Being a tourist

Last night I decided to hang around my flat, but since nobody was here, I just cleaned the whole thing. It was so gross, I can’t even explain. I took out 6 big garbage bags of trash and recycling (some of which have been in the flat since last term), washed dishes, vacuumed, and swept, and now it looks great. I decided that would be a good time to get a video of the flat since it will never be that clean again, so here’s a video walk-through of my flat:

It feels great to have it clean, and now I think we’ll all keep it cleaner than it was.

My first class today, Society and Politics, was very interesting. The lecturer was David McCrone, who is the Co-Director of The Institute of Governance, which is apparently a big deal. His lecture was pretty cool. It was about what Scotland is exactly, from a sociological viewpoint. It was a good introduction to the Scottish way of thinking.

After lecture I explored Potterrow, one of the student centers. It has a school store, a café, a few bars, that kind of thing. I went back to my flat and talked with my flat mates for awhile, then was going to do the reading for my class that afternoon, but decided to take pictures of the city instead. A good choice? Yes.

The weather was really nice. 40s, blue skies, gorgeous. I pretty much just did the route that the tour did yesterday, with a couple other streets. The pictures are on facebook. If you can’t access my facebook let me know and I’ll figure out a way for you to see them. Read the captions because they explain stuff. Tip: It’s easier to cycle through the pictures by clicking on each picture to go to the next one rather than clicking the “Next” button. Here’s a sample:

There will be many, many more pictures to come, but that’s a good start. I had a really nice walk. It was great to explore some new areas. I really liked exploring all of Greyfriar’s Kirk (famous, really old graveyard). All the graves are so old, I didn’t see anything more recent than the mid- 1800s. It’s beautiful and sad and haunting at the same time. I also found a really cool street and path that goes all the way around Castle Rock. What an impressive castle. I tried to capture it in pictures and videos but you just can’t. So you should all come visit me so you can see it for yourselves!

After my jaunt about the city I met some people for lunch at Palmyra, a delicious Lebanese café. I had a hummus falafel wrap with tahina sauce (it tasted just like yours Mom), which was great. When we left the restaurant, the temperature had dropped at least 10 degrees and it was flurrying. Turns out weather in Edinburgh is just like weather in St. Louis…

I went back to my flat determined to do the reading for my next class but it turned out that I didn’t actually have any reading that I had to do today! So I uploaded pictures instead.

My second and last class of the day was history. It wasn’t exactly riveting, but it was kind of interesting. We talked about population, birth, death, marriage, etc. rates in Scotland over the past few centuries. The cool thing about it is that the lecturer kept talking about how important the Registrar General’s job is and how all this information comes from him and stuff, and I get to hear the Registrar General talk tomorrow for my society and politics class! That was a cool coincidence.

After class I went back to my flat to get some stuff organized, plan some travels, and just hang out, which is what I'm still doing now.

Tomorrow we're going to the Writer's Museum, on Saturday the zoo, and Sunday the Royal Museum and Museum of Scotland.

Tom Riddle's grave and a failed pub crawl

Hello everyone, thanks for reading my blog!

This morning we woke up to a grey, cold, snowy morning. A few texts were exchanged and we decided to continue with our plans to do the 3 hour walking tour. The tour met at the Starbucks by our building, and there were about 50 people there for it. There were 2 tour guides so we split up, and our tour group had about 25 people or so (10 of them were from our group). Our guide's name was Ronnie, and he was great. It was a fantastic tour. It covered all the important stuff with humor and historical information.

Our plan was to take a ton of pictures but it was such a dreary day (and several people still don't have cameras as they are packed in lost luggage) that we decided to take pictures on a different day. I took a few (see below), then gave up.

We saw the inspiration for Tom Riddle's name (from Harry Potter). There's a famous graveyard (Greyfriar's Kirk) just below the windows of the Elephant House where JK Rowling sat to write the first few Harry Potter novels, and in the graveyard is the grave of Tom Riddle. There were graves with names of other Harry Potter characters too, like McGonagall. We also saw the original Hogwarts- the building that supposedly inspired JK Rowling (also visible from the Elephant House). It's a school called the George Herriott school. We saw a lot of great places, heard a lot of great information, and had a great time.

The City Chambers

The National Library and the oldest lead equestrian statue in Europe

The Castle

The window of the Elephant House where JK Rowling sat to write (and where we ate dinner the other night). It overlooks the castle, the graveyard, and the school.

After the tour we wandered around Princes Street for a bit (where a lot of clothes stores are), then went back to our respective flats to thaw. I did some reading for classes tomorrow, talked to people on Gchat, and hung out with my flat mates.

I went to the equestrian club pub crawl at 8. I decided just to go to the first bar and not to the crawl for a number of reasons that I will not mention here, but I had a good time at the first bar. I learned a lot about the club and the barn where they ride. There are about 150 people in the club, and about 50 ride each week. The barn where they ride is the barn where the British Olympic team rides apparently, so it's quite nice. The club has 4 competitive teams, and they're very, very good. I think they said they're the best in the UK. The barn is 40 minutes to an hour away, but that's the same as the barn at Wash U so I'm used to that. The thing I don't like is that the students at the barn tack up the horse for you, and untack them after the lesson so all we do is show up and ride. I hate that. It's really nice to have time to spend with your horse before the lesson and kind of get to know them a bit before you get on. I guess it saves over an hour of time but I want to spend as much time at a barn as possible! Oh well, at least I'll get to ride occasionally. I probably won't get to ride every week because there are so many riders, but I'm signed up for the first advanced lesson next Wednesday. Hopefully it goes well, but I'm kind of worried.

It's only 10 pm here so I'm not sure what I'm doing for the rest of the night, but I'm exhausted so I might just hang out here in my flat and try to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I have class tomorrow but tutorials don't start until next week so I just have 2 hours of class (at 10-10:50 and 15:00-15:50). Very nice.

First day of classes and folk music

First I'll just say some general stuff about classes, like how things are done differently here than in the US. One of the big differences is that, in the lower level classes at least (like 1st and 2nd year), there's no set professor. Any given class might have 5-10 lecturers, and each will speak on their topic of expertise. To keep a sense of cohesion in the course, there's a course organizer, who keeps track of all the administrative stuff. In addition to the lecturers and the course organizer, there are usually tutors, who are like TAs in America.

Another big difference is assigned work. In most classes, you get a big reading list for each class, and you just kind of choose a couple and read those. There's no main text for the course so I don't have to buy any books. Instead, all the readings are either online or in the library.

The grading system is also quite different. It’s very, very difficult to get an A, and an A is 70% or above. Passing is 40%. There are also very few grades in each class. None of my classes have more than 2 graded things (Either 2 papers or 1 paper and a final exam).

Ok now for the specific classes. The first one I had was Scotland: Society and Politics from 10-10:50. We got a thick course book with all the info like tutorial schedules, reading lists, that kind of thing. There are a couple lecturers but the two that were there today both seemed good. They both have Scottish accents but they're completely comprehensible, which is nice. In addition to having that class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I also have a tutorial for it on Thursdays, and 4 guest lectures on certain Fridays. The first lecturer, on this Friday, is Duncan Macniven, who's Scotland's Register General. Apparently a pretty important guy. This should be a fun class because the paper is a research project about an area of Scotland. In our tutorials we go out and gather data and stuff; it should be pretty cool.

The second class I had was Metaphysics of the Mind. Usually that's from 11:10-1 but today we ended at about 11:45 which was nice. It's definitely going to be a hard class because I don't remember much from other philosophy courses that I've taken, but the professor seems good. He's also Scottish, a pretty young guy, so he should be interesting. It's an upper level class so he's the only professor. It's a fairly small class, about 25 students. We went over some of the main concepts that we should know (dualism, the identity theory of mind, consciousness, and functionalism), which I've learned about several times before, but I don't remember anything. So that will be a hard class. I sat with 2 other international students. One was from Georgia and the other goes to American University (Mormor- He doesn't know Emily Poor but he's heard of her). A lot of the readings that are assigned in that class are written by Wash U professors.

After metaphysics I was exhausted because I didn’t fall asleep until about 3:30 last night, so I went back to my flat to take a nap. When I woke up I went to Princes Street to get some cash, then met Daryl (the guy from Wash U) for lunch. We went to Elephant and Bagels which I guess is run by the same company that runs the Elephant House, where we went for dinner the other night. Elephants and Bagels was good, it’s a little café with tons of different bagel sandwich options.

After lunch I had Scottish History Since 1914. That was another larger lecture class, and again, we just did administrative stuff today. That’s from 3-4 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I have a tutorial for it on Thursdays. Half the class was spent telling us how to use the library online resources, which was immensely helpful. It’s pretty much the same thing as the Wash U library, but since almost all of my readings are online it’s pretty important.

I went back to my room after class and signed up for my history tutorial, and I got one on Thursday, so I officially only have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays (except for those couple guest lectures for society and politics which are on Fridays). I hung out in the flat for a while, showered, then went to dinner with my flat mates.

We went to dinner at a place called Frankenstein’s which is a 3-story bar all decked out in Halloween/Frankenstein themed things. Every Tuesday it has Free Food Tuesdays for students where if you buy a drink you get a free dinner. So I got a student card, bought a drink, and got a free hamburger and chips (fries…). It was fun hanging out with my flat mates and we had a good time.

By the time we finished dinner it was about time for me to meet the small group at Starbucks, so I headed over to the Royal Mile. Nobody was there, so I asked the baristas if there was another Starbucks on the Royal Mile, and there was, so I walked down there. It was quite a walk, all the way at the other end of the Royal Mile, but no one was there either! So I don’t know what happened but I had a long, uphill walk back to my flat. I sent a facebook message to one of the leaders; I probably just went to the wrong Starbucks. (Don’t worry, it’s not all sad. Keep reading).

Instead of going back to my flat I went to the Wash U girl’s flat and there were like 6 people hanging out in there so I stayed. One of the girl’s friends knew about a pub with folk music on Tuesday nights so we decided to go check that out. We found the building, but when we went in it was just a small pub and no music. Apparently the girl found out about this place from an email, and the email said to ask the bartender where the music is. Sketchy…. So we asked the bartender and he led us through a locked door, down a really sketchy flight of stairs, and through another locked door to a room where a group of people were just sitting around fiddling. Not, apparently, a place for spectators.

So we were left wondering what to do. Luckily, one of my friends who went to Edinburgh to study abroad a few semesters ago told me about this place called Sandy Bells (http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/edinburgh/pubguide/sandybells.html), which I later read about in guide books. It’s a pub with live folk music every night, so we decided to head over there and it was a great success. We got drinks, listened to awesome live folk music (see video below), and talked. A couple people called friends to meet us there and we ended up with like a 10 person group.

The biggest success of the night was when I found out that one of the Wash U girl’s flat mates is a Christian! We knew each other didn’t drink back home, and we were talking, and I think I asked why she didn’t drink or something, and she started her answer off with “Well I was leading a Bible study…” and I interrupted her and was like “LET’S GO TO THE CHRISTIAN UNION TOGETHER!” and she was like “YOU’RE A CHRISTIAN?!” and we both literally shouted in the middle of this pub. After we explained to our friends that we were bonding and not dying, I told her about the small group so we’re going to do that together, and she had already looked up churches in the area so we’re going to check some out, and basically it was just awesome. We were both so excited to find another Christian. It’s funny because if I had met up with the small group at Starbucks I might have not been back in time to go on the folk music excursion, and who knows if we ever would have found out that we’re both Christians. And here’s the weird part (Mormor pay attention), she goes to American University and knows Emily Poor!

So that night was pretty awesome. Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to do the free, 3- hour walking tour, then who knows what excitement will ensue. Most likely it will entail reading for classes on Thursday.

It still hasn't rained

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.

2nd Day

Today was a good day! It started with me finally getting out of bed after hitting the snooze button many times at 9:50. I took a shower, ate breakfast with my flat mates, who were confused about why they were already awake (they went back to bed after breakfast), then I went to the flat downstairs with the other Wash U girls. We were supposed to meet for coffee at 10:30 before orientation at 11 but they didn’t answer their door when I knocked so I went back to my flat for a few minutes. I found out later that they didn’t answer because their shower was on so they couldn’t hear me knocking, and they were trying to figure out how to turn the shower off. I guess the knob was stuck or something and they had to get maintenance and they couldn’t get it off either so they just left it when they went to orientation.

I met up with two girls, Mary and Ali, who I had met the day before. We stuck together for the orientation which was actually pretty good. We listened to a few talks, went on a campus tour, had a delicious bagged lunch, and listened to some more talks. At lunch I finally met up with the Wash U people. Apparently 3 of them had serious trouble getting here, and those 3 all lost their luggage.

After orientation, which ended a bit early at 3:15, we all went back to our flats. No one was in mine so I worked on my room and talked with Dillon. The other Wash U girls took naps then we all went to go shopping, but everything was closed, so we went to dinner. We went to a great place called The Elephant House, which is where J.K. Rowling started writing Harry Potter. The food and atmosphere were great, and there was an awesome view of the castle, all lit up at night, from the dining area. So that was a lot of fun. Oh, another cool thing about that place were the drawers on our table. Our table had 3 drawers, like for silverware, but inside there were dozens of notes written by visitors to the Elephant House. They were written on napkins and scraps of paper in lots of different languages and about lots of different things. They were about people's vacations, lives, or just drawings of elephants. Our table was the only one with drawers so we felt very special.

Mom, you would like this. From the Elephant House website: Ian Rankin, author of the bestselling Rebus novels, and Alexander McCall-Smith, author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency and other series of novels, have also frequented The Elephant House, as well as many others throughout the years.

After dinner I came back to my room and talked with my flat mates and 6 other people who were here getting ready to go out, and we all just talked for like 3 hours. Eventually my flat mates decided not to go out at all, so we kept talking for a bit. Now everyone, including me, is going to bed.

Classes start tomorrow, but I don’t have class on Mondays so I have another day to get settled. Tomorrow I have to officially register and meet with my Director of Studies. Other than that I’ll just shop, hang out with people, and get ready for classes on Tuesday.

One thing I like about living in the city is that you can walk virtually everywhere. It’ll be terrible when it starts raining but now it’s lovely. Edinburgh is a hard city to learn because the streets are all windy, on different levels, and named different things along the same road, but it’s fun figuring that out.

Oh tomorrow I’m also buying tickets to go to the zoo on Saturday. The International Student Center has excursions every Saturday for cheap, and I want to do a lot of them. This Saturday they’re going to the zoo, after that to St. Andrews, then a whiskey tour, then a skiing trip, followed by a trip to Lindisfarne/Holy Island (a castle), then a to be determined weekend trip, then Loch Lomond, then Linlithgow Palace, then white water rafting.

My thoughts are all now in a Scottish or English accent (depending on who I’ve most recently talked to), now I just have to work on speaking with an accent!

The First Day

I'm making myself write this tonight even though I'm exhausted because there will be too much to write about if I go another day without writing!

So starting at the beginning...

This morning flights from London to Edinburgh were getting canceled because of weather, but my flight miraculously wasn't canceled. Unfortunately, my flight to London was delayed, likely resulting in me missing the only flight to Edinburgh.

So I was a little worried when I got to Dulles. There were no problems with checking my bags or security (other than long lines), and I got to my gate about an hour before the originally scheduled departure time. Somehow the flight to London wasn't as delayed as they thought it would be, and we landed at Heathrow at 7:20. The flight over there was interesting because I could have sworn I was sitting next to Jason Bateman (an actor), and I basically spent the whole flight (well, not really) deciding whether or not I should ask him if he was, but I decided that it didn't look quite like him, just really, really close so I didn't ask. I couldn't sleep at all on the plane so I'm exhausted now. The food was good though.

It took about 15 minutes for me to get off the plane, and the flight to Edinburgh left at 8:55! So I walked as fast as I could through Heathrow, did a bus transfer to terminal 1, went through like 5 lines, and made it to the gate at 8:35! Amazing!

So I arrived in Edinburgh. It was snowing really, really hard when we landed. I got off the plane and went to get my bag and was met by the University of Edinburgh welcoming committee. They had nice welcoming bags and bottles of water, which I was extremely thankful for since I was still parched after my dash through Heathrow. I got my bag (thank goodness it got there), then sat and talked with other internationals for about an hour waiting for enough people to arrive that we could fill the bus/van thing. The first 2 people I met were from Virginia and Missouri. Strange.

Eventually we had enough people to fill the 15 passenger bus/van thing and we all went outside. It had turned into an absolutely gorgeous day. Sunny, cloudless, about 32 degrees F, no wind. Very nice. We trudged out to the bus in the snow and the driver started loading our bags. He was like "You can get on now" and all 15 of us (all from the US) went to the right side of the van. The driver was like "No, you get in on this side," and continued loading bags. We all went back over to that side and stared stupidly at the side of the van. Where was the door? All we could see was the driver's door. I'm proud to say that I was the one that eventually realized that in Scotland, the driver is on the right... so the door we were looking at wasn't the driver's door.... Not our finest moment. The first of many Scotland fails, I'm sure.

So we all got on the bus and at first we were all talking to each other, but as we got closer to the city we stopped talking so we could look at the scenery. Soon the only noise was the strange radio station on the bus that played everything from Brittany Spears to Bon Jovi. The city is so beautiful! There are mountains (hills) everywhere, and driving towards Edinburgh you can see towering Arthur's Seat and the Sallisbury Crags behind the steeples of Edinburgh. Gorgeous.

Eventually we all got to our respective stops, and I was the only one at Kincaid's Court. I went to the office and got my keys and welcome packet, and took the elevator up to my room (thank goodness for the elevator, we're 5 floors up). When I got to my flat, one of my flat mates, Mairi was there with her boyfriend Christian. Mairi is a 3rd year student studying abroad for the whole year, from San Francisco. Christian is Norwegian and he basically told me all about Norway for the rest of the night. He's from near Bergen.

The flat is very old and very dirty, but somehow nice. We have 4 singles, 2 bathrooms (1 shower), 2 huge storage closets, and a large kitchen and sitting area. We have the corner flat so our kitchen/living area is bigger than some of the other ones. My room was somewhat dirty because the girl that lived there last semester (a study abroad junior from Texas), left a few days later than she was supposed to so the cleaning lady hasn't come yet. I ended up vacuuming the whole room later with an ancient vacuum that barely works and smells weird, but my room looks much better now. Apparently the girl that was here last semester was just awful. I've heard a lot of stories already and she sounds terrible. My flat mates seem very relieved to have me instead of her.

I dumped my stuff in my room then talked with Mairi for a while. Soon the 2nd flat mate arrived- her name is Cerys and she's from Scotland. We talked for a few hours then I went shopping before I lost the daylight. I wanted to go shopping with the other Wash U girls that are here but they weren't in their flat when I knocked so I went by myself, which worked out better.

I walked to new Edinburgh, which is where a lot of the nicer stores are, and I wandered around for a while looking for the bank atm that I wanted and admiring the scenery. It's really a gorgeous place. It's strange because it's definitely a city, complete with traffic congestion, packed sidewalks, and homeless people, but everywhere you look there's either a mountain or a beautiful building. It's lovely.

Eventually I found the right ATM, got some money, and went to the phone store. I got a pay-as-you-go sim card with the intention of putting it in my regular phone, but I guess my phone is "locked" to only one service and you need a code to unlock it. Rather than go through the hassle of fixing that I'll probably just get a cheap phone for about 10 pounds here.

After getting the sim card I went to Pound Saver and bought all my bedding and toiletries for very cheap. That was great.

After that I went back to my flat and the third flat mate, Abby, from England, had arrived. I dumped my stuff outside my door then we all talked for a few more hours. All of them are very, very nice. They're great, but they all really like to party and we'll probably be having parties in our flat so we'll see how that goes. They're also not very clean... I don't know, I'm sure it will be fine.

After we talked I went to an international students welcoming (free pizza), but the pizza was gone by the time I got there. I saw some people I had met earlier so we talked, and were shortly joined by some more people. We were all Americans, and it's funny because whenever we hear where someone goes to school we ask if they know such and such, and almost without fail, they do know them. Small world.

We left that pretty quickly and walked around the campus a bit, then they went back to go to bed (jet-lagged) and I went grocery shopping. After shopping I decided to wander around the city a bit and got lost which was fun. I had a map in my purse so I could have used it but it's more fun to get lost. The city is also beautiful at night, by the way.

So I wandered for a while then went back to the flat where Mairi, Chris, Cerys, and Abby were getting ready to go out to party. There was pizza and good conversation, and we talked for a few hours while they were drinking. It's great talking to kids like this. They're all smart and well rounded and we can have great conversations about pretty much anything from psychology to religion.

They left for their party and I opted to stay behind and organize my room since I was falling asleep. I worked on my room for a bit, then my flat mates came back to drink more before going out to a club. I was video chatting with Dillon so they got to say hi to him. I talked with Dillon for awhile after they left, then I wrote this blog entry!

Now I need to finish a few things before I go to bed, which needs to happen very soon. It's 11:30 pm here now. Tomorrow is orientation from 11 til like 3 I think. I'll put up pictures of my flat eventually! I want to finish setting up my room first.

Arrival

I made it! Surprisingly I didn't have any problems. I'll update more later.