21!

My 21st birthday was Saturday!
I had a great dinner with a smaller group of friends at a pub, then a large group of us hung out in my dorm room to get ready for the bar. We went out to Oxygen Bar, a dance club, and had a great time!!
Picture: Some of the girls (Amanda, Katherine, Sarah, Me, Melanie, Erica, Lindsay, Shayna) at Oxygen Bar

The end is almost near! I've already started packing up my room and getting ready to see my parents and then head home!

Scotland: The Land of Sheep

I spent the last four days in Scotland, and I could not be more in love with the country!

We left on Thursday morning at 11:30 to head to King's Cross station to catch our train to Edinburgh. We arrived at Edinburgh around 5:30, and after checking into the hostel, our group leader from Richmond, Stuart who is from Edinburgh, showed us a bit around the city. He took us to Edinburgh Castle and to the shopping street.Picture: Edinburgh Castle


At dinner, we ate a couple of traditional Scottish dishes...I did not order haggis for myself, but my friend Shayna did, and I had a pretty big bite. It was not horrible, but I don't think that I will ever try it again. We also had Irn Bru with dinner. Irn Bru is the national soda of Scotland, and it even outsells Coca Cola in Scotland. It's an odd mixture of cream soda and orange soda, and while being pretty delicious, is 30% sugar. I couldn't drink it every day, but I had a couple of bottles throughout the weekend. After dinner,we took a trip to a very cheap pub that was showing a football game, and hung out for a bit with the locals and watched the game.

At 10 o'clock, we headed to the Royal Mile (the main steet of Old Edinburgh) for a ghost tour. There are countless numbers of ghost tours in Edinburgh because of the city's very old and haunted history...the modern city is built on the old city. We started off the ghost tour on the surface of the city, but eventually we made our way down to the vaults. That is when the ghost tour actually got really scary. We first saw the torture museum, where the tour displayed instruments of torture used during the 17th and 18th centuries in Edinburgh. These instruments put the torture scenes in 'Saw' to shame. We made our way down into the underground vaults, which were on the show 'Most Haunted Live' in 2006 which found the vaults to be very haunted. The scariest story we head was about a Wiccan temple and the leader who spent the night down there. The leader of the Wiccan coven was friends with the owner of the vaults, and so he was given permission to hold services down there on Wiccan days of worship. However, in the first room that they inhabited, lots of weird things happened, such as the room being trashed and witches feeling lots of pressure on their chests whent they entered the room. So the Wiccan leader decided to spend the night in the room inside of his protective circle. He woke up in the middle of the night hearing shuffling coming down the stairs and approaching his circle, but it stopped once it reached the protective energy. So finally, he heard the frustrated ghost begin to shuffle up the wall and onto the ceiling right above him. Like any normal person, he grabbed his torch and ran. Supposedly, the spirit was then trapped by him inside of the circle. We had the option to stand in the circle, and although I'm a bit unsure about the presence of evil spirits, I did not tempt fate and stand in the circle! Some people in our group did...hopefully they will be OK!Picture: Protective Circle, Paranormal Level 2 Zone

After the ghost tour, we grabbed a drink and hung out in the underground vault bar where there was live music, and then called it a night and went to bed. We had to be up early the next morning (8:30), so we were hoping for a good night's sleep without any nightmares.

The next morning we got up and started on our tour of the Highlands of Scotland and the Isle of Skye. We went with a tour group called Haggis Tours, which was SUCH a great tour company. The guides were young, funny, and the male guide Colin was very cute and had a great accent! We left Edinburgh at 9:30 in the morning and began our trip up Scotland into the Highlands. One of the first places we stopped was the small town of Dunkeld. The first part of the day was gorgeous, so we walked around to the cathedral and then soaked up the sun by the river.

Picture: Dunkeld River

After Dunkeld, we continued our trip North and stopped at Culloden Battlefield. It was the site of an important battle between the Scottish Jacobite forces and the British. After stopping there for a few minutes of pictures and bathroom breaks, we made our way to the most exciting stop of Day 1: Loch Ness!!
Picture: Me in front of Loch Ness

By the time that we got to Loch Ness, the weather had gotten a little colder and the sun had gone away. But it was still super exciting to see the most famous lake in the world, and get pictures with Nessie! We walked around the gift shop and looked at all of the really tacky touristy souveniers.



Picture: Me, Shayna, and Melanie with Nessie!

After Loch Ness, we were pretty much done sightseeing for Day 1. We arrived in Fort Augustus, where our hostel was located, and checked into our rooms. We stayed in the 'Trainspotting' themed room, which was super cool. That night, we went out on the (small) town of Fort Augustus and had a good time sampling authentic Scottish culture.

The next morning we headed out at 8:30 again. On Saturday, we were going to spend the day on the Isle of Skye. The Isle of Skye is translated from Scottish into "The Misty Isle," but the weather that we had was some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. It was sunny with pleasant temperatures and clear, blue skys. My two favorite parts of the Isle of Skye were the Sligachan River and our hike down to a waterfall. The Sligachan River is supposed to bring youth and beauty if you put your face in the water for 7 seconds. So most of our group got our faces wet in hopes of youth and beauty. We'll see how that works out.
Later on the in the afternoon, we stopped at a waterfall/view point on a big cliff. Eventually, unplanned, we all decided to start hiking down to the waterfall. It was so increadibly beautiful and untouched. We spend about half an hour down there just taking pictures, soaking up the sun, and enjoying the amazing view before making the steep climb back up the cliff.

We spent the night in a small town called Kyle Achin right over the Skye Bridge. It was an extremely SMALL town, so the night was pretty slow. We hung out in the hostel bar for a while, before retiring early and watching a little T.V.! We randomly had a TV in our room so we hung out watching 'Family Guy' before calling it an early night.

The next morning, we got up for our last day in Scotland. :( We left the Isle of Skye and started back down the Highlands. It was another BEAUTIFUL day, and I couldn't stop taking pictures of the scenery. Our final destination of the trip was Stirling and the William Wallace Monument. I felt a little homesick for P.C. at the William Wallace Monument because of the obvious connections with Braveheart. I took an awesome picture with an imaginary sword in fron to the monument as a tribute to Cyrus!

After the Wallace Monument at Stirling, we were pretty much finished with Scotland and made our way back to Edinburgh. We hopped on a train back to London, and then five hours later, we were home! I was sad to leave Scotland...it was such a fun place. It was amazing to be in nature and see the stars and breathe fresh air for a few days!

More pictures of the scenery and other places are on Facebook!

G20, the cinema, and Camden Town

As I'm sure many of you saw on the news, last week was the G20 Summit in London. Since we don't have TVs in our rooms, it wasn't really until the protests started to flare up that we realized that this summit might be a bigger deal than we thought. We were supposed to go down to the center of town on the Wednesday that the summit began for a class field trip...but I made the executive decision not to go because the transportation promised to be a nightmare. I didn't want to get in the middle of the Tube and it be so crowded that I wouldn't make it to my class on time (and waste 2 pounds). This was a good call because apparently rioters attempted to break into the Bank of England, and they successfully broke into the Bank of Scotland and began destroying the place. It would have been cool to be in on the action, but not cool at all to be caught up in it all and get arrested! However, I didn't hear anything much about the summit after that, and the rest of the visit went off without a hitch. Apparently, everyone over here was wowed by Michelle Obama and loved all of her outfits. She was all over the free papers that they give out on the Tube, and all of the reporters came to the conclusion that she looked miles better than Prime Minister Gordon Brown's wife. I don't know much about global politics, but I do know a bit abut fashion, and I'd have to agree.

If you know me at all, in any way, shape, or form, you know that one of the foremost loves of my life is movies. If my money would hold out, I could go to the theater every night and see one. So it's been a long, hard three and a half months without going to the movies. This is not to say that I still don't watch movies...as an abroad student, you get very well acquainted with certain websites that have less than legal copies of movies and television shows. But I had not gone to the theater, bought a ticket, some candy, and a drink, and then spent two hours in a darkened theater with twenty other people in three and a half months. So on Friday night, we decided to go to the small cinema (they aren't called theatres over here...those are for plays, cinemas are for movies) in Notting Hill and see 'Two Lovers.' It was a lot of fun to go to the cinema. The tickets at this smaller cinema (2 screens) were probably equal after conversion to American ticket prices, and there was a nice area where you could buy a beer, mixed drink, or nicer food to take into the theatre with you. The cinema was in Notting Hill and owned and operated by a church, the Kensington Temple. I think I may go to see another movie before I leave...although, they have far less movies than there are in the United States...now, there are probably only 10 movies to choose from in the entire city.

On Saturday, Katherine, Rachel, and I went to Camden Town and explored the markets. Camden Town is essentially a couple of large markets, along with lots of established stores. I feel like Camden is the London that we have missed living in Kensington. Kensington is such a nice, safe, POSH area of London. Camden Town has the punks, the Rastafarians, the goths, and all of the hipsters. There were lots of really funny T-shirts, cute dresses, jewelry...but also lots of leather, bongs, pipes, and inappropriate body jewelry. I would compare certain parts Camden Town Market to gigantic Hot Topics. But there were also amazing vintage stores that we spent a lot of time looking through. There was a really exciting and unique food market...with food fromMe xico, China, India, etc, crepes, and freshly squeezed juices. Sadly, we ate before we got there, and could only walk through and enjoy the smells. I made one purchase at the markets...it is a really unique leather bracelet with a key charm and beads. It was only 3 pounds!

After the market, we went out to eat for a friend's 21st birthday at Texas Embassy. The food there is not the best (nothing compared to the Mexican food of Barberitos or Senor Garcia's) , but they have good chips and salsa and margaritas, so it was a fun and chill Saturday night. Since we had such a large group, we sat upstairs and listened to the musical act that was performing.