Day 18-20

The view from Arthur's Seat...

I am getting bad at doing this everyday eh..? Well, let me think back, Monday and Tuesday were pretty laid back days - I went to class Monday, it was cancelled. Meaning I had a full 7 day weekend. :) Not too shabby. It was also Robert Burns Day, which is a holiday here in Scotland. It is suppose to be celebrated with haggis and whiskey, so we kind of did that, well, at least we celebrated... it was fun, we all were hanging out in the Wrights houses, then headed to the Golf tavern and met up with some more people. A group of us went out to Binny Mulligans after that for some live music. Pretty good night, got in pretty late and that gave me a late start on Tuesday, but worth it!

(This last picture is taken standing outside our building, Arthur's Seat is in the distance)

Tuesday was a really laid back day, got some bank stuff squared away and went to the pound stretch and salvation army with Jordan and Marc. We all got some random stuff, I got an air freshener for the room, a non-stick frying pan, and a door gym! Ha! That'll save me some money instead of a gym membership, this thing actually works pretty well... not a bad investment at all. I usually take it easy on Tuesdays because Wednesday is my big school day, so I did, and unfortunately I missed a fun night out at Citizen Smiths, but that's ok. There will be more...

Wednesday was a very eventful day. It started out with my 730am wake up call for Cognitive Neuroscience at 9 in the morning... yipppppie! Wow, that class was a joke today! There was a PhD student teaching a section on the visual system because apparently that is his expertise... if so, I don't know what to think. Luckily I learned everything he was TRYING to teach in a sensation and perception class last year at state. This guy literally had no idea what he was talking about, it was as if someone who really had no idea what any of this meant went up with a powerpoint and sort of mumbled sentences and pointed. Everyone had the most blank and confused looks on their faces I felt quite bad. At one point he literally said the phrase "well, this pathway has different cells and different things happen then this pathway"... that was his explanation of the two different pathways for rods and cones in our brain. I want to write that on the test and see what they say about it. That was probably the easiest part of the lecture too and he managed to make it down right incomprehensible. Half the things he just kept saying we will get to them later, when obviously they were meant for now as they were in this lectures powerpoint notes... BAH! Alright, done ranting. After class got out I had my tutorial for it, we watched an hour long presentation of visual disorders. A man who couldn't recognize faces, and another who could only recognize faces. Pretty interesting cases. The rest was on visual neglect, and ironically I had seen the exact same video with the exact same old lady Peggy on more than one occasion back at state. Seems like a lot of repetition is going to be going on this year.

After class I went back for a quick break in between my next class, Scottish Culture and Society. I met up with Jordan and Marc to go to class - and somehow we got the idea to hike Arthur's Seat instead? Pretty randomly if I recall... I said as long as I was back by 4, it was 12:30, it supposedly takes and hour and a half there and hour and a half back. 3:30, that was pushing it. But we went for it. By the time we actually left the flat it was almost 1, we got to the bottom of Arthur's seat around 1:50. The mountain was ready to be conquered. We started hiking up it at what seemed to be top speed, took a couple more direct, and steep, short cut routes. Before you know it we were almost to the top. By this time there were a good 40-50MPH winds hitting us, luckily they were blowing us into the mountain, and not away from it. These were no joke, you could almost, literally, fall into the wind and have it hold you up. When we got to the very top and even along the way, the sights were amazing. It was surreal up there, you could see everything... there was snow covered mountains in one direction, towering buildings in another, keep going onto the grasslands, and then a long endless pool of water in the last... I definitely will be visiting here more often.

When we got down it was only about 2:30... we flew up this mountain! So, getting our Wednesday travel bug we headed to the train station to see what we could put on the agenda. The possibilities were really endless (besides the money issue), so, being our neighboring huge city, we settled on a night out in Glascow. We also walked around a whole part of Edinburgh I have never been too, pretty cool, I am getting the hang of the streets now. After a quick bite to eat at a local sandwich shop Gregg's (cheap and delicious)... we headed back to the flats. I had about 10 minutes to grab my stuff and go to my next class...

The next class flew by, being only an hour, and when I got back I saw the gathering of people who were ready to venture into Glascow with us. Jordan, Marc, Kyle, Jaime, Amy, Taryn and I headed out... we went to a bar called King Tut Wah Wah Hut! Haha, what a name... we went there for some live music and drinks, but we ended up hanging out by the extremely small billiards table shooting some pool and tossing back some 2-pint King Tut's (which we had to put 5 pound deposits on... the glasses that is). We left around 10 and walked around some of Glascow, went into some little Chinese place and Pizza parlor next to it, got a quick bite to eat and talked for a bit. The train ride home was an hour and a half of non-stop hilariousness. I'd even say it was as fun as the whole night put together. Every on the train had to think we were out of our minds, if they only knew we were sober...

I'm off to bed. Who knows what tomorrow has in store...