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Published: July 30th 2015
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Hello wonderful people! I'm a wee early with this blog as I normally write my blog on Sunday evenings, however I felt that I have already done some fun things this week and I have a completely packed weekend coming up, so I decided that instead of writing a novel for you all, which I hope would be a best seller and I would give you all autographed copies, I decided to split this week and weekend into two separate blogs. So stay tuned for my next blog that will hopefully appear Sunday if I make it until then! I would like to first take a brief moment to thank all the brave men and women, one of my uncles included, who are attempting to fight a fire at home that has grown to I believe over 500 acres in the span of a few days. They have all been working very hard 24/7 in over 100 degree heat on top of heat from the fire, and I pray for their continued safety. Now, back to rainy Scotland. On Monday and Tuesday I endured my three hour class, which has turned out to be quite fun. It's always fun to have
a lecture with a Scottish professor and 11 American female students, and halfway through almost every lecture we stop to talk about the differences between Scotland and America. It's always a very interesting discussion, and always makes me realize how much I will miss it here after I leave. On Wednesday a flatmate and I finally made it up to Wallace Monument. For those of you who are unaware of this monument, much like myself before I arrived here, it is a tribute to William Wallace and is a large very tall monument that sits directly behind campus and I have the privilege of being able to see it from my kitchen window every day, as well as anywhere that I am on campus. Lucky me, eh? There's a lot more history behind it that I never remember, so you'll have to look that up for yourselves. Basically, it's about Braveheart. Who doesn't love Braveheart? Historical inaccuracies and all! It's at the very most a 10 minute walk from campus and thankfully we caught a nice and sunny day, which are few and far between in Scotland. It's a basically vertical building that sits on top of a hill, so
the view even from the bottom of the monument is lovely. There are 246 steps to the top, however I'm for certain that they are lying and that it's more like 1,000, as all of those "246" steps are completely spiral. Yes, I did get very dizzy. No, I did not trip. Thankfully. At certain points there are three rooms on three separate levels that depict different aspects of William Wallace's life and such. Finally after climbing the last of the steps and after I could not see straight any longer, we reached the top. The view from the top is simply beautiful, as are all views from any high point in Scotland. You can see for what seems like many miles and since the sun was out it made it that much more enjoyable. I always love going to tall view points, and even though I'm sure all of my pictures from said points look identical to one another, I love them all. Going down the stairs was not quite as much of a task as going up, but I think I got dizzier faster. Spiral stairs seem to be in every castle and important historical building in Scotland,
and they are always terrible, and I do not recommend it. Now onto what has been perhaps one of my favorite parts of my entire trip thus far. Today, and friend and I traveled 45 minutes via bus to the very tiny town of Aberfoyle to do Go Ape. In a nut shell, Go Ape is a large ropes course set in the Trossachs near Loch Lomond that includes various tasks. And it's all high up in the trees in a forest. And to get to said course, you go across a 400 meter zip line that's 150 feet above the forest floor. And then you take one back to get out of the ropes course. It's wonderful. I live for all things that include adrenaline and all things thrilling, so this was my haven. Our check in time was at noon, but the closest time the bus could get us there was around 10, so we had a couple of hours to kill. We decided to go find where to check in so that we knew for future reference, and on the way up the trail we began to see excerpts from Alice in Wonderland accompanied by props from
the passage. The last one was "Into the Rabbit Hole" and it led what looked like a huge nest which was to resemble the inside of the rabbit hole. I have absolutely no idea why they are there, but they are quite interesting and fun to follow all the way down the path. We continued down the path and came across a little bridge that crossed just a small patch of grass. In that grass, hidden in the trees, were people-shaped mirrors. Neither of us noticed them at first, but they were terrifying once we did. We then found a lovely waterfall (which the zip line goes right over the top of!) and some nice hammocks that we decided to lay in. They were quite relaxing. The walk in the forest reminded me very much of the trails up the North Umpqua and it made me a bit homesick, but it was also like having my own bit of Oregon right there with me, which means that my family and friends can just come here and there is no need for me ever to leave! I'm going to need you all to start booking flights, please. After sitting for a
while we walked back up to check in, and then it was go time! We got harnessed up and the instructor went through safety stuff and then sent us off down the zip line. The view going across was wonderful even though I'm pretty sure some bugs ran into my face. Once on the other side, we began the ropes courses. There are 5 sections, each with probably 5 or 6 ropes and obstacles to get across as you make your way through the trees. All of the obstacles are quite a ways in the air, and we rarely touched the ground throughout the entire session. I wish I could explain every obstacle, but perhaps my favorite was one where you are hooked to essentially a long rope, and then you jump off of the platform on the tree and you swing across into a giant net. It doesn't sound nearly as fun as it was, but it was great. Once we finished we took the long zip line back and I was so sad for it to be over. I wish that there were courses like these on the west coast, however I think many of them are east or in the midwest. Needless to say, I very thoroughly enjoyed myself and I wish it didn't have to end. Tomorrow, I leave the university at 5 a.m. (yes, that is a.m. Yes, they want to make us miserable) to head off to Belfast in Northern Ireland for my class excursion. I'm quite excited about it, obviously besides the leaving at an ungodly hour part. We fly out and back into Glasgow airport, and right after arriving back in Glasgow I catch a train with a friend to head down to Liverpool for the night. It is going to be a veeeerrrrry long day, probably on little sleep, but I am very excited for both trips. My professor mentioned that he would buy us drinks in Belfast, so I suppose that's a good incentive. I hope everyone has a lovely rest of the week, and I look forward to sharing my sleepless filled weekend with you all when I return. Cheers!
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