Day 3 started with getting woken up by the houseskeeper. She banged on everybody's doors except mine to wake them up and lecture them about how she can't clean the flat if it's so messy. I agree with her, and it was pretty funny.
Everyone else had class so I stayed in bed til the housekeeper left, then I got up, showered, ate lunch, and went shopping. I went to a bunch of different stores looking for the last few things that I need and I think I have everything now.
After shopping I met with my Director of Studies, and while I was waiting for him to show up I met another international student who's in my philosophy class, so at least I'll know one person there. The meeting was very brief and nothing really happened. After that I went to register. I filled out a couple forms then got my student ID, and the picture looks good so I'm glad about that! Then I went to the International Student Center and bought a ticket to go to the zoo on Saturday. That should be fun.
I went back to my room for a bit after that to get my room together, and I must say that it looks pretty good. I still have one section of wall that I need to do something with but other than that I'm happy with it. I looked everywhere for a duvet cover that I liked and I ended up finding a really nice one for really cheap, so that was exciting.
The other Wash U girls don't have kitchen stuff yet so Emily and I went to dinner with 2 other girls she had met earlier. One of them used to be really into riding so we're going to do the Exmoor Pony Trekking thing one weekend (http://ponytrek.eusu.ed.ac.uk/). Another Wash U girl and their flat mate want to do it too, so that'll be fun.
For dinner we went to The City Restaurant, which was just a little cafe place. The food was mediocre but it was a fun time. We're slowly learning Scottish restaurant customs. We stopped by the Old College on the way back to take a few pictures because it's beautiful and I didn't want to feel like a tourist when I was their earlier in the day. It's really beautiful; night pictures don't do it justice. It's basically a big square, stone building with a huge courtyard in the middle and a large dome over the entrance. You can also see that there's still a bit of snow on the ground. Here are some of those pictures:
Following that little excursion I went back to my room to finish putting up pictures, then I went down to the Wash U flat to hang out with those girls, their flat mate, and one of the girls we went to dinner with. We talked for a while and made a plan for Wednesday. A lot of us don't have class on Wednesday so we're going to be tourists for a day and take lots of pictures of the city. We never want to take pictures normally because we don't want to seem like tourists, but we have to do it sometime so we're just going all out. We're going to take a free, 3-hour tour of Edinburgh too. It's through a company called New Europe Tours (http://www.neweuropetours.eu/), which offers free tours in like 10 major European cities. The guides work for tips so the tours are supposed to be really good, and they cover everything in the city. We figured that would be a good start to the semester.
People started to leave the flat to go to bed so Emily and I watched a few episodes of The Office, then I left.
Classes start tomorrow for me. See my first blog post for my schedule. Hopefully it will go well, I have all 3 of my classes tomorrow.
I think I'm going to be really fit after this semester. I'm doing soooo much walking, and it's all up and down hills as Edinburgh is very hilly. Plus I'm not on a meal plan so I won't be eating as much. All the international students are sore from walking around!
My small group (Bible study) has the first meeting tomorrow. It's just a sort of get together to start off the semester. We're meeting at Starbucks and the drinks are paid for so that's really nice.
Wednesday is the first equestrian team gathering and we're doing a pub crawl... I'll go so I can meet everyone and pay my entry dues, and I'll get to experience a couple pubs in one night.
I haven't done any planning for it yet, but I think I'm going to go to London for the weekend of January 29. I'm kind of trying to plan around the International Student Center excursions (the zoo, castle trips, etc), and the whisky tour is that weekend, so I figure I can skip that one.
I'll put up pictures of my flat when I finish with my room. The flat has a few quirks. First, the shower is very finicky. Unless it's early in the morning, you have to flip a switch in the kitchen that gives you hot water. It can be set for 1/2 hour, 1 hour, or 2 hours. Then once you have that done, you have to turn the knob in the shower on in very slow increments or the water is scalding hot and you have to turn the shower off and start all over again. Another thing that kind of annoys me about the flat is that each of the sinks has 2 spigots, one for hot water and one for cold. So they don't run together, and the cold water is icy and the hot water is burning. So you either have to use one or the other, there's no in between. It's really just a very old flat but it's livable.
Alright well I should probably get to bed since it's 11:45 and I have class in the morning. Actually, who am I kidding, I'll be up for hours planning a trip to London.
Update: I bought a ticket to London for January 28.
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