St. Andrews

Since I no longer was able to go to the Isle of Skye like I had planned, Erin and I embarked on an journey to St. Andrews.  St. Andrews is a historic town with a well known golf heritage.  While I was here I went to to the St. Andrews Museum, walked around the streets, got fresh fruit and went to the cutest bakery.  I had a picnic at the beach and then finally went to the Aquarium!  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and the perfect day for an adventure!

St. Andrews Museum

Frog Cake

Carrot Cake

Tanning on the beach

Beach

Great White Shark 

Endless Countryside

Ireland. Well that's a crazy thought.  Yep I had an interesting and crazy time in Ireland.  In fact it will be easier for me if I write to you almost exactly what I have in my journal (with a few censoring things - you will soon enough understand why.

22-March:  
Woke up crazy early and went to the airport, the security was just funny, one girl was struggling....another had a butter knife in her backpack.....8am flight to Dublin.  Arrived in Dublin at 9am, took a giant green bus to Paddy's Palace, which is a crazy name for a hostel if you ask me!  And then couldn't check in until 1pm so we wandered the streets of Dublin, found a bagel shop for lunch.  Walked O'Connor bridge road, saw the beautiful Trinity College, visited LOTS of candy shops, and walked more and more streets. Finally checked in at the hostel and took a much needed power nap.  Went to buy bus passes that would be needed for the rest of the trip.  Went to the best museum ever, the LEPRECHAUN MUSEUM!  Visited O'sheas for dinner, planned some other activities for the rest of the time.  I ate fish & chips and tried a classic Iris drink, Bulmers Cider, delicious.

Trinity College

Leprechaun Museum (I got shrunk!)

Giant Stone

Making Sandwiches

23-March:
6:30am wake-up, shower, breakfast at hostel.
8am bus to Cork, explored Cork a bit...kind of boring.  Bus to Blarney: visit Blarney Castle, kissed the Blarney Stone twice...which was not so good because I seem to lose my luck when later that day we were exploring the grounds and Erin thought it would be a fun picture of us jumping out of the tree...well I landed bad and hurt my ankle and broke a couple ribs booo! But it's okay it didn't stop me from the rest of my trip.  Next we made our way to Killarney, checked in the hostel, had dinner at Corkey's Pub.  At this pub I had the BEST BURGER, seriously I will never forget this burger for the rest of my life, it was amazing!

Kissing the Blarney Stone

The tree I will soon jump out of

24-March:
Today was a day spent in the Cliff's of Moher.  They were stunning and well worth the trip.   Then we explored Limerick where Frank McCort's book Angelas Ashes was set.  Headed back to Killarney and went out to the Killarney Grand.

Cliffs of Moher

25-March:
Started the day just wonderful, traveled through the stunning and breath taking Irish Countryside stopped in Limerick for lunch... Then later that evening we arrived at the airport, checked in as usual...and then went to security.  Here is what my journal says  #@$$%#%%^#%$^#$$$##$$%*%^#$#$%##@%!!!!  Yep the girl who booked our tickets, booked the wrong day back, now we were basically screwed for the rest of our spring break because we need to be in Edinburgh by 9am the next day.  and it would cost 250 euros for a different flight.  So we made our way back to Paddy's Palace and tried not to yell at anyone seeing as the person who messed up wasn't even with us she was off doing who knows what.  So we arrived at paddy's palace.  Room 11, a 10 bed mixed dorm.  It was completely dark when we entered and discovered that our roommates were ALL in bed AND only top bunks were open oh jeez, I was weirded out.  So there it went the rest of the night we made do with what we had to.  

26-March:
Yep, still in Dublin (can you tell I am still upset by this?).  We found the Ginger Twins at breakfast and made plans to hang out with them all day.  We went to the post office and saw the holes from the raid years ago.  Spent most of the day at St. Steven's Green (a park).  It was beautiful out, sunny and in the 60's I even got a tan!  I got Nutella Gelato!  Yum!  Even if we didn't want to still be in Ireland cause it meant missing our trip to the Isle of Skye at least it was warm and nice out.    

Picnic in the Park

Gelato! 

Dalkeith Life

It has come to my attention that I really don't post about my typical days here at Dalkeith Palace, so I figured I should enlighten all of you at what actually happens on a day-to-day basis.  First today is a Tuesday, so I have class at 8am.  This means having my alarm set for 7am....those who know me, know I am not a morning person, especially without coffee.  So that is where my day began.  My alarm went off and I hit the snooze and rolled over in bed.  Then I decided my usual 7am shower could wait until after class, so I reset my clock for 7:30 (I know an extra 30 minutes!).  Finally I got up at 7:30am all 4 of my roommates were still sound asleep and the room was very dark (even though 3 of them have class at 8 as well). I made my way to the bathroom conveniently located 2 doors to the left from my room.  As I entered I squinted my eyes in pain as the lights were much brighter than my dark room.  I then brushed my teeth and washed my face attempted to find an open toilet, but of course with none open I had to go downstairs to find one.  Then I went back to my room to find 1 of my roommates awake, got dressed and made my way to breakfast.  I had a bowl of rice crispies and an apple.  I had Creative Writing but nothing exciting happened today, in fact I had to try my hardest not to fall asleep.  Next I had my midterm for Environmental Biology.  It was fine, I didn't have any problems that I found with it!   After that it was time for lunch, some sort of weird potato and hash mash thing.  It was not good at all.  After lunch I had lots of time since I get done with class at 11:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I went to Lidls (Little's) and got some groceries for Spring Break since I need to pick up a few things.  After that I went on a walk with Gabrielle and Erin.  We fed the horses apples, raced sticks off the bridge, played on the tire swing, and went down the giant slides.  After that I had a delicious dinner (rare to find here) of chicken Kiev, potatoes, and tomatoes.  And now here I am posting about what happened today.         

Tire Swing 

Clide and Clide Jr

I made breakfast Saturday

My hammock on the first beautiful day

Portobello

Today me and a couple friends headed down to the sea in Portobello.  It was not a very nice day in terms of weather, well it was a typically day in Scotland (cold and rainy).  So we decided to face the cold and shiver our way down to the sea.  We walked along on the beach with our shoes off and our feet turning numb.  Along our walk we played with many puppies, found crazy colored sea shells, and saw too many seagulls.  It was a nice walk even though we were freezing cold!  After we were done walking Jacinda and Erin decided to go rinse their sandy feet off in the water, Jacinda was hoping around on one foot trying to get her shoe on just being crazy.  Then we headed up to find the 49bus to get back to Dalkeith.  On the way there was a 4 month old beagle puppy, naturally I had to stop to pet it and the owner asked me if I happened to be at the beach hoping around with one shoe on, I said that was my friend! I thought it was really funny that she noticed! 

Elephants and Bagels

I FINALLY FOUND GOOD COFFEE!!  This has been a problem for me seeing as I am highly addicted to coffee, as most of you should know.  Since I have been in Scotland I have been searching for good coffee seeing as they do not understand what coffee is.  I think they think coffee is water with milk and a drop of coffee flavor or that they think it's tea SO NOT THE SAME! As much as I like a cup of tea I would much rather have a wonderful cup of coffee. So today my wonderful roommate Gabrielle or G-Sista, took me to Elephants and Bagels.  We got two wonderful things, a bagel with cream cheese, and next a cup of deliciously caffeinated coffee.  Thank goodness!! This is now my favorite coffee place here.  I even took a picture of their mugs!  

Stirling Castle and Linlithgow Palace

March 9th, 2012
I went on a house trip to Stirling Castle in the town of Stirling. This is the castle where William Wallace fought his big battle featured in the movie Braveheart.  It was a stunning castle especially since the inner part is a Renaissance style castle so it was painted with bright colors inside and out.  A fun story about this castle is that there is an area called "The Lion's Den" this was because one of the Kings received a lion as a pet!  What an incredible beast to have in your castle! 

After Stirling Castle I headed to Linlithgow Palace. This is an abandoned palace that is now used (at least by us) as a giant playground! Although many people actually tour the building it was fun to run and poke my head out the window and look down and yell until someone else somewhere in the building stuck their head out too! It was quite fun!  

Quote

Scottish Country Dancing

Yesterday (Tuesday, March 7th) Hannah (my host sister) and I went to dinner at our host parents house.  Then we headed off to our first Scottish Country Dancing event.  Oh jeez was it interesting.  First off it was me and Hannah and a bunch of very nice grandparents....luckily there was another exchange student brought along with her host mom, she is from Spain.  So the three of us quickly learned the steps and attempted to dance the dances.  I felt like every time I finally understood what was happening the dance was over! Then after an hour and a half of dancing (seriously these people even had specific shoes!) we were exhausted.  We gave our new friend Blanca our emails, our host moms made plans for the 3 of us (like 5 year olds on a play-date...haha) and off we went back to find our host dad to drive us back to the house.  So Scottish Country Dancing....very interesting. Next week we are trying a different type of dancing although I haven't a clue what it is called except that it is a faster type and is not the 2 types we have learned before.  Alright that is all for now! 

Arthurs Seat

One of the most fantastic things in Scotland is the rolling hills.  These are mostly way up in the highlands however there is a few surrounding the city of Edinburgh.  So on Wednesday before my 4:30pm class I got up early and headed to hike a few of them.  I hiked one called Arthurs Seat.  This is the main peak from a group of hills called Holyrood Park, which was described by Robert Louis Stevenson as a 'Hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design.'