I am of course lying when I say that this is being written from Edinburgh. I left there a few months ago, and have returned to the States. I felt bad just leaving my blog at Prauge, when so much happened in Scotland since then. I'll avoid the stories of exams, and saying goodbye to dear friends and instead focus on the good things that happened during that last month of my great adventure. The blogs about Orkney and my family's visit have been quietly published so as not to flood your inboxes with too many old tales, but if you'd [View Full Entry]

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It literally* took trains planes and automobiles to get Jordan and I started on this journey. The Orkney Isles are at the northern tip of Scotland, and though closer to scotland than Iceland or Norway, they are a far more difficult place to get to. We had to take a train from Edinburgh to Inverness, then switch trains at Inverness to go up to Thurso, then take a bus to the ferry terminal at Scrabster, then take a ferry across the Pentland Firth to the small town of Stromness on the Orkney mainland. Whew! It was exhausting, but well worth it [View Full Entry]

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This will be a very short entry in terms of text, as a few of my readers were actually with me for this particular journey. but I really liked a few of the pictures that I took on Iona, and thought it would be a shame to keep them out of the rest of my travels. In short: My family came to visit me in Scotland the week after I had returned from Spain. Chronologically this entry should be placed between Spain and Paris, but where on earth would the fun be in that? After my return from Spain I took [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! Sorry It's been so long since I updated- there are these silly things called exams that had to be studied for. Luckily, I did quite a bit of studying, and I think I did well. Good thing too, because unlike back in the states the exams here count for anywhere between 50 and 80% of the final grade. Anyways- Here continues the final stop of my European adventure- Prague! Early on Thursday morning we left Tubingen, traveling by train first to Stuttgart, then to Nuremburg. There we switched trains, getting on a far older model of train as we [View Full Entry]

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No, really, a brief stop- This is a very short entry. Since we had to stay for an extra day in Paris (gee, darn.) We had slightly less time (only 24 hours) in Germany. We arrived in Tubingen late at night after a variety of train switches. The next morning we went out to explore the town. Tubingen is a small university town just south of Stuttgart. It's a lovely, very picturesque, very German town. Just one look at the painted plaster and wood buildings tells you exactly where you are. The day we were there happened to be there was [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone! This is the first of many blogs from my spring break adventures. I'm back in Edinburgh right now, enjoying the spring weather and the bustling city- hopefully a new blog about the festivities here will be published in a while. You'll be getting a lot of notifications about new blogs in the coming days, hopefully they won't drive you nuts! Enjoy! My journey started well enough- all flights were on time and I even arrived in Paris a few minutes earlier than expected. I struggled through the process of getting a ticket to the city center on the RER, [View Full Entry]

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30-3-2009 Hola! I write this from a juice bar in Spain. It's an interesting place, right around the corner from where Kelly is in class, and the guys behind the counter seem to speak a variety of languages: Spanish, of course, then English, and I could have sworn that they were speaking French to each other a minute ago. They laughed at my inability to speak Spanish, and my highly American desire to pay for my juice when it was given to me: ''Here in Spain, you go sit at the table, drink it, then pay when you leave'' one of [View Full Entry]

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Castle This past weekend I went with an IFSA-Butler sponsored trip to Loch Lomond. They always do good things, though this was the first trip of the semester, which means TONS of people. It was quite a festive bunch, though slightly exhausting. To deal with the large amount of people Butler hired out an entire hostel, the Loch Lomond Youth Hostel to be specific. The Loch Lomond youth hostel is not your normal backpacking hostel though. It's a castle. An honest to god Castle out in the middle of nowhere. Converted in 1945 using relief funds contributed by American Trade Unions, [View Full Entry]

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... From the Midnight Sun where the Hot Springs Blow! Led Zeppelin definitely knew what they were talking about when they wrote that song. I had that chorus going through my head for the entire weekend! This is the first entry of the new year and new semester- thanks for keeping up! This semester is starting out beautifully courses are more challenging, flatmates are lovely, and more travels! I left late afternoon on Thursday after Practical (lab) my professor was very understanding which is terrific because he comes across as a very grumpy/sarcastic sort, and he let me take a practical [View Full Entry]

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This weekend our program organized an expedition to York. I had missed the first program-organized trip to Inverness (but I'd already been there, so it's ok) due to a field trip, so I was really looking forward to this one. Luckily, It didn't disappoint. We took a train down, following the coast. Rowan and I had pre-booked seats together, at a table, and met some interesting people on the way down, namely, a harried mom with two adorable blonde girls, a fashion buyer from york, who told us where to go while we were there, and a bio-chem graduate student from [View Full Entry]

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