Hello everyone!
This was my last week in Edinburgh; I’m surprised how fast time really does fly. This week was jam packed with activities. Last Saturday a group of us American students went on a pub-crawl on Rose Street. It was really fun. We went to several pubs, including a karaoke pub in which Scottish people were belting out anything from Beatles to Elton John, it was pretty funny. On Monday Edinburgh had the greatest weather ever. A group of us went and chilled on Arthur’s Seat, which is a giant dormant volcano next to the residence halls. It was really crowded there and everyone got sunburn. As usual, a group of us went to the pub quiz at one of the student unions. We got second place! That is our highest score ever. We are usually in the bottom half due to the fact that we don’t know anything about British sports and/or British television shows. Luckily for us, there were more general knowledge questions. We won £10! It was exciting.
The next day my friend Caroline and myself were going to go to the zoo. We caught a bus and headed over there, unfortunately it was a bank
holiday which meant that everyone was bringing their kids to the zoo - the line to get into the zoo practically wrapped around the entire zoo. Instead, we went souvenir shopping for our families. We also went to the University of Edinburgh’s Museum of Surgery. This was the coolest/grossest thing ever. The first exhibit we walked through was a tribute to dentistry. There, we saw how the tools became refined and eventually saw the evolution of the dental procedures that we are accustomed to, and let me just say; we’ve come a long way. From there we saw countless organs/limbs/bones in jars with different ailments. They were divided up by different categories. There was a section devoted to diseases, mutations, and possibly the coolest: battlefield surgery. The thing that made the entire place eerie was that we weren’t looking at fake bones with musket balls lodged in the femur- they were real.
The next day Caroline and I finally made it to the zoo. We got there just as the zookeepers were just finishing feeding all the animals so the animals were all active. We saw all of the exhibits and even saw the penguin parade. Everyday at 2
o’clock, the zoo has a group of ten or so penguins walk around a small park next to the penguin tank. It was really neat to see. We saw the only koalas in the United Kingdom, they were sleeping and being boring so we went into this bird house where we could purchase a cup of nectar and the birds ate it out of our hands. It was really fun.
The rest of the week was filled with playing countless games at the library bar and studying for my European History final. On Saturday I woke up early (7:30) and went to my last final in Edinburgh. It went pretty well, no surprises. After that I did some packing. The weirdest thing happened while I was packing, I heard thunder! Usually it rains in Edinburgh, we never have lightening or thunder, so this was big. In the afternoon, a group of us went on the Royal Mile Challenge. It is essentially a pub-crawl. We made it to almost all of the pubs. We started at 4:30 and ended at 11:30. It was amazing.
Today I am just packing. I can’t believe I only get two suitcases to cram
everything in my room into… somehow I managed. Tomorrow I go back to the States. I have a 9:20 plane to Newark and from there to O’Hare. My mom is having a welcome home party for me in the evening; I hope I don’t have too much jet lag! It has been an amazing privilege to come and study in another country and I will always look back on it with fond memories. Thanks to everyone who has read this blog, I’m glad that it has been fun to so many people!
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