SUNSHINE!

It's so bright and sunny today! I've only seen one cloud! The sky is so blue and it makes me deliriously happyyy! :)

When I woke up, this is what I saw:

BLUE SKY. It rained all yesterday, and it's been gray and overcast all week. I've got this childish glee (even though I could see my breath on the way to Latin) that has left me listening to Michelle Branch, of all things. =P

An update, though: the strep is gone. Mostly. I've still got a bit of a sore throat, and I wouldn't dare try to sing, but I can talk and laugh and behave like a (mostly) normal human being again. I was on the penecillin for two and a half days before deciding something was wrong (it was) and going to the university health center and asking for amoxicillin instead. Turns out I'm not allergic, but "intolerant" of penicillin.

Whatever that means.

But I'm mostly better now. And yesterday, I spent two and a half hours in the library just to study Lain. (I'm struggling.) And then went and did archery for three hours. (Archery again today! And Thursdays, apparently, are pub night at Koko's. Should be interesting.) And last night, I bought airline tickets to meet a beautiful blondie friend from back home in Berlin, Germany, in mid-November!

Eating time now. (Black olive pizza, perhaps?) And then I'm going to find somewhere sunny and luxurious to lie down and study Latin before my other two classes.

And by luxurious, I mean, like, grassy. :)

Penicillin dreams?

(EDIT: Not sure how coherent this is. I’m feeling a little out of it.)

I had really, really, reallyreallyreally weird dreams last night. Pythons that tasted like chocolate chip cookies and clown-zombies that we had to shoot and I think we might’ve been in Iraq—and by we I mean (I think I mean) me and my platoon. I think it was my platoon, because we had a captain and we were all wearing Marine-ish stuff and knew how to use giant guns. And I think we were discussing/considering my turning into a vampire because I was the second-weakest in the group and then I’d be able to help protect us.

The butcher who dealt with the pythons was a very sweet guy, though. Italian, I think. Like someone you might imagine meeting in Chicago, though, because he definitely spoke English. I’m not sure why he was in Iraq, but he was helping his wife plan some kind of celebration. It might’ve been for a wedding reception. But I distinctly remember that at one point he held up an enormous piece of skinned meat and told her, “See this? It’s not good enough. Too soft.” And then he tossed it down on the worktable and the meat oozed the way undercooked cookie dough will when you try to get it off the cookie sheet. It would’ve been super gross, except I could see the chocolate chips in it.

Very odd.

Too many vampire stories? Maybe. I finished a thirty-three-story-long vampire anthology that tended to scare the crap out of me a few weeks ago, and I just started reading Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, so yes, there’s the distinct possibility that all had something to do with the apocalypse scenario and the discussion about ruining my life in the long run by turning me into a vampire so I could protect people in Iraq.

But as terrible as the clown-zombie apocalypse was, everyone was nice enough to me and each other that I reeeeeally didn’t want to wake up. The captain and the python butcher especially. They were looking out for me, which is one of the most wonderful things I can imagine after spending three days sick as a dog and looking out for myself.

Maybe that’s why I was willing to consider the whole turning-into-a-vampire thing. To be able to protect the people who were nice enough to protect me from zombie-clowns.

Who were really frigging creepy and scary-looking, by the way. And I’m not even afraid of clowns.

Strep throat. Yuck.

It’s been a very long week. A very long four days of classes. I’m already drowning in schoolwork, to the point where I’m seriously considering switching into at least one easier class. (I guess the education abroad advisors weren’t kidding when they said the upper-level classes here were on-par with graduate classes. Ugh.)

I joined the archery club, though. I like those guys. They’re funny and silly and fun to hang out with.

I also ended up catching strep throat. Spent all yesterday in bed, feverish. (I never knew where I was when I woke up—kept thinking the noises everyone else was making was my little brother, or the people I’d lived with during freshman year. At one point I woke up and thought the coats I’d hung on the drying rack were dementors.) I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t do anything (including homework or fun reading. Not cool). Finally at around five AM I managed to drag myself out of bed and to my computer to look up the times for student health.

Student health isn’t open on the weekends. I saw that on their website and was so discouraged I almost put my head down on my desk and went back to sleep. All that meant was more work, more stuff to do to take care of myself before I could crawl back under the covers.

So I called what turned out to be the “royal infirmary” (the hospital). They asked a bunch of questions, which sucked because I had to speak around my swollen throat, but they arranged and paid for a cab to come pick me up to get me there for a nine-thirty AM appointment. (I had a sudden surge of adoration for the British medical system at that point.)

So now I’m on antibiotics and tylonal and am trying to drink more water. I’m also having a sugar craving, but I can’t swallow well enough to eat yet.

You know what sounds really good, though? My brother’s chocolate chip muffins. Mmmm.

A Mostly-Calm Weekend (Part 3)

Sunday was even calmer than Saturday, so this will probably be short. (Well, that and I have my second class of the year in about an hour, and still have a few things to do beforehand.)

I went off to the Archery World Championships at Prince’s Gardens (I think that’s what it’s called—it’s the Something Gardens off Prince’s Street, anyway) to watch the women’s compound semis and finals and the men’s recurve semi and finals.

First off, don’t ever let anybody—even me—tell you that recurve isn’t as accurate as compound. It’s a little less reliably accurate, maybe, but there were still plenty of perfect sets. And both events were shot from the same distance. I don’t know exactly how far it was, but it had to’ve been close to eighty yards. Every time someone let an arrow off, it went hissing through the air alongside the stands. (SSssht!) That was cool. Even cooler was trying to imagine the sound a thousand arrows would make during some Hollywood blockbuster. :)

The scores for both men and women were incredibly close. In both instances, the difference between gold and silver was a single arrow. The American guy, Brady Ellison, won gold (beating out the South Korean, which surprised me—they always seem to win archery tournaments. =P) and the Amercian woman came in third. Apparently Brady Ellison has been doing some sort of cancer fundraiser, and his sponsors have agreed to match whatever he wins. And when he got up on the podium, he said he’d hit $10,000. Pretty cool to see someone doing such a good thing for the world. :)

Something funny I noticed—once the British woman had been knocked out, the crowd seemed to gravitate toward cheering for the American. Kind of interesting, I thought, since I’ve been told multiple times (all by Americans before I left) that they’re not so crazy about us.

Pictures of the matches to come!

A Mostly-Calm Weekend (Part 2)

After the soccer game, I went to England and Scotland's flat to hang out. (It's so nice! Every room has the most ornate crown molding.) Melbourne, who'd ditched the soccer match about halfway through in favor of lunch, came over and the guys cooked us dinner! It was maybe made with what I suspect was an overabundance of cinnamon, but it was suuuuper tasty. And the company was great--Melbourne, England (who cooked), Scotland, their other flatmate and another of their friends (whom I do not have codenames for yet, unfortunately, because the other flatmate is from England and their friend is Scottish. I should've known I was going to regret naming them England and Scotland.)

They told a bunch of wonderful, hilarious stories about their previous attempts to cook for friends (all the while hinting that they'd love it if we would reciprocate, which I still need to remember to talk to Melbourne about) and general escapades. For example, there's a girl they know who studied abroad last year and left her stuff at their place rather than put it in storage. She's back in town now, and you know, wants it back.

Except they don't have all of it. Another girl took off with her mirror, they drank the alcohol, a pillow got tossed in the rubbish bin because it was too dirty to have around. Stuff like that. They've decided to solve it by dodging her, of course.

This same girl showed up on their front stoop after dinner. I've never seen so many boys devolve into a tizzy so fast. I mean, I've seen girls do it at sleepovers and stuff back when I was ten or twelve, but three twenty-year-old guys...?

They dove out of the way of the windows, scuttled to the light switches and turned everything off, and then convinced Melbo urne to answer the intercom connected to the front porch so the girl they were dodging might, on the off chance, think she had the wrong building. Melbourne stood at the intercom going, "Hello? Hello? ...Hello?" for several (long) minutes before there was a thump on the staircase.

The guys all jumped, then turned and ran, pushing and giggling, to lock themselves in the kitchen. (Yes, there was a door.)

(And yes, they did eventually come out. But not until she'd left.)

A Mostly-Calm Weekend

So either during the party across the hallway or on the way to the club that we didn't end up going to, Scotland issued a challenge to several Chileans that were helping to host the party across the hallway. A soccer challenge.

They couldn't resist, of course. And neither could Scotland help but brag about his own skills on the pitch (field), which just made them more eager to assert how much better Chileans are at soccer than any European.

I got drafted onto the Scottish team. After having not played in about a year and a half.

Okay, honestly, I didn't mind at all. I was just nervous. I tell people how many years I've played, and they assume I'm good. Not just good, but good. After all, how could someone not play for eight straight years without getting good?

By playing like me, that's how. =P

Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed the morning after the water fight and jogged (not literally) down to the only bank branch open in Edinburgh on a Saturday to apply for an account. Then I stopped for breakfast on the way back, blogged that super long post about the marvelous three days I'd had, and got ready for le futball. Or, as I've been told it's called here, "real football."

Melbourne came with, mostly to hang out and watch but partly because I didn't know where the Meadows were. (I'm so glad she did. I never would have found them on my own.) We were already late when we left, but nobody else showed up for another half hour or so, and the Chileans canceled/postponed.

It was okay, though. We found a bunch of Spaniards to whup us instead.

They'd already been playing, though not for too long. The way the teams ended up were the five Spanish guys versus "the rest of the world" (Scotland, America, Germany and... somewhere else.)

There were six of us compared to their five players, and we definitely didn't score as many times as they did, but we played long enough and hard enough that it wasn't an utterly humiliating defeat. I held my own well enough, I think. I couldn't keep up physically (soooo out of shape that it's embarrassing), but I played smart enough that I'm okay with how everything turned out. I almost scored twice, and got injured twice. That's always the fun part. Unless you're in serious pain.

The first time, one of the Spaniards crashed into me and sent us both flying. I twisted to keep from landing badly, then rolled to keep him from landing on me. The wind wasn't even knocked out of me, but he didn't get up right away. I didn't mean to belittle his manliness or whatever, but everyone else laughed when I went, "Ohmygod, are you okay?"

Oh, well. =P

The second time happened when I had another run in with a different Spaniard. (I think.) I think he might've kicked me, or grazed me with his shoe (or something). It ached a bit, but I didn't even glance at it until another guy made a horrified face and asked what happened. Turns out I had blood dripping down my leg. Oops.

I didn't have any tissues, so I started using an old slip of paper that told how to apply for a job at the Sweet Factory at North County Fair to mop up my leg. Then, thankfully, the German guy on my team handed me a few tissues, and I got to rub hand sanitizer over an open wound. Not as much fun as it might sound like, let me tell you.

(Both pictures, by the way, are of the Meadows, where we played.)

It's only... wait, what day is it?

I have to say this once more: the wind here is freezing. It would be quite pleasant without the freezing arctic gusts whooshing through the city. (I don't know if the wind comes from the arctic. I made that part up, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

I got up before noon today! It's been an incredibly productive day, actually. I found the gym, wandered through the sport societies (school clubs) fair and shot a few arrows with a 26 pound bow (at only ten yards, though. But still, 26 lbs is more than I usually shoot), found George Square and David Hume Tower, finished matriculation (registration, getting all my classes sorted out, meeting with my academic advisor, the extremely nice and slightly portly Dr. Keith Hughes.), went food shopping at two different places, bought a plate and food storage container at another place (and spent fewer than 20 pounds for all of it!), aaand... then I went home, cleaned chicken with the dullest knife on the planet, and took a nap. Because I was exhausted.

I'm still pretty exhausted. I set an alarm, though, and was only out for a max of half an hour. It was probably closer to a quarter of an hour. Then I got up and half-raced across town (well, I thought it was across town, but it's really only about five or six blocks away) to the Tmobile and Vodaphone stores to talk to someone about domestic and international plans.

The stores were absolutely packed, and as it turns out, I'm basically screwed when it comes to phone plans. Laaaaame.

I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but according to the Tmobile woman most students in my position just have two pay-as-you-go phones: one for international texting/calling and one for domestic stuff. More incredible lameness.

The Real Windy City

This second video (below) is even harder to understand--I got up out of the depths of the graveyard and the wind just kicked it into high gear. Watch or not; it's mostly just more meandering and fancy headstones.

I got lost again yesterday. It was a little more worrisome this time--I've wondered, multiple times since landing, how to tell if I somehow ended up in a seedy part of Edinburgh. The whole city is kind of dank and oppressive and gray, and there are definitely hobos hanging around the touristy areas. I'd started thinking that maybe the university was maybe in a not-so-great neighborhood.

Until I got lost. (Again.)

After I visited the graveyard on the Royal Mile, I started walking back to campus when I spotted a map displayed out in front of a tourist center. And lo and behold, Prince's St. is not part of the Royal Mile. It was one street farther on.

The whole point of finding Prince's St. is that I was told there was both a Vodaphone and Tmobile store over there. (And as it turns out, there is also a Burger King and numerous other designer clothing stores. The Scottish do love their designer brands.) By the time I got there, everything was all closed up, unfortunately--everything tends to close kind of early over here.

BUT on the way from the Royal Mile to Prince's St. I had to cross a bridge that goes over the train station. It was SO WINDY and GUSTY. The bridge walls were about five feet up, so there was no chance I'd go over, but the weird gusting--first making it hard to walk forward, then helping me speed along, then shoving me into the wall--made me very nervous. I had to consciously restrain myself from trailing my hand along it as I walked.

After I found the closed-up phone stores, I took a different bridge back over the train station. It was only a block down from South Bridge, but when I came out on the other side the streets were considerably less occupied. No cause for alarm in that alone, but then I glanced up and realized that the street was lined with warehouses decorated with graffiti and all had broken windows.

Uh-oh. Or, more accurately, oh, shit. A young woman walking by herself at sundown through a not-so-marvelous neighborhood--doesn't that just beat all? It's everything any adult has ever told girls not to do in their hometowns, let alone foreign cities.

It turned out fine, though. Some creeper hiding in a car catcalled me, and there were some shady looking people hanging about, but I started walking back in the direction of South Bridge. Mind you, I didn't just retrace my steps. I figured there had to be some connecting street that would be a shorter distance than just retracing my steps.

South Bridge, though, ended up looming out of the clouds. Edinburgh has lots of hills, lots of ups-and-downs. The streets follow those ups-and-downs, and I'd ended up far below where I wanted to be.

So when I spotted a giant staircase leading in the general direction I was aiming for, I crossed the street and started climbing--even though it was called "Fleshmarket Close." ("Close," it seems, is kind of like "street." So, Fleshmarket Street. I just about had a heart attack, but I took it anyway.)

Aaaand the stairs opened up into a street I recognized! I'd been there the day before while I was lost! Ta-daaaa!

Although, to be perfectly honest, the stairs opened up on a street I'd taken about a dozen steps down and then decided it looked to sketch to wander down in the dark. But at least I knew where I was, how to get off that street, and how to get back to the dorm. And that's exactly what I did. I was really too rattled to stay out any longer. And my feet were killing me from all that walking.

Room Tour

Good Night

I think it's going to be a good year.

After my nap, I left the dorm (which is in absolutely terrible shape, like something out of a movie when they're trying to make a point about the awful conditions some people live in. Okay, maybe not quite so drastic, but it's pretty bad.) and I wandered around for a while. I didn't intend to be gone long, so I only wore flip flops.

And then I got a little turned around.

In all honesty, I knew how to get back, but it was such a loooong way that I kept turning onto different streets thinking that this one surely had to be a shortcut of some sort. So I actually wandered around Edinburgh for about three hours.

It turned out fine, though, even though my feet are still killing me.

Once I got back, I was trying to be productive--unpack some more, pull out the hangers I bought and start clearing the already-considerable mess I've made. I left the door open since I'd only met one other girl in my twelve-girl suite (codename Blondie). She invited me out to a club, but I couldn't remember what it was called or where it was, so I'd resigned myself to staying in and just going to bed early.

And then another girl stumbled by, whom I shall call Alaska, after her state of origin, even though she goes to Dartmouth. She's very friendly, very people-oriented. She'd been hanging out with a boy (codename: England) who is a U of Edinburgh student but who'd studied abroad at her school last year. That's where they met.

So Alaska and England were headed off to a couple different "freshers" activities (freshman orientation stuff--mostly clubs and bars on campus that were only open to freshmen, actually) and Alaska immediately invited me along. I leaped at the chance, since, you know, I'd like to get along with everyone I'm living alongside this year.

England ended up taking us the long way to the freshers' stuff, but on the way we ran into a girl Alaska goes to Dartmouth with (codename: Arizona), and at the library bar (yes, the campus library has a bar and a pool hall in it!) we met a guy from St. Lucia. I didn't have any ID on me that proved I was over 18, so I didn't drink, but we all hung out at the different bars, went to a few clubs to dance, met a few more girls from my suite, and baaasically had a jolly good time.

(Apparently, that's quite a pretentious thing for an Englishperson to say. Not surprising.)

And now it's a quarter to four in the morning.

Good night. (It was.)

Wow. Just... wow.

This has quite probably been the most stressful two weeks of my life. Packing is stressful enough. Doing it twice is annoyingly stressful. Doing it twice, then missing your flight, then showing up at the wrong gate before FINALLY catching your (my) flight is basically unbearable.

I haven’t slept in I-don’t-know-how-many-hours, so this will probably either short and rambly or long and rambly. Thank god for spellcheck. And internet connections, while we’re counting our blessings.

So! I just arrived in Edinburgh. My bed is half made. I gave up halfway through getting the duvet cover on, because it’s ridiculously enormous. Which I suppose I’ll be grateful for in a few months when winter sets in, but right now I’m just beyond caring about it. (But I have a pillow!!! I am not beyond caring about that. :) At ALL.)

There are no elevators in my building. I’m on the seventh floor. (Sixth? Maybe.) I also have two fifty-pound suitcases, a backpack, and a duffel bag. OH MY GOD SO TIRED is all I really have to say about that. A very nice French girl offered to help me get my stuff up, but I don’t think she realized how much god-awful-ness would be involved because she definitely pulled the “I’m French and don’t speak any English so I’m leaving now because this goddamn luggage weighs a ton” routine.

She was nice enough to help for four flights, though, so I didn’t call her on it.

I have my own room, which is wonderful. There’s more furniture in here than I know what to do with. For some reason, there’s another, smaller desk beneath the regular desk. I don’t know what to do with it quite yet. Maybe I’ll just… put it in the middle of the floor. After I finish unpacking and hide my suitcases. Or block the door with it?

I also have a phone. (And internet. Thank god. Again. Hallelujah and all that.) And bookshelves!

Pictures (possibly a video) to come. After I find my converter and charge my camera.