Scotland Wandering

Unwilling to give up one more weekend, my friend Molly and I decided to go to Scotland.  Everybody else was either traveling to Stockholm or was just busy so on Thursday afternoon we booked tickets and on Friday morning we left.  We got onto the train around 2 minutes before it left King's Cross but we were on the train and in a little less than 5 hours we arrived in Edinburgh!

Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen and is definitely one of my favorites.  The city itself is relatively small but has an amazing feel with lots of really nice people.  The rest of the day on Friday, we checked into our hostel, wandered around the city, walked the Royal Mile, booked tickets for the castle, walked through the parks, and just had a great time!  In the evening we checked back into our hostel for a little before heading out to meet one of my sister's friends from Edinburgh.  Molly and I made the fifteen minute walk into a twenty five minute walk after taking a couple wrong turns but eventually found the pub and had a great time talking with Craig and his mate.  Just listening to a couple of Scottish accents for two hours made the trip worth it.

Saturday morning, we got up, toured the castle, got baked potatoes for an early lunch, and ate a deep fried Mars bar.  My sister had told me of the goodness that is the fried Mars bar before I went to Edinburgh but I hadn't fully appreciated how delicious it could be.  It's unbelievable.  A normal Mars bar is good enough but when you deep fry it and the chocolate and caramel get melty?  Forget about it.   After that life changing experience, we went to the bus station and got onto a bus for St. Andrews!  In just a couple hours we were at the home of golf!  We met up with my friend, Lizzy, whom I haven't seen in years and she toured us around the town, golf course, and showed us the university.  St. Andrews was definitely a cool little town with a lot of pretty views of the sea, not to mention one of the best looking golf courses I've ever seen.  Among golf courses, the majesty of The Old Course can't really be matched.  We headed back to Edinburgh in the evening and then left for London the next morning.  A great weekend

Welcome to Edinburgh!

                                                        Castle and Harriet's School

                                             

Mars Bar and the castle at night

  

                                                             Arthur's Seat from the top of the castle

 

                At the Old Course with Lizzy                                Chariots of Fire Beach

                                                                    Royal and Ancient


                                         

Two Weeks Ago

Back in September, Jack and I signed up or the Spartan Race.  For those of you who don't know, the Spartan Race is a three mile run with any number of obstacles; what the obstacles are, however, you don't find out until you run in the race. 

 

Now before I talk about the race itself, there was another significant event that took place the night before the race.  Saturday afternoon, Jack and I went out to get a haircut.  It's normally pretty tough to mess up my hair but this guy found a way.  Molly saw the back and sides on our way back and all she said was, "yikes...."  Basically, I looked like a cone head.  I saw an opportunity.  Back when I was playing youth football in probably 7th or 8th grade, one of my favorite Notre Dame football players was Tom Zbikowski.   That was also the year Tommy Z got a mohawk and, consequently, the year when I was told "NO" every time I asked for a mohawk at the barber.  What better time to get a mohawk and fulfill a dream than when I already have a terrible haircut and am running in a Spartan Race the next day??  Now was the time.  One of the RAs, Rachel, had the clippers, and Jack was willing to cut my hairs so he went to town.  Apparently Jack missed the day in preschool when they taught about straight lines so a couple minutes in all I hear is laughter.  After half an hour I ended up with an S-shaped mohawk that wasn't centered on my head.  BUT, a mohawk nonetheless!  I trimmed it up and was living the dream.  

A couple weeks before the race, Jack and I were joined by Kurt so on race day, the three of us, and three awesome spectators (Riker, Helen, and Molly) got on the train and took it an hour away into the British countryside-town of Redhill.  The stares and double takes people did when they saw my hair made the trip even more enjoyable!  There were over two thousand people running in the Spartan race, spread throughout four or five different heats.  Kurt set off in the 10:30 and Jack and I lined up at 11.  After a pre-war speech from a Spartan, the race started and was pretty easy...for about 2 minutes.  Basically our run consisted of army-crawling through mud underneath barbed wire, climbing over 9 foot walls, more mud and barbed wire, carrying thirty pound bags of sand up and down a hill, running through the woods, going over and under logs, the ice crawl (same as the mud and barbed wire, just with lots of ice cubes instead of mud), wading and swimming through water, and jumping over fire-all within a three mile period! 

Aside from the bruises and cuts - battle scars as I called them - it was one of the most fun things I've done while I've been here.  And, as I found out, Jack and I came in 145th and 146th out of over two-thousand so not too bad!  The mohawk was a hit, too.  Told you, Mom!!

The Runners                                                                                             Ice Crawl

 Lots of Mud                                                                                          Fire Jump

 

       At the start (Spartans on the left for motivation)

                                                                   Kurt at the Finish

Warriors

Lots of work and little sleep

My week was dominated by a six page paper on two books due Tuesday,  a four page research paper due Wednesday, and a narrative essay due Thursday.  Pretty interesting stuff to write about, but that's not exactly what I was thinking at six in the morning on Wednesday when I was still up writing a paper due at 1:30 p.m.  Not to mention that this was after getting 4 hours of sleep on Monday night.  I normally put work off a little bit but that didn't happen this time surprisingly enough!  I spent a lot of time doing other work I had to do and there was just a lot of it.  But now the week is over and my work load has substantially decreased.  

In other news, I am officially a member of the University of London's noncompetitive swim team!  My friends Brian and Jack both tried out and we all made it!  Essentially we swim for an hour on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, so not a big time commitment at all but it should be a ton of fun!  Close to half the people in our lane got pulled out and didn't make the team so we were pretty happy to make it through the try out and timed lap alive!  This is also going to be a great way to meet some new friends and a lot of people studying at University of London.  

Time to sleep, eat, and sleep some more

Great Thursday

After a fun Writing class I made the trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) for Art History.  We spent time looking in the Medieval and Renaissance Art portion of the museum and talking about the influences of the times.  We saw works by Michelangelo, Donatello, and saw one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.  It's pretty incredible to think that Leonardo actually wrote in the little book that was right in front of us (especially writing everything mirrored from right to left).

The weather yesterday also couldn't have been much better- around 80 degrees fahrenheit and clear blue skies.  We got let out of Art an hour early so Addie, Maria, and I went to Hyde Park to enjoy the day.  We walked around for a while and then sat in the shade next to the water before making the two mile walk back to Bloomsbury.  Still wanting to enjoy the beautiful weather, we decided to stop at a pub on the way home and sat outside.  This will now be tradition on Thursday afternoons.

After getting home, I ate dinner and then got ready to go to club Pacha for the night.  We got there around 10:30 and stayed until around 2 a.m. but got to listen to DJ Hardwell.  By far the best DJ we've seen so far!  A really really great night out was capped by a 3 mile walk home with Brian, Molly, and Maria which included a stop by Buckingham Palace at 2:30 in the morning.  Doesn't get much better than that!  

Fun at Buckingham Palace

Trip to Bath and Stonehenge

So it's been a while since my last post, but I'm very much alive and having a blast!  The past week has flown by but was capped off by a day trip to Bath and Stonehenge yesterday.  By far one of my favorite days since I've been here.  Bath was an amazing town with a really great feel, gorgeous countryside all around it, not to mention the great 2000 year old Roman Baths.  So cool!  Then after spending the entire morning at Bath and around the town we took an hour long bus ride to Stonehenge.  Stonehenge was possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen.  You're just driving along through the farm land, looking at pretty much the same scenery for close to an hour, and then all of a sudden it's there.  This 5000 year old rock structure with rocks quarried 200 miles away and now line up with stars.  Really really cool and just fascinating.  A great end to a fun week!

                                                                   The streets of Bath

                                                                  The pub where we at lunch

                                                                     The Bath Abbey

 
                                                            The beautiful countryside

                                          The gardens by the river.  At the level of the Roman city

                                                                            Awesome Jans

                                              The drain of the springs with iron mineral buildups

                                                                        The main pool
 

                                                The main pool with the Bath Abbey above it

                                                                           Stonehenge

                                                               One of my favorite pictures

Today is a Sad Day...

I have to do laundry

Into the Third Week

It's official...We are now into our third week here in London!  It was a pretty good week and the first week of having my schedule the way it will be for the rest of the time.  It looks like this:

Monday: Free
Tuesday: Social Foundations 10-1
Wednesday: History of Modern Europe 1:30-4:30
Thursday: Writing 9-12;  History of Western Art 2-5
Friday: Free
 *Classes are three hours but we have  half hour break in the middle

Aside from having some really cool classes (especially History of Modern Europe and History of Western Art), I only have 3 days of class a week.  How awesome is that?  More time for homework, fun, and especially traveling!

On Monday, my roommate, Jack, and I decided to head to the Imperial War Museum for a presentation we had to give for our writing class later in the week.  We checked out the museums website, saw that it was only a fifteen minute bike ride from our flat, and decided to give the rental bikes a shot (London has a cool bike rental program where you can pay 1 pound and use a bike for as long as you need it and then return it to another bike station when you're done).  The bike ride was just as much an adventure as the museum itself.  We rode our bikes through London, across the Thames, and to the museum, all while driving down the wrong side of the road, weaving in and out of traffic lanes, and avoiding busses.  I think Jack and I both   described the ride as "one of the scariest things we'd ever done."  We made it there safely, though, and ended up having an awesome time.

Tuesday night was Big Dinner Night!  In our second week, we prepared four types of pasta and four types of sauces for 20 people, along with a caprese salad and warm baguettes with olive oil.  Two weeks, two victories.  This one did take significantly less effort than the pizza, however, and was much less time consuming.

All in all, reading got finished on time for class, classes went well, and it was a good week!  Now here we go for another weekend!

                                                            The Imperial War Museum

                                           Jack wasn't too thrilled after the bike ride...Or that I posted this

                                                        Five levels of really cool exhibits

                                                   Part of the Berlin Wall outside the Museum

                                          Biking across the Thames on a windy (but sunny!) day

                             
                                               The front of the bus that almost took out Jack
           
                                         

                                       My personal favorite: this bike lock just did not stop anyone.