My Flat

Hi Everyone!

So I'm sure that you are all wondering about where I live and such (and if your not, I'm going to tell you about it anyway). I live in a six bedroom flat with mostly visiting students. Two of my flat mates are from Canada, one is from France, one is from the US also, and one is from Scotland. The girl from Scotland, Nicola, is the only Fresher (Freshman) in our flat, which must be kind of hard for her although she hangs out with all of us a lot. The other girl from the US, Brianna, is starting her second degree in veterinary studies so she will be here for five years. The rest of us are all visiting students for a year. Fortunately, we have two bathrooms and a fairly large kitchen with two fridges!! I live on a main street, South Clerk Street, and unfortunately my bedroom faces the street, so it is a little loud sometimes (especially when drunk people are walking past at three in the morning).
















This is the outside of my flat...although I got it from the internet so it is a little out dated and the stores in the bottom have changed. One is now a dance store, it's so cute!!! I am on Level 4 (the fifth floor) on the right hand side. My window is the first window on the right after the center windows.















Here is my beautiful room!!! The curtains were AWFUL looking, so I covered them up with pretty pink and purple fabric.



















This is the view out of my window!















Here is the rest of my room.















This is our (very messy) kitchen. Usually it isn't this bad. Notice how small the stove is!















This is our eating/common room where one of my flatmates, Anastasia, making breakfast.















The common room again, this time looking at the wall that separates it from the kitchen.

Well that's all for now.

Love Always,
Lizzie

Shopping Crazyness

I had the most insane shopping experience of my life. My friend Alex and I decided to go shopping at Top Shop (for those who don't know Top Shop is just like an up scale H&M that is mainly based in Europe) today around 5:30. Little did we know that there was a sale going on so the store was closing at 6 (so that it could reopen at 6:30 for the sale because British stores are weird). We had just gotten everything we wanted and went to the dressing room where they told us we couldn't go in because they were getting ready for the sale which was SUPER frustrating. So we decided to have dinner and go back. So we went back around 7:30 and it was the craziest thing ever!!!! I had to wait like 30 min to get into the dressing room and then another 10 to pay for my clothes. And I only saved like 9 pounds on a 50 pound purchase, which I guess is pretty good. I actually enjoyed the experience but have no desire to ever repeat it again (I guess no after thanksgiving day sales for me).

Family Visit

Hi Everyone,

I went on a family visit this past weekend. It is a part of the IFSA-Butler program. About twenty of us went and stayed with different families in Cumbria, near Penrith. I stayed with a woman named Anne Longbone, who lived in a little village called Maulds Meaburn (pronounced Maulds Meebin). She has two daughters, Sarah who is 15 and Charlotte who is 18. They were all very nice. The village was very cute. Only a couple hundred people lived in this village.















This is Anne, Charlotte, and Sarah's house. It's actually two houses smushed together, so their house is the one on the right.


















This is the view out the front of the Longbone's house. Notice all the sheep...it was very weird to wake up in the morning and see sheep out the front window.















This is the view out the back of the Longbone's house. More sheep!














This is the village green. One of the farmers has the rights to just let his sheep out in the middle of the village.














The sheep walk around in the village...even going over the bridges and such. If you can't tell by these pictures, there are WAY more sheep than people the live in the village.

The area in England we were staying is near the lake district, so on Saturday we went to Keswick and took a walk around the lake with Anne, Charlotte and their dog, Gigha (pronounced Gia) who is a black lab and made me miss having Jesse and Ginger around. Here are some pictures from the walk around the lake.















The beautiful lake. Anne told me that sometimes she would take her Brownie group to that island and camp out for a night or two.















Here is Gigha swimming in the lake. She loved to get wet and then would rub her self around me and get me wet too!!!














Here are some sheep (more sheep) that were around the lake.

After walking around the lake we went to Keswick and had lunch--fish and chips. All the food here is fried!!! I keep trying to go for a couple days without eating fried food and I can't. The block around my building has about four chipies (shops that sell chips-as in fried-and other fried foods as well including deep fried pizza, deep fried haggis, deep fried mars bars, etc). I'm gaining SO much weight because of it. Anyway, back to the home stay. There was a little market in Keswick as well, although I didn't buy anything. But there was a Peter Rabbit store. So of course I had to take a picture.














The Peter Rabbit Store!!

We also went to Anne's brother-in-laws, Martin, house for afternoon tea. It was her nephew's birthday the day before so she wanted to wish him happy birthday and give him a birthday present. Martin and his wife, Ros, had an awesome house. They had just bought it a year before and were doing a lot of work on it. Their backyard was huge and tiered. When you first walked out the door there was a little yard with a high wall and they had a trampoline that took up about half of the yard. Then you went up some steps to the garden. They had apple trees, and b
erry bushes, and lots of vegetables. They also had a lot of animals: two dogs (one neurotic one named Molly, who constantly had to be petted or she would butt her head into you until you fell over), two guinea pigs (which they let roam around freely and usually hid under their plants), a rabbit named Christopher (who Gigha was very intent on trying to eat, Charlotte had to hold him very tightly when Christoper was around), a black cat named Charlie, and four chickens!! Martin said he never had to buy any eggs because the chickens would each lay one a day. He had made an apple cake and lemon pound cake for us, both with his own eggs.

After tea we quickly hurried home because some friends of Anne's were coming over for a barbeque. Their old neighbors, Judy and Mel came over. Mel loved to use Anne's barbeque (apparently he has one of his own, but will only cook on Anne's). He made TONS of food. We ate outside even though it was very cold. Fortunately they had a fire chimney thing that we sat in front of to keep warm. After dinner, one of their friends was having a party were they had all this beer that they had made themselves. It was very very good! And I tried a few different kinds.

While I was in Cumbria, Anne also took me to see a stone circle. Like stonehenge, but not as impressive. Here is a photo from that.















We left on Sunday after Anne made us (I was staying with one other girl from the IFSA program) a wonderful lunch of Cumbria sausage, potatoes, vegetables, and applesauce. She also took us to a Jersey dairy farm, where they made all their own ice cream, on the way to the train station.




























The Jersey cows. They were grazing right out in front of the place where the ice cream was served.















They had calves at the farm. Aren't they so cute? They almost look like deer!

Overall the weekend was so much fun! Well I have to run off to class now!!!

Love Always,
Lizzie

The Beginning of Classes

Hi Everyone,

I started classes about a week ago, and I thought I would tell you a little bit about the classes I'm taking. I am taking two physics classes: thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, a Scottish history class, and introduction to German. The physics classes are good, I think they are going to be hard work, but both teachers give very detailed notes, and I have heard from people who took the class previously that you don't have to buy a book or even use any of the books they recommend very often. Scottish history is going to be interesting, although it will be a lot of reading!! And introduction German is going to be very hard because it is an intensive language class. I think it's going to be a lot of fun though. I've already had three classes and it the teacher is very nice and helpful.

That's all for now!

Love always,
Lizzie

Hello!!!

Hello Everyone!

I am finally starting the blog that I said I was going to start a couple of weeks ago!

I have been in Edinburgh for about two and a half weeks now. My flight here was pretty uneventful, which is always good. I met up with the IFSA-Butler (the program that I am going with) group in Newark. We had a very long layover in both Newark and London, so I got a chance to bond with a lot of IFSA people who were also on the group flight. The hotel we stayed at for orientation with the Butler program was very nice and right in the middle of the city, and across from some very nice pubs. The orientation was a lot of fun. We had sessions on safety in Edinburgh, the differences in the academic systems between Scotland and the US, the history of Scotland, where to get cell phones and how to open bank accounts, and of course we registered for classes. The first day we were there we had a bus tour of Edinburgh. I got some wonderful photos from some of the hills surrounding the city.















North of Edinburgh. The body of water is the Firth of Forth.




















This is a big tower on the hill where a ball is dropped from every day at 1pm at the same time that a cannon is set off at the castle, so that the boats on the firth of forth know what time it is.















This is an observatory that was built on the top of the hill, but the light pollution is so bad that it can no longer be used.















The city of Edinburgh. The big building on the top of the hill is Edinburgh Castle.















Arthur's Seat
















The Scottish Parliament building. It was designed by a Spaniard and the building is very controversial. A lot of people hate it!















Holyrood Castle. The Castle at the bottom of the Royal Mile that the Queen stays in when she is in Edinburgh.

After orientation for the IFSA-Butler program we moved into our university lodgings. They are pretty nice and I will post pictures of those soon. Then we had orientation for the University which was a lot of fun. I met so many people during tasters for societies and pub crawls and the like.

Well that's all for now. I will post more soon!!

Love always,
Lizzie