Finally, moved in and connected to the internet!

The Balmoral Hotel is the building on the top left, just above the bridge. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I was beyond excited to see it! If only I could visit the room where J. K. Rowling wrote Deathly Hallows...

Well, I meant to use this as a way to keep family and friends back home up to date on my adventures here in Scotland. But between exploring Edinburgh and Stirling, and staying with a wonderful host who had only broadband internet, I haven't been able to stay true to that thus far. Luckily, I've now settled into my room at Stirling University, so from now on I should have no trouble at all in updating this fairly regularly.

The view of Princes Street from atop
Calton Hill...the clock tower is part of the
Balmoral Hotel.

With that said, I think it's time to actually use the blog for its intended purpose, and share my stories of Scotland thus far. The flight all the FYSAE students were on (plus a handful of students from other universities who are studying at Stirling through Arcadia) landed in Edinburgh early on Monday morning. We landed around seven in the morning. Since it's so much further north than Pennsylvania, the days here are even shorter, so it didn't start to get light until around nine. One of the Arcadia employees stationed in Edinburgh met us at the airport and took us by bus to the city, where we checked into Jury's Inn, our hotel for the next few days.

I was so excited to be in Scotland--everything seemed even more exciting, more enthralling than it normally would. I was half-exhausted, since I didn't sleep at all on the flight over, but just being in Edinburgh and knowing that there was so much to see and do was enough to give me a kind of rush. I wanted nothing more than to race through the city and take in as much as I could. A group of friends and I decided to go out into Edinburgh. There were things we wanted to see--we didn't know what, we just wanted to explore and see as much as possible.

We decided just to head out from the hotel and see where we went from there. I was especially excited to find out that our hotel was just across the bridge from the Balmoral Hotel, which is where J. K. Rowling finished writing the last Harry Potter book. We ended up going to an old cemetery on the way up to Calton Hill, which had these great old buildings and monuments. There's a structure that looks like the ruins of the Parthenon in Greece. Edinburgh is called "The Athens of Scotland" for this reason. Pretty much every spot on Calton Hill offered an absolutely amazing view of Edinburgh.

After exploring Calton Hill, we headed back down the hill to Princes Street, the main street through Edinburgh. We checked out some of the shops; I found a place to exchange my money; finally, we decided it was about time to find something for lunch. At this point, the group split. No one could agree on the best way to find a good restaurant, so finally three of us said we were just going to walk up the nearest street and stop wherever looked good. We ended up eating at a small cafe-style restaurant called Pret A Mange. I really liked it--its got healthy, organic foods and drinks, and they put a huge emphasis on recycling and cutting down on waste however possible. I just got a sandwich and a little smoothie, but I was quite impressed!

I think one of my favorite parts of the day had to be the bagpipe player. The whole time we were up on top Calton Hill, we could hear bagpipes playing in the distance. We joked about hearing bagpipes playing constantly in Scotland. I wondered if maybe some people in Scotland play bagpipes for money the way you'll see people in New York City playing guitars, with their cases left propped open in hopes of earning some cash. Sure enough, when we made it to the center of town, we found a man playing the bagpipes, with a case propped open in front of him! It was very entertaining, and it really did make my day.

After lunch, the excitement of being in Scotland started to give way to jet lag. I could not stop yawning, and I really just wanted to get back to the hotel and take a nap before the orientation for that day started. I got back to the hotel around one that afternoon and pretty much immediately fell asleep. I could've slept for hours, but the front desk called the room. Both me and my roommate had fallen asleep, and my alarm was accidentally left on silent, so it wasn't very effective in waking me up. We didn't have much orientation that night--and honestly, I was so sleepy, I don't even remember it well at all! I had to talk myself into eating dinner because I wanted nothing more than to sleep for a good twelve hours. I felt so dead!

I think I'll stop here, because this is already quite the lengthy post, and also because I'm getting pretty tired, so if I keep writing, it'll get progressively harder for the alert mind to understand. A tout a l'heure!