Goodbye America, Hello Scotland!

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Day One: Flight

First, it was Houston to Newark, which is easy. Just three and a half hours of whatever movies are on the seat back in front of you, right? Not this time. The entertainment system was down, but I didn't mind. It gave the opportunity to people watch (and practice my Sherlock-inspired skills of deduction).

Flight Buddy #1:

This man is a big burly guy from Germany, I think. He enjoys his armrest space as well as gourmet cheese and Balmont red wine. He was quite unhappy about the lack of entertainment. There was a huge gold ring on the pointer finger of his right hand, I mean huge. Is it a Super Bowl ring? Some sort of German Mafia jewelry? It still remains a mystery.

(Update: ring has a torch symbol on the face and something University on the side, so it's most likely a school ring. I was hoping for German Mafia.)

Second flight was the big one- Newark to Edinburgh.

I'm pretty good with long overnight flights, but when I sat down, the entertainment system was once again broken. But only mine. On a six hour flight, I <em style="line-height: 1.42857143;">need that entertainment system. My Flight Buddy #2 was going to be this sweet old Scottish man, but I changed seats to have a working screen. So...

Flight Buddy #2:

I don't know what made this couple so angry, but they looked at me like the empty seat I was taking was sacred ground or something. We stayed on our respective sides of the seats and I watched The Kingsman for the first time (great movie). It was less painful than I thought, even though the woman kept accidentally touching me in my sleep.

Two hours of sleep later, I arrived at the airport in Edinburgh. I awkwardly sat by myself, trying to figure out which young adults were the API students and which were normal travelers. After probably an hour and a half of covertly watching other people, I found our director Rebecca and stood with her. Thankfully, everyone else I had been looking at were API kids and joined us. One by one, our eleven students wandered in and we hopped on a bus to the University of Stirling campus.

Time to unpack and rest? Nope.

The walk around campus was worth the exhaustion, though. The grounds are beautiful and green and America is cool, but this is better. We even had lunch on the grass in front of the loch. After learning where everything is (hopefully I can retain hat knowledge), we had a fun little safety meeting where we listened to a guy talk really fast in each of the different accents in Great Britain, and learned not to walk back to campus alone at night in the winter or you'll freeze to death and be found two days later. Quite informative. Only then were we allowed to get our keys and drop our luggage off at our rooms.

Unpacking and rest then? Of course not.

And again, the waiting was worth it. We rode a bus to Stirling center and wandered. Highlights: there is a shop called the Bluebell Tearoom that serves amazing afternoon tea (which is very different than high tea, I’ve been informed), Costa Coffee is the most popular coffee brand in the UK, and there is a really cheesy Tex Mex place that I as a Texas must try and will be very judgmental about. What I remember from yesterday the most, though, was dinner.

Bless API for scheduling a three course meal at Henderson's Bistro, a fancy place with fancier table settings. Rebecca told us which dishes were the most Scottish and which were so American that she'd be angry with us if we ordered them. I ended up getting a rosemary and red wine lamb casserole, which is actually not a casserole and more like a stew. The girl that was sitting across from me (Courtney) decided to be adventurous and try black pudding potato cakes. If you don't know what black pudding is, Google it. Actually don't, just know it's pretty gross, at least in my opinion. You can see her opinion of it up at the top. There was also a fire. Not in Henderson’s of course, or I’d be saying that part first. It was down the street where we had been less that thirty minutes before, which is still pretty frightening. The conversation went like this:

“Does something smell like campfire to you?”

“Yeah. What is that?”

“Guys... there’s a huge cloud of black smoke out there.”

“...”

“Guess something’s on fire.”

Firetrucks came quickly and put it out (I think), but we never went back to see what it was. I’m still curious.

Then we finally got to unpack and go to sleep. What I didn't know was at there's only about five hours of darkness here in Stirling, so after emptying my suitcases and vowing to put everything away the next day, I went to bed in the bright light of 11:00 pm. Morning light woke me up and I immediately thought "Oh my god, I'm late!" But it was actually 4:30 am. This might take a while to get used to.

Day Two: Exploring

Today was our introduction trip to Edinburgh (pronounced Eh-din-bruh by the locals). For those who know me well, you know that I like being on time to things, if not early. Our bus from Stirling to Edinburgh was so late and took so long, we ended up staying in Edinburgh for maybe two hours instead of four. +10 points for API because they’re planning us another Edinburgh day trip for later in the month.

Regardless of our short time there, it was really interesting. I’ll definitely explore the Royal Mile, a mile long street between the Holyrood Palace and the Edinburgh Castle. Also on the list is the Elephant House, birthplace of the one and only HARRY POTTER series. And the Edinburgh castle itself. And all of the Old Town. So... I’ll be re-visiting pretty much the entire city.

I will state for the record that I am navigationally challenged. I use a GPS to get to places in the town I’ve lived in for thirteen years. That being said, Director Rebecca was teaching us how to navigate our area (because we’ll be living here for a while). She put us on a bus and told us to find our way home. Edinburgh to Stirling was fine, just that one bus there. But from Stirling to the campus was an entirely different story. We found the bus stop to get onto the bus, but we didn’t know which bus was the right one. It was either 63, or 54, or 54A, or 62, or some other combination of numbers and letters. We read the signs wrong (I’m still not sure how to read them) and it was getting later and later. We were supposed to be back to campus by 5:00 pm for a welcome reception, at it was 4:47 when we got to the bus stop. We thought we had the right bus, but the driver told us to wait for a different one. Then we tried to remember if that one had passed us already. It was a bit of a mess. At 4:56, we got on the right bus and left.

We were only five minutes late getting back to campus, but we had been given three different answers to the question “Where is the reception again?” We tried the place closest to the campus entrance and it was wrong. So we tried another place... also wrong. The third place was right, but we got there just as it ended. Let it also be stated for the record that I’m extremely un-athletic and our campus is made of hills, so this place was difficult to get to, but it was worth it. The view was incredible.

Fun fact: everything on campus closes at 5:00 pm. We didn’t think they meant everything, but they did. We arrived at the reception when all the food was gone, so we looked for the on-campus pub. Pubs would be open at 6:00 pm on a Saturday night, right? Nope. Closed. We smelled food from somewhere else and followed that, hoping it might have been for us, but it wasn’t. There’s this little cafe right next to the buildings we’re living in, and I was sure it was closed at this hour. We went just in case, and lo and behold, it was open. We ate, we left, and I’m going to pass out in about ten minutes.

Though a lot of things went wrong today, I don’t regret it. On the bright side, I experienced what not to do when attempting public transportation. I learned about the meaning of time; how sometimes life pays attention to it (everything closes at 5:00) and sometimes it doesn’t (late busses). And I walked over 6 miles today. That may be a normal thing for some people, but compare that to my 1.6 mile average from the other days of the week and that’s incredibly impressive. My new Pedometer++ app tells me I walked 6.7 miles, which is 14,179 steps, and I went up and down 67 flights of stairs. I think summer school will be the best workout I’ve done all year.

Tomorrow will be the University of Stirling orientation. I have no idea what that entails, but at 9:45 tomorrow morning, I’ll find out.

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Comments

[Momma Kaplan]

So happy that you're having such an awesome experience!!

[NikkiandGreg]

welcome to scotland:)
Hope you enjoy our beautiful country and don't get bitten alive in the 'summer' by midges (little annoying flies that love to nibble on you). Please don't do what most tourists do and completely avoid my hometown of Glasgow. It is a beautiful city in it's own right, and it's worth a visit for the friendly people and great nightlife. As a student you will LOVE IT! (Sauchiehall street is a must). And half an hour away from there is Loch Lomond- a large lake surrounded by mountains (or munroes as we call them). One last slight bugbear (sorry)- Edinburg has an h at the end and is spelt EDINBURGH. Good luck!