London & Amsterdam

It seems as though I've gone M.I.A. for a while. The past week was spent visiting my friend Sydney from Haverford in London then traveling with some Haverford girls to Amsterdam. It was an absolutely lovely time and I have hundreds of pictures to prove it. For example,

However, I'm going to change things up here and only go overboard with pictures that stand out to me. Mainly, what made the city special in my eyes. Sadly, I didn't really take that many pictures in London (that are atypical from the tourist shots), but Amsterdam has a few gems. 

However, I was super happy to get back to Edinburgh. I mean, come on. Who doesn't love a city that looks like this?

Carlton Hill

Sorry this post is super lame, but at the moment I'm pretty talked out about my trip. Eventually I'll put up little anecdotes about the cool cultural experiences from my trip. For now, enjoy the selected pictures.

Favorite parts of the trip-
1. Tea time with Earl Grey tea and cupcakes
2. Viewing Seurat's Bathers at Asnières in the National Gallery (London)
3. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
4. Amsterdam's bike culture
(and of course...)
5. Seeing Sydney!

Happy Birthday!

Also, happy birthday Mimi! Hope you're having a lovely day. I know you read this, so here's my transatlantic birthday wish to you. Love you! (PS Thanks for all of the cards, I love getting mail!)

1. I love dinner parties. (My cooking skills are significantly improving.)

2. Britain's Got Talent was literally outside my flat building today. Auditions were being held in the Festival Theatre, which is directly next to mine. The crowds (and noise) were a nice surprise...

National Museum

I went to the National Museum of Scotland today. It's pretty cool, although rather eclectic. I guess I'm just used to a more specialized museum since I only frequent the Franklin Institute back home. Regardless, it was a good experience. Each room seemed to remind me of the passions that I sometimes I forget I possess: rocks and minerals, heavenly bodies, Egypt and mummies, etc. I can't begin to explain how excited I was when I got to the geode section. The last picture of the amethyst- OH. MY. GOD. I fell in love. Directly behind the amethyst was a huge display of hundreds of different petrifications and minerals. I could have stared at that one display for an hour easily. And of course, they opened a mummy exhibit so I was in heaven. (Sadly though I didn't go- the exhibit wasn't free and I didn't have any money on me).

Oh museums, how you entertain me. I'm so excitable.

THE SUPERBOWL. Its pretty funny that the best Superbowl experience I've ever had happened while I wasn't in the United States. The Superbowl wasn't broadcast over here until 11:30 PM, which made me question whether I should watch it or not. However, my friend convinced me to attend her pregame party and watch the game at Teviot, our student center. I never expected our student center to be so crowded, but it was! Who knew Edinburgh students cared so much about American football? (In all honesty, the majority didn't. I think it was just an excuse to be out and watch sport.) But every TV in the building was super crowded by spectators and I wound up standing on a couch behind people sitting on a balcony to watch the game projected onto a screen in the room that typically is used as Teviot's "nightclub". The game was made much more interesting by the group of guys I was standing behind. They were a lovely bunch of Englishmen who were the most excited to watch the Giants win- they had organized clever cheers (The blue, the white, the Patriots are shite... as an example) and decided it was a great idea to take their shirts off and pose when good plays were made. So basically, they were your typical rowdy boy sportsfan? I was also hanging out with a guy from England who knew nothing about American football but decided to root for the Giants anyway and yell nonsense the whole game. As a side note, it seems that the popular drink that night was a snakebite- an alcoholic beverage consisting of half beer, half cider and flavored with black currant. It's pretty tasty as I discovered (for what it is, anyway).


Random tidbits-
1. Sonia and I tried Kelly's of Cornwall's Clotted Cream. Taken from their website- "Kelly's of Cornwall is the leading brand of Cornish ice cream and a pioneer of the famous Cornish clotted cream ice cream." YUM!

2. I had my second lab for my one class today. It breaks my heart to say I will no longer be working with Mr. Blue Eyes. Turns out that we change lab groups every time, so now I'm working in this group of really nice girls. And I'm not that bummed about it because we are so much more efficient than my last group. Our planning and preparation only took about 20 minutes, where it took us sooooo much longer last week. 

3. I recently discovered I love sweet potatoes. And that I don't know how to properly cook a burger without a grill. The two aren't related.

4. Some pretty tasty lunches. Spicy chicken and cheese sandwich with a side of sea salt and balsamic crisps. (Yes, balsamic! How awesome?!)

5. I think I'm the only one who sweats at the gym. I look around each time and I'm dripping with sweat (sorry for the mental image) and my shirt is soaked, but no one else seems to be perspiring in the least. Stupid. I get embarrassed and leave as quick as I can.

6. I think I may have fallen victim to an English version of Barney Stinson (although not as extreme). If you don't know who that is, don't worry about it. Its probably better that way. If you do, thanks for your sympathy. I always thought those girls were stupid too.

I think it's safe to say I'm finally settled in. I'm finally feeling at home in my flat.

This weekend was the first one I felt comfortable in just doing nothing. Friday and Saturday nights were just spent with a few friends drinking mulled wine and watching movies. No money spent, no stress. It was quite a nice weekend. Especially because its been pretty cold here (it snowed in London?!) and yesterday's rain was quite miserable. I didn't even feel guilty about going out, which is nice. Although tonight is the Super Bowl and one of my friends invited me over to her Super Bowl party. How can I say no?!

Yesterday was the Scotland v. England rugby match. Poor Scotland. As one website recaps: "FULL TIME: Scotland 6-13 England. The victory is England's. Scotland had chances to win that game, but threw every one of them away. For much of that match, they were playing against themselves. " Sad day, what a sad day. They really stood a chance until the second half. It's a relatively big deal since it was their opener in the Six Nations (annual rugby championship games).


But anyway, back to how I'm all settled in. Sonia and I made dinner together last night. Soooo tasty. Now I'm inspired to actually start cooking real meals for myself. I still think I'll be cooking potatoes and carrots the most though. Just so incredibly tasty and easy to make. 

I also am really starting to have good relationships with the girls I live with. The past few nights my flatmate Amanda has been making popcorn for herself but then comes into Vera and my room to give us both bowls. Vera (my roommate) and I are getting along really well now too. I can't say what changed really, but we're getting a lot more social. And of course, Africa and I are getting along really well too, especially after the whole fire thing on Friday. There's not much I can really say about the good vibes going on in my flat, but its a whole lot more comfortable now and a lot more social. I also think its pretty funny/great that our towel rack looks like this. We somehow each bought a different color towel- so incredibly convenient. 

I don't know if I mentioned this in my blog, but our kitchen light burnt out sometime this past week, so we had to resort to a desk lamp to light our kitchen. But the first day we did that, that specific lamp's bulb also burnt out! So now we're on desk lamp two. We've reported the light issue and they told us they're come fix it the next day, but we're still waiting in the dark...

Ok well I think that's it! Have a nice Sunday everyone.

It's been quite an exciting past few days for me. I'm going to try to make this blog post a lot shorter than normal though. More succinct, let's say.

So here goes:
1. I finally joined the gym! I looked like a lost puppy though trying to figure out where everything was. It's a pretty confusing building with tons of secret little doors and staircases. I also forgot that the treadmill would show distances in kilometers and speed in kph.

2. There was a fire in the flat above me yesterday so we were all evacuated and had to wait outside as the firemen did their thing for an hour. It was pretty intense. We had four fire trucks blocking up our street, which seemed like a little overkill to me, but hey. All of the firepeople in the trucks went into our building so I guess it was necessary. They really pulled out the stops for us too, making use of their hoses and the ladder that extended to the 4th story window. My flatmate Africa had her phone on her (I stupidly didn't bring anything with me except my room key) so she was being paparazzi. Hopefully she'll send me the photos soon so I can show you guys.

3. My friend invited a group of us over to enjoy the delicious desserts she was dying to make. Of course we said yes! She invited us to bring along beverages that would complement her desserts, so that's just what we did. She made this delicious chocolate peanut butter terrine and vanilla cupcakes with honey cream cheese frosting. Good company and a lovely night.

4. Sonia and I decided to spend the rest of our Friday (Friday morning was the fire) walking around town. I had never visited Princes Street and she had never walked up to the castle so we put those on our to-do lists. We wound up viewing beautiful artwork (like some of Raphael's madonnas) in the Scottish National Gallery. Gotta love free admission. It was a really chilly day, but so nice to walk around. I live in such a great city. Here are some of the pictures I took-

5. On Thursday, some of my friends and I decided to go out to what seems to be the club I frequent quite often. Mainly because I happen to be hanging out with someone who hasn't been before and they want to go. (Although I'll admit I really do like the club.) It's free entrance on Thursday, so that was definitely a deciding factor as to why I wound up there. But anyway, this night has many stories attached to it, but if you're curious for more details about them, ask me. It's way too long to type all of them here. But to sum up- I witnessed my first fight in close proximity. (But I was safe because the guys I had met were really protective of me and kept me out of danger.) I met the coolest guys from the British Army (they were the ones who kept me safe) and a bunch of other cool people. Apparently I'm a guy magnet in the UK (sorry parents reading this) so I spoke with a lot of guys. Who knew?! 

Just Not The Same...

The other day I was craving some type of gummy candy so I decided to explore the candy sections of the grocery stores I go to. Trying to branch out from the ones I've already tried (Rowntree's Sour Pastilles and Rowntree's Randoms- both delicious), I went for ones that sounded totally outrageous to me. I finally decided upon "Jelly Babies". I regret that decision. I should have known- it says it right in the name. They're JELLY babies, not gummy babies. That actually just occurred to me now. So they were not at all what I expected, wanted, or even liked. Sure, I finished the bag eventually. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Overly dramatic? Yeah. I know.

Also, today was the second time I've went grocery shopping for real. I've been to Tesco for things here and there, but I was just about completely out of food today so I went grocery shopping with Sonia. We decided to try a different store just to compare prices, quality, etc. So today we bought food from Lidl. I also regret that. At the check out, I made it very obvious that I was not from Scotland. Basically, the woman checked out some of my items and sat there staring at me. I realized she wanted me to bag the groceries, so I went over there but couldn't find the bags. So I asked her. And she told me that the bags were back in line and that I had to pay for each bag. And remember, I was completely out of food and had to restock. I had a decent amount of food, so buying bag by bag. Ughhh. And then, I was obviously flustered, she was still waiting on me to bag the food. Of course I can't get the bag open, the line behind me is getting longer and longer and I eventually just shove all of the food into my bags. Thankfully nothing else went too wrong. The cashier woman decided to make jokes about it once my ordeal was done. She also said there was no need to be embarrassed, that now I knew. Except she was so freaking snappy with me during the whole thing: "Have you ever shopped before?!" as if I were supposed to know that I had already passed the bags, that it was obvious that you pay for bags at a grocery store. (That's not how it works at Tesco). I sassed her back and said "Well yes I have." She was so passive-aggressive. Happily though, my bill came to about 28 pounds, including alcohol, so basically it was a 20 pound food bill. I don't consider that too expensive for the amount of food I bought. (Two bags of salad, some chicken, some burgers, salad dressing, soup, fries, clementines, peas, etc). OH WELL. I'll just never go back to Lidl. There are a few other produce shops/grocery stores I've wanted to try. 

That's about it for now. I could report on the amazingly attractive fella I have for a lab partner, but I doubt anyone would be interested in that... (Bluest eyes you've ever seen.)

Haha yeah, but anyway. I'll post more interesting things later. I just wanted to talk about my failed food experiences. (OH BUT I've been making the most amazing rosemary potatoes- thanks, Mom! Its totally a staple in my diet here.)