Helpfulness and Cultural Sensitivity — Tuesday 8 November to Friday 11 November

Tuesday was the "be helpful" day. I started off by turning the bin back over after SOMEONE (flo, conor, felicity, and maybe adam) turned everything in the kitchen over. Chairs? Check. Stools? Check. Theme night bottles on the windowsill? Check. Speakers? Check. Microwave? Check. Coffee table? Check. Toaster? Check. Electric kettle? Check. Bin? Check. Recycling bag? Check. All the papers on the bulletin board? Check. The random hairspray bottle we have on the counter? Check. The basil and parsley plants? Check. My cup of dried out, perfectly good white tea leaves and a tea ball? Check.
I was impressed, if peeved. I turned the bin over, since I had to throw my teabag away.

Chairs and coffee table. Bob, significantly, was not turned upside down.

Stools.

Speakers, and the weird Christmas moose.

Microwave, kettle, toaster. The kettle still had water in it...

The bin hadn't been turned over yet when I took the pictures.

They had only turned one paper over, but all the others got turned over when they got back.

We actually had someone come in from the office and ask us to turn our furniture back over. Apparently it's a safety hazard.
Since it was raining in an irritably misty fashion, I decided that I needed a head covering. The high volume of practicing muslims on campus makes me leery of wrapping a scarf around my head, I didn't feel like wearing the hat I did bring, and I don't have anything with a hood that I would wear outside my own flat. Besides, hoods are difficult with my hair. They just don't like each other. I had planned to meet Freya, the girl who I'd helped monday, on tuesday afternoon, so I went to the library, got a book to read for history seminar, perfected my lab report, and went to H&M for a hat, all between 10:30 and 12:00.
I got a call from Freya (the lab report girl) as I was heading back from H&M. The guy with the neckbeard from biochem's computer had crashed, and could I email him a word document so he could redo his entire lab report? Thanks.
I would never leave a fellow biochemist in the lurch, especially one who is as baffled by the lack of mathematical education in this country as I am, and especially one with such an impressive neckbeard.
History lecture was the most boring thing. Usually, there's something that can be concluded from the historical records. Today? Nothing. We could only conclude that we really don't know what went on with literacy and education in early modern england, but first we had to go over what we might possibly conclude, and why it was wrong.
The high point was when a random australian who sounded oddly american came in and excitedly told us about a "summer abroad volunteer" thing. Delphine, the french lecturer who is also the least annoying lecturer I've had so far, looked a little peeved when she poked her head into the room, but allowed her to come in and bounce off the walls. There was a theory that she was some random street person who made up some fliers and put on an australian accent to mess with people.
The afternoon was consumed by biochemistry. Freya had just had a death in the family, so she decided to push her due date back while getting as much done as possible, but I had to figure out the library turn-in system. It was pretty easy; you just need your name, student number, module leader's name, date the assignment is due, date it was assigned, module name, module code, and the assignment title. I still felt pretty accomplished when I turned it in.
When I got home, I made crepes. I will never let a crepe tuesday pass me by. I still haven't quite figured out the way that the hob (stove) heats, because sometimes, 6 isn't hot enough, and other times, 4 is too hot. Whatever. The crepes were pretty good; I suspect that the few that Jessi didn't eat have either been hidden or devoured by the party downstairs.
I've been having trouble getting to sleep because there's literature assignment all over my bed making me feel guilty and there's thumping music downstairs.
Funny story. I got an email from whitworth a while ago with the registration schedule. I was all set to register at 3PM Wednesday, when I remembered the time zone thing. Panicked, I tried to remember when 3 PM pacific time was in london time, and convinced myself that it was at crazy early in the morning. No, it's not. It's at 11PM london time. I reset my google calendar, discovering a cool time zone feature along the way.

Wednesday, I really didn't want to go to class. I got to bed late on tuesday night (stupid lit assignment), and I had slept well but short. It was freezing outside my covers because I think Jessi opened the window when she got home, why I don't know. In any case, she didn't close it. After closing the window around 7, I went back to sleep until 7:45, when my first alarm went off. I then slept intermittently around my alarms, which I only seem to be able to turn all the way off when I'm still asleep. I seriously considered sleeping through my seminar, seeing as the sky looked bleak. It sounded like a good idea, and a perfectly valid reason, until I considered the fact that my professor can actually tell if I skip that class. I regretfully dragged myself out of bed.
After class, I helped Freya (whose name is actually spelled Freeha, but she hates that spelling and tells everyone "Freya" to simplify things, which sounds like my "I'm from oregon" modus operandi for identification here) with her lab report. I was starting to feel a bit used, but in the long run I'd rather feel used than mean.
I won at registration, and I got into almost everything that I'd planned to take. I resigned myself to intro to public speaking instead of interpersonal comm, and got a fitness-wellness gen-ed in the form of water aerobics (held monday, wednesday, and friday at 8). My next MWF class is core 250 at 10:25, so I'll have time to change and such. Win! I also got both of my 3rd year chemistry classes and their labs at reasonable times, and I think my core d-group is with a cool leader. I also have karate 2, which claims to have Sensei Canon (instead of the new guy that he called on to take over so he could get a new job that he liked better). I'm not getting my hopes up, but it would be awesome if he was back.

Thursday I skipped my 0900 lecture. I looked outside and it was all grey... I couldn't make myself get up. I did go to the noon part of the lecture, which was kind of interesting. I had a nerd freakout, though, when I was thinking about how small molecules of water and air are to fit inside cells and capillary electrophoresis tubes and that sort of thing. I was actually briefly claustrophobic because I was thinking about all the molecules that were completely filling the room and smashing into everything. I was in a huge room that wasn't stuffy or even that warm, with no one sitting right next to me. It was really weird.
Between seminar and lab, I called this haircut place called Sherlocks, mostly to see if they were walk-in or appointment, since I had a coupon and needed a haircut. They took walk-ins but preferred appointments, so I made one for Friday at 13:00 (1PM). The connection wasn't good, so I ended up giving my name as Anne because Raeann would have been too hard to spell. I may have also given my last name as Hudson by accident. I ended up nearly gaining a northern accent when I was giving my mobile number, the last three digits of which are 116. For some reason, my pronunciation was confusing, so I slipped from my fairly broad uh (wuhn) to more of an oo (woon). I hope I'll be able to pull this off in America. It will be nice being able to say "Washington" and having most people know that we're either there already or that I'm not talking about the capitol of the country. I'm tempted to switch to Anne anyway, just because of the wide range of spellings that I get for Raeann in America. I'll respond to it, so...
Lab was... pointless. There were only enough gels for 8 groups, which meant that one person got all the experience. Also, no one got all seven bands that we were supposed to get. Fail. I had odd flashbacks from senior year at PNNL, since that was my project for the last few weeks. I didn't actually learn to read the gels, but I was pretty good at preparing and running them.
While waiting for the gels to run (90 minutes), Freya and I went for coffee. Neckbeard tagged along, and I discovered his latent veronica capabilities. He doesn't seem to be able to stand silence. I also came up against the strangest instance of cultural insensitivity that I've ever witnessed. This could be because most white americans, especially in a study abroad situation or a university setting, tend to be really cautious about offending. Even if you think someone is dead wrong, chances are that you won't say a word.
A small amount of backstory is required for this to make sense: 1. Everyone in england smokes. Not everyone, but pretty close. There are cigarette butts everywhere.
2. Freya is pakistani, which I don't consider asian, as such, but I guess it really is. I think of asians as eastern asians (oriental is a type of rug).
Freya also smokes, and she did so on the walk to starbucks, which is right by an entrance to the bridges (so fairly visible). She commented on how awkward she feels smoking in public, because there is apparently an asian social stigma against asian girls who smoke in public. It's not considered a very, um, moral thing to do. Neckbeard, who is bulgarian, flipped out. He thought it was ridiculous, which it kind of is (let's face it, every culture has something that another culture considers ridiculous embedded in it), but he also thought that it was somehow offensive, and kept insisting that she didn't have to be sneaky about smoking. She obviously didn't want to be seen as a person of loose character by other asians, and kept trying to change the subject while maintaining that she doesn't like smoking in public.
The only thing I can really think to compare it to is this. It's as if someone moved to a place where general opinion was that underwear is all you need. Naturally, most (sober) people from the first world, at least, think that pants are also required. They're going to keep wearing pants because they're just not comfortable without them. Then someone who doesn't think pants are necessary comes up and belittles their insistence on wearing pants over their underwear. No one else in that society cares if they wear pants, and no one has really commented on it to date because it's not that big of a deal, but this local makes a huge deal out of it. Of course the pants-wearer is going to keep wearing pants.
Of course Freya won't just start smoking in public.
Geh. It rather soured the afternoon. Plus, neckbeard doesn't know how to shut up, seriously.
After having a frustrating discussion with the impossible little frenchman about exams, I went home and flopped into the kitchen, where I stayed for a few hours. It was very relaxing, not needing to do anything.

So, exams? Biochemistry modules all have their exams in june. Even the fall semester modules. Even the fall semester modules that end in december.
What.
And the exams are all accredited, so I can't have them just write up a slightly revised version that I can't pass along to my classmates to their benefit unless I managed to get the whole biomedical sciences department to back me on wanting exams in january.
Unlikely. And I'm probably not going to be able to just write an essay. Looks like I might have to go to a british embassy or consulate, where I am, in essence, on british soil, and sit the accredited exam five months after the course finished. I don't know what this means for my credits, and I'm not sure if I can choose to just not transfer them. I'm trying to not stress about it right now, since I still have an essay due in less than a week that I still haven't really started.
Of course, if my credits won't transfer... I have to wait until monday for a lot of things, like getting the exam schedule so I can look into going to london at the end of January, setting up a meeting with the ISEP lady here, and call iceland air to move my ticket up about a week. I'm thinking I might just go to London and leave from there, although the luggage situation would be a little tricky. I don't want to take what will likely end up being three suitcases and my bag on what will probably be the megabus, but possibly a train.
We'll see.

Friday I slept in until almost noon, for the win, and then went to get a haircut. Jessi came with me to get out of the flat and do some gift shopping, and Josie came to get a travel bag for Bob Diddyfish, who has been the subject of a few inquiries by the university. I was a little nervous about the haircut, since the plan was to get a rather dramatic shortening, but it ended well. I'm still in the confused stage between "My hair looks awesome!" and "Oh, it's so short! Where did it go?"
It's pretty short around my face, which is throwing me off when I try to move it out of the way of food or something because grabbing the ends means brushing it away from my face instead of tossing a lock over my shoulder. Lunch was around 14:30, and was obtained at Fatso's, which has jacket (baked) potatoes, soups, and salads. Possibly also sandwiches. I got a jacket potato, which sounds cooler than baked potato, with cheese and a smallish salad that came with it. We ate at Murray Library, where we ran into Flo, who'd just come from his first day at Liebherr, where he will pretty much be a translator between the Sunderland branch and the main corporation in Austria, which apparently refuses to speak english to its english branches.
When we got back, I got all my books for my lit assignment out, then fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was about to head downstairs for dinner when Jessi hurriedly informed me that Adam was about to go to Asda, and did I need anything?
Yes. I decided to use next week's food budget to stock up a bit, and as a result, I shan't be getting anything from Aldi next week. When I run out of milk, I'm out until the week after. Of course, I can just use everyone else's until then, so I'm not worried. I got lots and lots of fresh fruit, which was exciting, and a new container of flour for crepes. I may have gone overboard on the fruit juices and yogurts (sometimes pronounced yaw-gurts). I'm going to miss hazelnut yogurt a lot when I go back home.
I am a bit worried about the going back home situation, but I'm kind of trying to forget that over the weekend. I need to focus on writing that thrice-accursed assignment.

Tuesday 1 November to Monday 7 November

This post will be fairly disjointed because I don't remember many details from the week. Nothing too interesting happened, although my lab report still wasn't due (Nazgul shriek of rage).

It's a little quiet, crank your speakers for the full effect of how I felt.

Oh, I gave a presentation wednesday that wasn't too bad. I wasn't very pleased with the end result. I was having a hard time coherently connecting the primary source to the secondary sources while making the slides, but I thought I did rather well in the end. My professor asked me some questions that I knew the answers to, and no one had that glassy, "this doesn't make sense and I can't even understand her accent" look, which was encouraging.
Over the course of the week, I worked on that lab report (grumble), made up the presentation, got serious about my english lit essay, and slept in too much. I also started NaNoWriMo, the "write a novel in november" thing that I keep hearing about. The idea is to write 1667 words per day to get 50000 words in 30 days. I'm slightly addicted to updating my word count. I take my computer everywhere in hopes of being able to work on the story in my free time, since I'm still in the euphoric phase that I get at the start of anything. I'm also trying to build a buffer for when I have to do, you know, schoolwork.
I also got my first lab report back, and, well, I passed. Sort of. "Passing" is above a 39% (holy cow) and I got a 41%, so by my standards, I failed miserably. By comparing my grade to those of the other people at my lab bench (I've described some of them before; Adam and Jedward were the only two from my "usual" group), I pwned that assignment. I was the only one who passed, but I think they may have been kind to me on account of my internationalness. They won't go so easy on my second report, which was better anyway. I think it was better, at least; I can't actually remember what it was.
Hmm. It's the past now; I never look back. (ha)
I can't remember what day it was that I walked the accidentally long way back from the university. I think it might have been wednesday, but I'm not sure. I wished I'd taken my camera, because I don't have the motivation to take another random walk, and the area was starting to look a little sketchy. Not the area that I headed into so much; it was pretty residential. The street I ended up on runs parallel to Chester Road, which I have documented photographically in the past. I know this now, but I wasn't sure where exactly I was at the time. While it was nice, I was approaching a hill and had been walking for long enough, so I turned down a street that should take me over to Chester. It did, but not before making me afraid that I might have to bludgeon someone with my laptop. Relax, Mom and Dad, I keed. First, I didn't actually see anyone that looked suspicious. Second, I haven't seen anyone that looks that suspicious in Sunderland to date. I think it's the narrow roads and slightly rundown nature of most houses here. I saw a million "To Let" and "For Sale" signs in cute little houses, but I refused to let them influence me. (sigh)

On the weekend, I went to the Sunderland city library down the street to see if they had any books I could use for my lit paper.
I was disappointed. They might have a very small section on 18th century literature, but they mostly have modern, pop culture stuff.
I also got a very sneaky bottle of water that turned out to be flavoured. I was incredibly disappointed, and I think Jessi thought I was being irrationally so. Greggs has normal water and flavoured water, and while the bottles have some differences (like the flavoured one is pink, as Jessi pointed out), there are pink bottles of normal water in other stores (as I didn't point out because it really was my fault for not checking the label). I suddenly understood how the guys in the junior english class to which Meagan Bradshaw brought peppermint ice cream (which was delicious) were so offended by the fact that it wasn't fruit-flavoured. Sure, Meagan told everyone beforehand that it was peppermint, but they assumed that it was fruit or bubblegum and were extremely vocal in their disapproval of the gross deception.
That was how I felt. Imagine, expecting nice cold water and getting overly sweet raspberry cranberry water. Blech.
Sunday was Guy Fawkes Day, named for the main conspirator in the Gunpowder Treason Plot that attempted to blow up Parliament way back when. They were executed horribly either on the fifth of november or were caught on the fifth of november (remember remember the fifth of november) and Fawkes was burned in effigy every fifth of november for quite a few years/decades/centuries afterwards. In practice, it's like the fourth of july. Lots of fireworks, time spent with family, some old history revived, and fireworks. They also do a lot of bonfires. We didn't do much for bonfire night, since the place that had a fire was reported to be boring, so we stayed in and played with the Clanny Cat.
Also this weekend, I was finally able to get onto WhitNet and pick out the classes I want to register for, which was ridiculously exciting. All the classes I need and want fit into the same schedule! Yes! That's never happened before!

Monday, I helped one of my lab-mates with her graphs. I was starting to feel a bit used (how did you get this far in school if you can't even make a graph?!) until I found out that she has a lot of responsibility and stress at home in addition to being in one of the more intense majors work-wise. I figure that I can add a small amount of pedantry to my life to be nice. She did assure me that flapjacks are easy to make; all I need to do is look into "golden syrup", which I suspect to be closely enough related to corn syrup that I'm not worried. The one that I had today kind of tasted like honey, so I think the recipe is pretty flexible.
Now I'm blogging instead of working on my thesis. I'd like to thank everyone who reads my blog for giving me a reason to avoid my homework.

Edinburgh — Friday 28 October to Monday 31 October

Friday was a day of sleeping in and moving slowly until about half an hour before it was time to catch the metro to Newcastle, where we would catch the Megabus to Edinburgh. In addition to frantic packing activities, Adam was missing. We decided that he could drive to Newcastle if he had to, and set off for the metro with way too much luggage. The best part was all the food that was being packed. Josie thought it was the funniest thing that Jessi was packing for the apocalypse for a four-hour endeavor, since she had to drive an hour and a half to get to the supermarket in her home, um, town.
When we got to the metro, Flo, Lisa, and Josie realised that they didn't have enough change for the fare (£3, and it has to be coins) and hurried over to the Aldi (right next to the station, but we were on the other side of the tracks) to buy something that cost less than £2.
While Jessi, Conor, and I were guarding the luggage (so much luggage!), Adam showed up to let us know that he couldn't come. He had a big project due for his film class (he ended up interviewing a DJ instead of a prostitute), and the main problem with it was his fault. There were many sad faces made by all parties.
After an unnervingly long time, Josie, Flo, and Lisa came running (and that's not hyperbole) down the stairs to the platform. They'd been stuck behind this guy with a trolley (cart) full of stuff who had refused to let three kids with one thing each go ahead of him. He took forever, and then he bought fireworks.
Geh. In any case, they made it with just enough time to buy tickets. The train came, we said good bye to Adam, and then we were off!
Flo brought out his food about two stops in. It takes about a minute and a half to go between stops in Sunderland.
We did get stuck at one station, but that was about five, maybe ten minutes of waiting.
Jessi brought out her food at that point. Josie made faces at them.
We finally got moving, and I understood why Adam thinks that the metro is populated entirely by sketchy people. It's a long train ride to Newcastle, and there are a lot of sketchy little stops along the way. In my limited experience, which is pretty limited to Sunderland, there's not a lot of open space in England.
There was enough open space between Sunderland and Newcastle to provide ample sketchy metro stops.
We made it to Newcastle, which is a rather pretty city that I'd like to spend time in not at the airport between 23:00 and 01:00, without being threatened by any of the metro regulars.
I didn't get to see any more of Newcastle than the metro and the very short walk from the station to the megabus stop allowed. We found our bus easily and boarded without incident.
I got an aisle seat, which was disappointing, because the countryside was very pretty. It got dark pretty quickly, and I spent about an hour in drooly snoozing that didn't leave me very rested. After that, I tried to stare out the windows at the dark landscape, but I was foiled by the shade on the windscreen (windshield) and the bald guy in front of me. I did see the Conan Doyle Tavern on the way in to Edinburgh, but that was about it.
There are so many castles and spires and the like in Edinburgh. It was incredible. In the dark, at least, it was beautiful. I was not expecting this. Big cities in the states are not considered beautiful, as a rule. Striking, sure, and occasionally intriguing, but rarely beautiful.
On the long walk to the hostel, we joked constantly about how this castle or that imposing building was actually the hostel, and learned that Josie's parents met at while staying at a hostel that was in a castle in Edinburgh. Her dad actually broke a hundred-year-old stained glass window when he and his friends got locked out. We also made fun of Flo, who griped the whole way about how hungry he was and how heavy his bag was (it held his and Lisa's clothes and was a duffel with no shoulder strap). Jessi borrowed Josie's rolling suitcase and rested her bag on it.
After arguing a little bit over which building was the Edinburgh Castle and which was the building that Flo was pointing at, we reached the Budget Backpackers hostel.

Hostel! The colours outside are pretty tame compared to inside.

We had a bit of a hard time explaining that we were missing on person, lowering our party count to six, and only four of us were staying for three days, and two of us were only staying for two days, but we all booked together. It was great. (Flo and Lisa had to go back for class on monday. Our megabus tickets got us back well before 6 PM, so I was fine for class)
Almost immediately after checking in, getting our bedding on, and ditching our luggage in the lockers, we set out in search of food. Flo was hungry, and the rest of us were starting to feel peckish as well.
We argued over whether we should try for Pizza Express or something cooler. We argued kind of a lot this trip...
We settled on The Castle Arms, a little restaurant on top of some shops. It was okay, but nothing to write home about.

Dinner. The better part was looking around the city, since the food was pretty "meh." 

I had "soup" that ended up being a vegetable stew-y sort of affair, while everyone else had a main course. I foresaw my eating habits in this. Yay, vegetarians! At least I have a valid excuse for avoiding haggis if it ever crosses my path.

After the castle arms, we ambled around the city. It was about 8PM at this point, I want to say, but the city was still nice to look at. We found a graveyard (which freaked Jessi out for some reason), and kept an eye out for tour guides with white facepaint and anachronistic clothes. I quickly determined that they were from the "Witchery Tours" across the street from where we ate, which I thought would be very interesting. They were very popular around Halloween, though, so I didn't bring it up to the others. There was no way we'd be able to afford it even if we managed to book a spot.

After lots of ambling, we ended up at a coffee shop that looked like it had cake, which Jessi was craving. It turned out to be The Elephant House, billed as the birthplace of Harry Potter.

Edinburgh is kind of obsessed. There's one shop that has a "JK Rowling was never in this shop" sign.

Apparently, Joanna (JK) Rowling had a bit of a rough start. She was a single mom without a steady enough job to pay for heat, so she took her kid(s) around to coffee shops where she could sit and write. I wasn't too impressed by Elephant House as a coffee shop. I suspect that they get by on their fame rather than their coffee. The mocha that I had made me tired, which was rather distressing.

After the Elephant House, we moved on to The Last Drop pub, which we later learned is where the condemned had their last glass of whiskey before being hung out in the Grassmarket. The Grassmarket was actually sort of across the street from the hostel.

The Last Drop tavern had several movie quotes. I took a picture of the Sean Connery one because he's Scottish. And Batman is in the picture, too.

 The Last Drop was really crowded, so it was also really warm. I dozed while waiting for everyone else to be ready to go, which was a little embarrassing. It was fine, though, since I was able to fall asleep pretty quickly once we did get back to the hostel. I felt a little sorry for our asian roommate, who was asleep before we got back around 11 PM.

No one really felt sorry for asian roommate when she woke everyone except me up at four in the morning moving out.
Saturday is the picture day. Edinburgh was even prettier in the daytime, and the whole city was like the cool walls that make me so ridiculously happy in Sunderland.
We had already decided to go on the free walking tour at 11 AM, so we ambled downstairs for breakfast at 10:30-ish. All the breakfast foods were overpriced, but I got a large bowl of greek yogurt with honey. It was delightful.
There were three or four other people on the walking tour, all from Holland. It was led by Will from Australia, who was traveling around Europe and decided to stay in Edinburgh about six months ago. I'm slightly jealous of the ability to pick up and just start life over in a new place.
Don't worry, mom and dad, I'm coming home in january. I want to do science (which I can't do if I get a degree from here) more than I want to go globe-hopping.
We started off by learning about Greyfriars Bobby, whose statue across the street from the Greyfriars Bobby Tavern that's right next to the entrance of Greyfriars Kirkyard (the cemetery we visited friday night) is the most photographed statue in Scotland. I took a picture of it, but it didn't turn out well enough for me to keep when I ran out of space on my camera.

So there was this policeman who had a dog, which was unexpectedly a skye terrier instead of some more terrifying breed. John the policeman and Bobby were an inseparable pair until John died, after which Bobby sat at his grave (in Greyfriars) every single day for, I believe, 16 years. Stray dogs weren't allowed in Edinburgh, so the people sent around a petition that basically elected Bobby to parliament. Since killing a member of parliament was illegal, Bobby was able to keep his vigil without worrying about having no owner. When he died, he got his own grave at the front of the cemetery, a statue across the street, and a pub named after him.  

Most haunted graveyard, thanks to the various epidemics that swept the british isles. 

Greyfriars has 400 headstones and about 400,000, um, occupants. It's on what is referred to as "the mound", which was actually created by the mass burials during plague and epidemic years. Lovely.

Here's the most haunted part of the most haunted graveyard: this row was a prison for the few thousand survivors of an assault on Edinburgh by the english. George "Bloody" Mackenzie was the guy in charge, and apparently he felt the need to teach the Scots a lesson. 100 were taken out and hanged all at once in the Grassmarket at the beginning, and the 700 or so who survived after several months of bad treatment were tortured. 

The single most haunted place in the graveyard: the tomb of George Mackenzie, the guy who masterminded the atrocities from the picture before this.

It was all so pretty...

"Worst thing that happened to Scotland"

 The Flodden Wall (FLOW-dn) was built by some Scottish king to keep the English out. It was a mile square, and it held the entire population of Edinburgh for way too long. Unfortunately, when the English came, no one was guarding the gate, so they just walked in. Oops.

Allegedly the place where Joanna Rowling first had the idea for Harry Potter when talking to a little boy about what they did in the building there.

Graveyards: beautiful. Also, that's Flo there in the foreground.

There were so many spires and steeples.

For any Harry Potter fans who read this blog: Tom Riddle's grave.

Edinburgh Castle. Pretty awesome.

The sun was shining from behind, so the lighting was almost surreal.

Either St. Augustine's or Greyfriars church.

So. Pretty.

National library. Huge. 

Apparently, it's great fun to watch drunk girls in high heels try to walk on cobblestones. 

Castle. That cliff is where they threw suspected witches into the lake that used to be there. If they hit a rock on the way down (likely), they weren't a witch and their soul went to heaven. If they drowned (very likely), they weren't a witch and their soul went to heaven. If they somehow managed to survive, they were a witch and were tortured to death.
In the words of Will the tour guide, "Basically, if you were accused of being a witch, you were in a whole s***load of trouble."

Princes gardens. Yes, that's grammatically correct. This is where the lake (which was full of non-witch corpses and nasty refuse from the city, hence the great soil that leads to gorgeous gardens today) used to be.

Monument to Sir Walter Scott.

Scott himself.

There's this weirdly modern section of the city. Most of it is awesome and old, but if you look between the two old buildings, there's a new, glass building. 

Some cool stuff. I never really figured out what they are, but it's pretty.

Will the tour guide from Australia. Also "Edinburgh's Disgrace" in the background.

Will again and Conor. I was aiming for the unfinished amphitheatre. Edinburgh was trying to promote itself as a centre for the arts, but they ran out of money. It was all a bit embarrassing, I gather.

That cool thing and also the whole city.

The city and the harbor. I'm not sure which body of water that is. I think the North Sea is nearby-ish.

I can't remember what it was called, but that's where they'd signal the ships to move out at 13:00 (1:00 PM) every day. Somebody would climb up and fire a rifle until the city started absorbing the noise; they put ip a white flag on the cross-looking thing up there. Also, Jessi in the foreground.

So much old stuff. 

Again with all the cool old buildings! So pretty!

...Mansion? Classic country estate looking place.

So cool.

Fancy hotel has a courtyard on top.

St. Giles. Next to the Scottish Parliament's headquarters, which used to be a prison.

I think someone's heart is actually in the middle there; I could be wrong. I kind of missed the first part of Will's explanation. It's the only place where it's legal to spit in Scotland, however, so we all spat and dodged the flying globs of saliva.

These are not TARDISes. But they almost are...

I have a thing for tall buildings. I think this one is the HUB, the only place where a parliament meets over a cafe. 

Just outside the hostel. Old wall!

Other side of hostel.

Arthur's Seat, the mountainy hilly thing that King Arthur allegedly climbed to look over Edinburgh. We climbed it, too. Well, we actually climbed the taller hill in the middle, but we were close enough.

Climbing Arthur's Seat.

A... house? 

Jessi in front, Conor to the side taking a picture, two random people, then Flo and Lisa. I think Josie was ahead of me.

That is a really bad place to have a house. No wonder it fell down.

Me on top of the world. If you embiggen (by clicking, I think; if that doesn't work, try right clicking and opening the image in a new tab) and highlight, you can see a non-edinburgh town about a million feet below me.

Everyone else: Conor, Josie, Flo, Jessi, and Lisa was behind me. Flo kept playing with the wind and jumping to see if it would carry him back. It did. It was so windy up there... 

What a view. Totally worth the brutal climb.

Another gorgeous view. The green stretch in the middle of the picture is the actual Seat; we went up to the taller part behind the Seat. 

After we climbed back down the Seat, Flo and Lisa went to sort out their train tickets back to Sunderland while the rest of us played hearts before ambling around again. We acquired two new roommates, an older guy who turned out to be from Ecuador and an even older guy who didn't speak english. Flo and Lisa got back before we did, and Flo planted a large fake spider in Jessi's bed. Jessi hates spiders.
It was hilarious.
I must be a very deep sleeper, because apparently the guy who doesn't speak english woke everyone else up at about 4 AM. This seems to be a common theme. Apparently, he was folding shopping bags for at least half an hour. Jessi asked him if he was done at one point, and he just said, "Hello." Jessi was not amused, and ranted later, when we were all awake, about how he could have said he was sorry, or that he didn't speak any english. I'm not sure where I developed my sense of sympathy for people who can't speak the language of the country they're in very well, since I've only been in El Salvador, and I picked up enough spanish to make my needs known or was around a translator who could help me. I think it very odd that Jessi, who is not speaking in her native language and who went to America with iffy english skills when she was in high school, is incredibly frustrated by people who don't speak english. I realised at about that point that I will probably not get along with Jessi at all by the end of november. Call it personality clash, culture shock setting in, or familiarity breeding contempt, but I will probably have an outburst when we move in on december. I planned to take steps to push this issue back as long as possible, and it might be that she's having culture shock. She's used to living at home, not having a roommate, and speaking in German all the time. I'm used to living in a dorm, cooking for myself, having a roommate, and speaking english. This is probably why she occasionally turns into a total monster. She's also unwilling to simply accept the suppositions of others, and vocalises any doubts she might have. This drives me crazy. I don't mind when she gripes about the dishes, or when she is irrational about bugs, or when she sounds angry over something little, like me being in the way of the microwave, or when she's really lazy and gets everyone else to get things for her... This turned into Watson's "I never complain" rant (starts at 49 seconds) from the Sherlock Holmes movie, which has a SEQUEL coming out!

Sunday, we mostly slept in (after the noisy packer debacle), and I can't really remember what we did. Flo and Lisa checked out, and I think this is the day that we went shopping. I got yarn for Mom, some postcards, and some "Traditional Scottish Tea" in a cool box. I was hoping for a nifty scarf, or some other touristy thing, but there was nothing I liked enough to justify spending the money on it.
We had Pizza Express for dinner, and it was okay. The best part were the "dough balls" (like small round breadsticks) with nutella. So good.
We had three new roommates when we got back, a couple and their third wheel. There were a few awkward moments there, but they were polite enough and didn't wake us up at crazy early in the morning.

Monday was fine. We caught the bus back with no trouble, other than Jessi insisting upon asking the drivers where they were going instead of reading the sign on the bus and on the gate, which I told her about (eye twitch) and being sent back into the nasty, hot, smelly bus station because our bus wasn't loading yet. For the ride back, I got the window, which soothed my irritation with Jessi, and I watched the countryside amble past.
After a lengthy search of the train station for a bathroom, we bought our tickets for the metro, which were oddly small. Jessi, of course, had to make sure that they were proper and not invalid in some way instead of simply confirming that everyone else had the same thing, since we all used different machines. Not that I'm bitter. Anyway, the rest of the way home was uneventful, and my post-journey endorphines saved the day by making me essentially forget any frustrations for a few hours. It was good to get back to Sunderland.

Also, the time changed. I think it was Saturday night.