First Real Post!

HI!

I know I haven't posted...at all, but I'm going to try and rectify that right about now. It's almost 3 a.m. so I'll stick to a regular written post, but I promise a fun video will pop up soon.

In a nutshell, everything here is absolutely fantastic. The city is gorgeous, there is wonderful nature, and the people are extremely friendly. Class on the other hand will be the bane of my existence while here, but I have a library buddy so it won't be all bad. Where to begin!

The first day here, I had no way to contact Kristine, so I decided to outsmart my jetlag and sleep the entire afternoon, evening and night. Thankfully it worked. The next day I had orientation, and randomly ran into Kristine on the way over! We skipped out of the presentation early and did some necessary shopping. Later that night, we searched for a nice looking pub and finally stumbled on one called The Abbey. It turned out to be a good choice, because we ended up talking to this Edinburgh native for over an hour and it was TERRIFIC. At first he accosted me while I was ordering a drink because I was wearing a hat indoors (apparently that's awful?) and didn't understand that A) I forgot to buy shampoo C) It was raining B) My hair was just plain gross. I was a little creeped out, so we headed back to our table to be left alone. About 10 minutes later he headed over to us and pulled up a chair...and none of us were too receptive. Unfortunately, America has taught us that this is creepy, so we were a little cold at first. Turns out, he was just a super friendly, really funny and of course, really drunk man. We talked about the differences between Scotland and America, Barack Obama, and he told us to be weary of machete-yielding men. In the end, it was a success, and will probably remain one of the trip's highlights.

The next few days were just a smattering of different pubs, classes, random walks and lots of new people. The classes here are really intense...I can sense that I'll be spending many many hours in the library, but it won't be too out of the ordinary. Hopefully I'll learn a lot! I'm taking: Energy, Environment and Security: Energy Policy in Britain, France and the US since 1974, The First New Nation: Nationalism and Regionalism in America, and U.S. Foreign Policy: 1880-1917. Foreign Policy is going to be RIDICULOUSLY hard, or so it seems, but whatever! We shall see.

And although I don't have a video in this post, I do have some cool pictures! Today we climbed Arthur's Seat...then rewarded ourselves with giant baked potatoes. Here's the view (and some other choice photos!)














http://www.flickr.com/photos/34437706@N05/3204605055/
(Many more photos at the link above!)

Well, I don't have too much to say for now, not to mention it's 3:30 in the morning. I promise it will get more interesting, so keep checking back for more!!! And feel free to leave me some comments :)