Week 2!

Hello All!!

At the suggestion of my lovely cousin Colby I have decided to start a blog about my Scotland adventures instead of a weekly email. I feel a lot less creepy posting one sentence blogs than sending you all one sentence emails at 2am from a train to Glasgow (full story to come). I should probably be on Twitter but I hate it. I will try my hardest to pick up from where I left off on my last email but so much has happened so I apologise in advance if I forget anything. I am also going to use this time to practice my British spelling so if as you are reading this you think that I have spelled words incorrectly you are wrong.

Today was the beginning of week 2 of classes and it is off to a great start! (insert sarcastic tone here) 9am class on Monday= not cool. Especially when the topic is Institutions and Policies of the European Union. The EU has to be one of the most complicated institution/organisation/"state"/whatever other label you want to put on it. Not only does it have a bajzillion different supra-national institutions but they are all structured in the same manner. In other words... the Commission is the "top" institution and it houses the presidency of the EU (fun fact #1: currently held by Poland), however the European Parliament also has a Commission and a President and a Council of Ministers. There is also a Council of Ministers as part of the Commission. If you are confused already be grateful that you are not also taking this course. Even though my core courses are not that exciting (Institutions and Policies of the European Union, International Relations Theory) I am thoroughly enjoying them. My favorite class by far though is The Politics of Post-Soviet Russia. I will write more about my classes in a different post because I'm sure that some of you are falling asleep while reading about my course work. So moving on to the (mis)adventure of this past weekend.

One of my flatmates Kelley and I took the train on Friday up to Stirling. FYI Stirling is where I studied abroad for those of you who have forgotten :). It is also where my Scottish friends Mike and Fraser live. We boarded the train at 2:30pm on Friday afternoon as neither of us has class Thursday or Friday (fist pump). We arrived in Stirling around 3:30 and decided to get some touristy things out of the way before we met up with Mike and Fras for dinner. The Wallace Monument is one of the big tourist attractions in Stirling, not only because it houses William Wallace's (Mel Gibson Braveheart) sword which is 6ft tall but there are also great views from the top. The Wallace Monument is 2 miles from the train station so we decided that we would just walk instead of trying to figure out the bus schedule. Side note: Kelley is wearing black patent leather flats and I am wearing riding boots. We moseyed over to the monument with no problem (thank you Google Maps) and proceeded into the gift shop to buy entrance tickets... only to find out that the monument was closing in 15 minutes. Fail #1. So sadly we had to turn around and begin our journey to Mike and Fras's flat. I type their address into Google Maps and... there flat is 2.7 miles from the Wallace Monument. WOOHOO!! Needless to say we took a beer break halfway there. When we finally arrived at there flat (which is really nice) my heels were bleeding and Kelley had to stretch out her quads. We told the guys all about of trek to Wallace Monument after which Fras informed us that we still could have walked to the top of the hill to see the views even if we couldn't go inside the actual monument. Fail #2. We spent the evening with the guys learning Scottish slang (which I will not repeat here because it was all extremely inappropriate) and soaking up the local Scottish culture aka watching football (not American). Our train back to Edinburgh left at 11:15 that night so we said our good-byes and headed back to the train station. We found our platform, got some M&Ms from the vending machine and waited for our train home to arrive. At 11:14 the train pulled in, we jumped on, and settled in for the hour long trip back to Uni. I will now break into an exact narrative of what occurred next....
Me looking at the screen inside the train which says "Next stop Glasgow Queen Street"
Me looking at Kelley: "Um..... that is making me very nervous"
The train starts to move.
Kelley turning to a woman next to us: "Is this train going to Glasgow?"
Woman next to Kelley: "Yep."
Me to Kelley and Kelley to Me: &!&#*$(!*@#&$*!@(#)$(#!*#@&$&!@#*($)(#*#*&@&#*$(#*@
We had in fact taken the wrong train, going in the wrong direction, and it was an express (no stops!).
Luckily we were able to get the last train from Glasgow back to Stirling where Mike and Fras had blown up and air mattress for us :) We did eventually make it back to Edinburgh on Saturday morning unscathed and just a little bit smarter.

I will end this post here because it is ungodly long and write a shorter one in the next few days profiling each of my flatmates. But here are some pictures of these past two weeks in case you are not on Facebook and have not seen them. Enjoy!

Love you all!

Mike, Jack, Me (obviously), Fraser

view from Arthur's Seat

Me with Kelley