we were there until close.
After that we walked all around town to find the Golden Hind. Construction does not make understanding a map any easier. It was a cute little place but fishcakes are a different thing here than in the states. They are made with potatoes and fish. While making our way back we found a small side road with this cool elephant.

Then we took the tube back to the hostel and fell asleep promptly. We woke up Saturday morning and spent the day walking around the city. We saw:

• Westminster Abby
• Big Ben
• Parliament
• a park full of statues
• and many other iconic images of London

We went on the number 11 bus tour and went to Wicked. It was amazing. Then I went to the bar in the Generator to meet some new people and hang out. Then off to bed again. On Sunday we decided to travel in to a different part of town. The Changing of the Guards was this morning and we thought that if we arrived a half hour early it would be good. We were wrong this was my view when holding my camera above my head.

Here was the view after we decided to go eat some crepes because we could not see anything and then walk toward the London Eye.These are the guards that were replaced processing out of Buckingham Palace. Great timing right?

We walked along the river to get to the London Eye and take a ride. It was spectacular!

The capsule next to us was a private capsule. Inside there was a couple and a worker who was serving champagne and chocolate. We spent most of the thirty minutes of the ride looking into that capsule after taking some pictures of the view.

Right after they were no longer in our view he got down on one knee and the next time we saw them she had a massive ring on her finger! After getting of the London Eye we wrote them a postcard saying "We saw in happen, Congrats! From your friends in Wisconsin" and gave it to them once they got off their capsule. Afterwards we continued to walk and saw the bridge that is Harry Potter. Then we came back to the hostel to get a little bit of rest and went out to a pub that was a couple of blocks away to relax and play some cards.
Monday was nice and relaxing we ate a good breakfast and made our way to the Broad St. Pump. It was the first site of relating a sickness to water.

And spent some time looking through the shops along Carnaby Street. I managed to snag a Celtic jersey for only 15 pounds! For those of you who dont know Carnaby Street is somehow related to the Beetles.

Then we stopped for some lunch and walked to King's Cross Station to catch our train.
Of course while at King's Cross I had to stop and take some pictures at Platform 9 and 3/4! It was all in all a great experience in London.

Fun Facts About Scotland

After living in Scotland for two weeks now there are some interesting differences that I have noticed. The big difference is that the price of something is the price you pay when you checkout. If the tag says 19.99 you pay 19.99. It is great! You can exact shrapnel or change ready when you buy whatever it is that you are buying. This makes it much easier to get rid of all the shrapnel that you have because there is no one pound note. It is in the form of a coin. They also have 2p and 20p coins which is completely different. So all in all you have way more shrapnel then you would in the United States.
The citizens of Scotland also do not have to pay for their education. It is all free, even college. It makes you a little jealous doesn't it. So is their healthcare. They do not have to pay for neccessary medication or surgery or anything like that. Crazy right?
Another fun fact about Scotland is that they have their own soda called Irn Bru. It has its own song and there are hilarious advertisements at almost every bus stop. If you get a chance you should look it up on Youtube and see if you can understand what they are saying.
There you are, a couple tidbits of information for you to impress other people with.

Black Pudding

I had a great day today back in Edinburgh. We went to the car boot sale this morning which more people go to than go to church. It was crazy! Everyone parks in the fourth level of the car park (a parking garage) and sells goods out of their boot (car truck). After walking through the crowd we went out to breakfast and I had a traditional Scottish breakfast. It includes black pudding, fried egg, potato toast, bacon, beans, and a sausage pattie. For those of you who dont know black pudding is made with blood and animal fat. You would think that it would taste disgusting, but it is now my new favourite breakfast food. The hard part when eating it is that you have to have some of everything when you take a bit and it took me close to half an hour to eat a plate of food.
After we walked to a free comedy show at Stand Up Comedy. I have not laughed that much in a long time. Two Scottish men with multiple accents and acting as women. It was hilarious! After the two hour free show we walked around downtown and ended up buying some jerseys for the rugby game that we are going to in two weeks. I am so excited to see a rugby game. It is Scotland vs. France and they are two very good teams.

Monarchs, Mariners and Bloodshed

It has been a busy last couple of days. Sure I have not had any classes, but there are so many things that can still be done. Friday I went into Edinburgh with a couple of friends and went to some of the spots on the Amazing Race that we wanted to visit again and today I went back into Edinburgh to complete the self guided tour Monarchs, Mariners and Bloodshed from the wonderful book 24 Great Walks in Edinburgh. (Thanks to my parents for that birthday present :)

While in town on Friday we walked up to the "Athens of the North" to get a great view of the city learn more about the history of Edinburgh.

Then we wandered over the Elephant House for a small snack. For those of you who have not heard about the Elephant House, it is the birthplace of Harry Potter. There I tried a Millionare Shortbread, my new favourite dessert. It is delicious!

Some of the names in the books can be found on the gravestones in a nearby graveyard, so we traversed through the mud and the muck to find gravestones with famous names on them. To top it off we were successful, we found Tom Riddle's grave and a McGonagall too. That pretty much sums up what Friday was and heres a quick history lesson from the walk.

Our first stop was the Trinity House a building from 1816 to give shelter and care to old, sick and injured mariners.

From there we turned around to look at the South Leith Parish Church which has stood at that site since 1483 eventhough all that remains of the original structure is the pillars in the nave.

We then walked through the slums of Leith to visit The Vaults which is the oldest warehouse in Edinburgh and to see the replica of Porter's Stone. (Notice the person in the giant hamster wheel that was used to move the crane)

As we followed the river we came to an old stair tower dating from 1675 that is attached to offices, but it used to be a warehouse.

The riverwalk located behind old warehouses converted into restaurants is simple beautiful and looks like a wonderful place to stop and eat. There is an archway at the end of the path and I managed to get a picture sitting between two fish.

As we continued on our self guided walk we learned of a sad story of miscommunication. Due to the language barrier between the Highlanders and the English, 50 Highlanders thought that they had been tricked into joining Lowlander forces and refused to get on the vessel that would take them to the correct location (otherwise known as mutiny) and when the English yelled at them, one of the 50 fired on accident and killed one of the English officers, so the 200 English that had come to arrest them opened fire killing 12 of the Highlanders. This picture is from the building next to the Ship's Inn were the Highlanders were located. It is now a restaurant.

We then crossed the Victoria Swing Bridge and walked on to Ocean Terminal, a three store mall complete with a movie theater and the Royal Yacht Britiannia is at port there.

This completed our tour for the day and we crawled our way home to relax before another exciting day in town tomorrow.

The End of the First Week

It has been nine days since I came to Scotland and within that time I have had many new adventures. Some you have heard about and some I have yet to share, so here are some more tidbits about my life in Scotland.
I did my laundry for the first time the other day and found out that the quickest way for me to reach the laundry room is to go down three flights of stairs. The good news about this is that it is a spiral staircase:) The joy of living in a palace. I also went grocery shopping for my food this weekend and missed getting off the bus at the right spot so we had to get off at the next one and walk back to the store. Luckily it was not raining at the time and we found some good deals so three people should be able to eat for about 10 pounds this weekend. That means more money for spring break!
Planning spring break is probably the most stressful thing I have ever done. There are so many questions and so many places to go it is hard to decide where I want to go and how long I want to stay in that place. Hopefully I will finish up my plans this weekend though with Lael and Erin.

Classes Begin

So it has been a couple of days since you last heard from me and they have been filled with adventure and new experiences. Sunday was the last day of orientation, but Patti was not feeling too well. Due to that we had three hours to ourselves in the middle of the day. Some of us took this opportunity to further explore the property. Our walk took as to the edge of the land across multiple rivers/creeks and up a 45 degree riverbank that was mostly mud. Needless to say we were a little dirty by the time we got back, but had a blast in the fresh air.
Monday was the first day of classes for everyone in the program. Mine started bright and early at 8:00! Introduction the Emerging Disease seems like it will a very interesting class and only has six people in it. The smallest class I have ever been in. The required Scotland class also looks to be fun. We are all packed into a classroom and the Scottish professor Gerry is a very entertaining person. At the back of our syllabus there was a letter from the Queen stating that the US is now a colony and we need to add the "u" back into all of the words like colour and flavour and there is no longer any football because it is a pansy sport.
After experiencing all new things today was even more amazing. I woke up this morning for breakfast and when I can back to my room there were four peacocks walking up the driveway to the palace. It was amazing! Just think to see peacocks walking around without any fence between them and you. Here is a picture of the four of them. (One of them is named Charlie)

 And here is a picture out of one of my bedroom windows that I took the other day and thought you would enjoy.

Spent most of the day in Edinburgh today while completing the Amazing Race. It was a little cold and rainy but we were able to learn much more about the area we live in and met some wonderful people. Also ate dinner tonight at a spectacular pub that may become a go-to stop called the The Black Bull. While there we got to watch the end of the Scotland v. England rugby game. All in all a very busy, but exciting day.

Today we were told we were to learn how to ride the buses here. It is fairly simple just make sure you know where you are going! We received our bus pass and rode into Edinburgh with someone to give us directions. Only my groups guide got on the wrong bus! Luckily we discovered our mistake before it was too late and quickly changed buses. Once there we got a ticket into Edinburgh Castle and were given the rest of the day to do as we wanted. After spending the day walking through the beautiful castle we rode the bus back to Dalkeith in a smaller group without help (we did not get lost) and ate dinner at the The Buccleuch. It was delicious after a long day of walking. The picture is of the Scottish National War Memorial located within Edinburgh Castle.

Hey all, hope you are doing well. Yesterday I left Madison to start my experience in Scotland. Upon arriving at the Dalkeith Palace the majestic entryway greeted me. Thought you would want to see it too, so here is a picture. Learn from my mistakes though, always make sure your battery is charged before you leave so you can take more than three photos before it dies on your first day somewhere.