First days in Edinburgh

Edinburgh at sunrise.

Goodbye America, hello United Kingdom! I wasn't planning on keeping a travel blog because I often start things and never finish them (oh hey there "sewing" project in 5th grade, how ya doing last semester's reading?) but there's so many things that I never want to forget! So, armed with my point-and-shoot (thanks one day of Photography Club), I thought I would at least try. That is my motto for my time abroad: to try new things and say "yes" to things. Don't let your mind go to the gutter. Life enriching things! Hence, Rule #76. No excuses! Go backpacking in a different country every weekend! Talk to that old Scottish man in the pub! Get lost (for a little bit! See below.)! 

These first days have been spent with my fellow IFSA-Butler program students in the Apex International Hotel. The very first day, we arrived at the hotel around 8:30 am and everyone was exhausted and jet lagged. As room keys were distributed in small groups, starting at 1:30pm or so, people slowly started to disperse. Alas, who was left until the very last aka 4:30pm because of a computer problem? Me and my roommate Anna. When we got our keys, we were so happy we wanted to do this:

credit: google images

But we actually did this:

Edinburgh is an incredibly beautiful city. I especially love it because this is where the love of my life JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books. Dork Alert!!! But seriously, you can imagine my excitement when one of the first places I discovered as we wandered around was The Elephant House, the coffee shop where Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book:

A very excited me.

We also saw the super expensive hotel where Rowling finished the Half-Blood Prince, the homes of Alexander Graham Bell, Robert Louis Stevenson, some important general whose name I don't remember, and the guy who discovered chloroform. There are also two super old buildings that date back to before Columbus sailed the ocean blue (in 1492! The only year I can remember...) The grave of the famous dog Greyfriars Bobby (who slept by his dead master's grave for 14 years) was also pointed out to us. It's also exciting to note that in this graveyard is a headstone labeled Tom Riddle. He Who Must Not Be Named, anyone? 

All the Harry Potter lust aside, the Edinburgh Castle is also very impressive. It's located on top of a massive hill and is definitely a great help in locating where you are around the city. This is a must for a girl who still needs a GPS to go to the mall from her house. 

The Edinburgh Castle

For some reason, I thought I had massive amounts to write but can't really think of anymore at the moment...I'm exhausted! This may be because my friend Rachel and I got very lost while walking back home after an exciting trip to IKEA with Danielle. We later discovered that we had walked about 5 times more than we needed to in a humongous loop lugging our bags and sweating and getting blisters. We were not pleased. Especially when we finally made it back in time to see all the rest of the freshers leaving Kincaid's Court (aka Kinky Court...ah the sweet sounds of debauchery that is coming through my window) in a huge mass for the Cowgate Pub Crawl. So instead we went grocery shopping! 

Rachel braving the haggis (on top of mash). It was very interesting tasting. I'm not sure if it's a good interesting.

Life in Edinburgh is exciting and also weird. I'm getting used to the accent, which varies a lot. My American accent is turning into mush. It's definitely hard starting from scratch--not having a lot of material things, no groceries, no Williams entries...I couldn't find any shampoo or sponges in the market and only Rachel could find the crackers (and "jelly" is not pb&j jelly!).  I'm currently now in my new "flat" and not at all unpacked and haven't met any of my flatmates yet. I'm bracing myself for an epic Fresher's Week...I think this is going to be an amazing semester!