Blog II Term II: Week I

            With every term comes lessons that need to be learned and realizations that are…well…realized. Last term I had trouble writing all 15 of my blogs and as a result I posted four of them past the due date. So this term I’m going to try to write at least a blog a week that is about my week (I’m really stating the obvious like a pro) regardless of how eventful it is/was. This week, lucky enough for you, was actually quite eventful and entertaining-at least to me.

Monday: I had my first class of the term, and only class of the day, at 12:10, it was my Scottish Literature class, which for those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, is my only first year and yearlong course that I am taking while here in Edinburgh, the other two are third year courses and only last a term. This class was rather boring because it was just a general introduction for the new exchange students just joining the class- two of which sit right behind me and continue to annoy the sanity out of me, it’s like being in a freshman class as a junior in the states (they are American by the way). But more (maybe) on them later; after class I went on a vigorous and final search for the test that I needed the next day for my tutorial (which is part of my Scottish literature class it’s just a smaller group of use with a professor so we get more attention and aren’t just lost within the larger lecture). This text, The Testament of Cressied translated by Seamus Heaney, proved to be the hardest of all my texts to find (and one of them just came back into print). I walked around for an hour or so checking all the bookstores (minus used) and finally found one copy in the last bookstore I went into. I then walked through the park to journey on a trail up to the castle that I had been wanting to explore since November (I was on Princes St.). It was a lovely trail on a gorgeous day, for the first time while here in Edinburgh I experienced the silence and solitude that brings me indescribable happiness (I later experienced this heightened feeling on a walk through Holyrood on Friday). I then met up with my dad, who was here until Thursday, and we returned to the hotel/apartment we were staying in down in Leith, which is the harbour area of Edinburgh on the Forth of Firth.

Tuesday: I had an earlier start than on Monday because I had my 11:10 tutorial; which I have resolved to enjoy more this semester instead of sitting looking angry with ‘F@$# Off’ tattooed on my head (I was once told this was true during my freshman year of university and ever since I’ve discovered that it is a perfect way to describe me…sometimes). Since I had successfully gotten my hands on the required text AND read it I was fully prepared for class (this was the only one all week). I was apparently not the only one who had had trouble locating the text, in fact, only two (not counting the professor) out of the six of us had been able to find the book. After this class I had my 2 o’clock third year course: Literature and Scepticism, which is worse than it sounds. So the way that the third year courses work is that the max amount of people enrolled in each course is 30 and then the class is offered at two times during the week (each two hours long once a week) to further divide the class into 15 students in each class. My Scepticism class is at either 2 or 4:10 on Tuesday, I wanted the 2 o’clock class so of course I got put into the 4:10 class *face slap*. So instead of getting to meet up with my papa at 4, I had to return to the dreaded 2.02 18 Buccleuch Place at the ‘witching hour’ (as my professor refers to it) to suffer through a two hour introduction. For those of you who are curious, yes I did fall asleep, not a good start to the term. It’s not that the class was boring rather it was that a) I hate eventing classes because I tend to crash about 5 in the evening and don’t recover until about 9, so I only digest half of the class before my brain becomes useless and b) the professor speaks in a lovely Scottish accent which I was very excited to discover but he talks very quietly which just lulled me to sleep faster. Scottish accents can lull one to sleep when spoken in a low tone, not really sure why it must be the gentle rolling ‘r’ and the overall way that words roll off the tongue, regardless of what it was I was gone. So by the time I got out at 6pm, I knew that what the professor had said was probably interesting but I couldn’t remember any of it. To make matters even more interesting (not uphill interesting but downhill interesting) my dad called and informed me that the car had been towed, we were both convinced that it would take hours if not a day to get the car back. It took an hour. So by half seven we were on our way back to Leith.

Wednesday: Exactly like Monday, I only had my 12:10 Scottish literature class in which the Irish lecturer introduced us to the critics of Scottish nationhood (this term we are exploring the idea of Scottish nationalism in Scottish texts). Since this class is only 50 minutes long I was out by 1 and returned to my flat while my dad was at the newly refurbished Portrait Gallery (which is definitely worth visiting). At three he picked me up and we drove down to visit the mall down in Leith. Though naturally I didn’t find anything because you never find something if you are looking. The key thing I was looking for was either a pair of boots to wear in my flat or another pair of slippers with hard soles. The reason I was looking for this was because over the break I nearly stepped on a dying mouse in the kitchen in my socks and ever since then I refuse to walk around my flat without hard soles (ugh continually remembering looking down and seeing that pink little tale inches from my toe, *shiver*). Though I found nothing at the mall I did find (or rather my dad found and talked me into getting, he does that a lot) some pink grandma slippers for 5 pounds which did the trick. (Oh something I didn’t mention because I started my week with Monday, is that on Sunday my dad helped me mouse proof the flat with poison that works within 24 hours versus the 5 day junk the school gives us so hopefully they won’t go dying in flats for people to step on. Plus he also put some sticky traps in the closet and steel wool behind the toilet because not only did I almost step on a mouse New Year’s Eve but I also found one emerging from behind the toilet at 1am on New Year’s Day).

Thursday: This was the day that I had been dreading all week because when my dad came to visit in November he left on Thursday and not only was I overcome with sadness but I also got food poisoning, so I was terrified that history would repeat itself. Luckily it didn’t. We didn’t have to leave the place we were staying in Leith until about 9am so I didn’t have to get up super early and we even had time to stop by the mall get some Starbucks, a muffin, and a gorgeous bouquet of yellow tulips and two lilacs (for those of you who are interested I LOVE flowers, in particular lilacs- I have a tattoo of one on my right shoulder bald). After obtaining sustenance we made our way to my flat and parted which happily wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be though I did comfort myself with the fact that I would be meeting up with my dear friend in Paris in three weeks than three weeks after that I would be going to London to visit my uncle and a week after that papa would return and following his departure my mommy would arrive for my two week spring vacation in April, so I was set for escapes from Edinburgh. Besides, I had been looking forward to Thursday all week because the RAs were hosting the term two Pub Crawl and since I hadn’t attended the one during first semester I really wanted to go not only because I had a crush on the male RA (pay close attention to the past tense) but also because I was curious as to how a Pub Crawl works and I concluded that I should be more social. Though there was a bit of a bubble burst to my excitement: my Stories for Boys class which everyone had to attend at the first class that evening at 4:10 (the other one is at 9am on Friday but the professor wanted to do the introduction only once so we had a group intro.). This posed a problem because I had to be ready for the Crawl at 7:15 and I didn’t get out of class until 6pm. My day was further problematized when I started to feel ill about 2 in the afternoon after spending a few hours cleaning up my room. My stomach hurt, I felt nauseous and my hands were shaking; turns out though I was just hungry and three pieces of bread started me on the path to feeling better. At this time I decided it would be a good idea to just eat a big lunch and have a wee dinner before the crawl. So I took out the salmon that my dad had left and cooked it (first time ever cooking salmon and it turned out fantastically). At 4 I made my way over to the David Hume Tower floor six for my Stories for Boys class praying that I would get into the 9am class on Friday (you guessed it I got stuck in the 4:10 class *face/desk impact*). The introduction to this course wasn’t nearly as bad as the Scepticism one but I was having difficulty hearing the professor, regardless it was interesting and I am looking forward to the next class (though we need to have read The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott which is about 400 pages long and I haven’t even started it). Finally, the day was done, I was feeling pretty good, and it was time to go on the Pub Crawl. So the Craw really wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be and I am not going to spend the energy or time to recount it (there is a Starbuck’s coffee with my name on it down the street waiting for me to retrieve it when I’ve concluded this blog). All I will say is that you really shouldn’t go on a pub crawl if you don’t drink, it is incredibly boring because while everyone else is getting drunker and enjoying the thirty-minute segments in each pub you are sitting there completely sober having a greater respect for clubs. Though it was boring I still stayed out until midnight because I had gone with my new flatmate and I didn’t want to walk home alone nor did I want to leave her (Ghaz has this rule to never let anyone go home alone and I wanted to make sure that my new flatmate didn’t). But when it hit about twenty past midnight and we had travelled from one bar to the Library bar in Teviot (a type of student centre here at Edinburgh) I couldn’t take it anymore and took the chance by walking back alone. Nothing happened to me obviously and I was overjoyed to be home and in bed though my mom had a fit when I told her and I honestly was freaked out the entire time I was walking back so no matter I won’t be doing it again.

Friday: The last day of the week was by far the most interesting for two reasons. The first reason has to do with my Scottish Literature class (I have the lecture Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for those of you who didn’t catch on). Before class I wanted to stop by the library and write a quick email back to my friend but while I was typing it I realized that I was going to be late, so immediately when I was done I logged off and booked it to my class. When I got to the building and was nearing the closed door I had a thought that I should stop and double check the class time, I ignored this little voice and kept right on and burst through the door and keeping the pace sat in an empty seat in the middle aisle in the second row. I’m going to give you a moment to guess where I am going with this … …… …… ……… …… …… yes indeed I had walked into the wrong class and since I had been walking like a bat out of hell (bet you’ve never heard that used with regards to walking) the only action I could think of taking was just taking a seat and acting like I was part of the class. After about twenty minutes in the class I had discovered that the class I had burst into was a politics of sex and gender class that was interesting but I was so tired from my late night out that I didn’t grasp anything further than what class it was. Right at the point that I was convinced the room of my Scottish lit. class was different on Fridays and I was missing it, two other girls came through the door and sat down, but minutes later one of them got up and left quickly followed by the second. At this point I decided that my window of opportunity was shrinking and if I didn’t leave then I would have to sit through the whole class, so slowly I got up and launched myself out of the class and into the freedom of the lobby outside. Turns out that on Fridays Scottish literature is at 1:05 and not 12:10 like the rest of the week. Though I had discovered that I wasn’t missing my lecture I also discovered that I was going to miss my first Scepticism ALG (autonomous learning group: a assigned group of four or five students from your third course class in which you meet at some time before the next class and discuss assigned questions about that week’s text, these meetings are mandatory). I was unbelievably upset that this had happened though I decided my excuse was legit (it wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t walked into and sat in the wrong class). At 1:05 my Scottish lit class started and though I tried to fight through my increasing exhaustion I fell asleep. By 2, when I got out of class, I had resolved to go eat, then take a bit of a walk around Holyrood park and to finish off by taking a nap so that I would be able to stay awake for the second thing that made Friday interesting: my friend Paula’s 18^th birthday party at the club Cav. The food gave me enough energy to walk up one of the many hills in Holyrood at which point I experienced the complete happiness and settling of my soul that I had experienced on Monday on my hike up to the castle. At four I returned to my flat and took an hour nap. Over the years I have discovered that me and naps really don’t get along that well primarily because whenever I wake up from a nap I feel a mildly sick to my stomach and I’m usually in a terribly mood, both these things happened when I awoke from this nap (I am not sleeping beauty, I more resemble someone coming out of an exorcism). At this point I was fully resigned to not go to Paula’s birthday, but after about an hour and a dinner of Annie’s mac and cheese in my incredibly crowded kitchen plus a cup of coffee, I was ready to go party! At about ten Ghaz, another medic and myself were ready and headed down to Paula’s flat for pre-drinks (note not drinking when going to a club isn’t boring it’s just on pub crawls because all there is to do is drink). Paula’s kitchen was PACKED! It was difficult to find a seat let alone a place to stand, I ended up settling in the corner near the refrigerator observing everyone interact and drink. I was beginning to get bored when a guy I had met during Halloween came over and started talking to me (there are some real gems here in Edinburgh who will just come and talk to you because you seem lonely or bored). Finally about ten to midnight we all started off to Cav, though Ghaz, myself and three others had gotten left behind by the larger group because we had gone up to Ghaz and my flat so I could use the toilet and Ghaz could change her tights cause she had gotten a run in them. Regardless of being left behind the five of us piled into a cab and within five minutes were outside of Cav, though right when we got out of the cab Ghaz realized that she didn’t have her ID. So we all decided to accompany her back to the flat so she could get it. Finally about twenty past twelve we were in the line to get into Cav and by half twelve we were in. While here in Edinburgh I have been to four clubs and Silk on grassmarket was my favourite but after going to Cav (which I was told should never be visited sober) I have decided that it is my favourite. The primary reason why I liked it so much is because the dance area is in a huge room with really high ceilings so instead of feeling claustrophobic I felt like I was breathing in air that wasn’t just the result of hundreds of sweaty bodies mashed together. Also there was a huge chandelier with a giant disco ball coming out of the middle of it. Not only was Cav the best club I’ve been too but that night was also the most interesting for three reasons: a) I was able to stay up without a problem until twenty-five past five in the morning which is really saying something; b) I got told by a random that my glasses made me look sexy (it’s about damn time); and c) while on my second trip outside for some fresh air I noticed two guys on the other side of the street looking at me and I guessed that sooner or later one of them would approach me. About a minute later lo and behold one of them came over to me and started talking to me. His ice breaker was if I had a light and after a minute of observation I came to the following conclusion that he was just using that as a reason to start a conversation because 1. I was not holding a cigarette while there were twenty or so others who were and if he really wanted a light I doubt he would’ve chosen the only person not smoking. 2. He did not have a cigarette ready to be lit indicating he didn’t really need a light and 3. He stayed around to chat with me. The conversation that followed was rather entertaining. About two sentences in our conversation the guy mentioned that I seemed sober and I told him that I was which started him on the questioning of why I was at a club, which I responded that I was with some friends. He then (using his skewed reasoning) listed out (on his fingers) that I don’t smoke, I don’t drink and I’m at a club which equalled the overall question of ‘how is that even possible?’ Please pause for affect. I had no answer for him except that it really didn’t bother me. At this point the friends that he was waiting for came out of the club (one of which was obviously drunk not to mention creepy) and the guy I had been talking with ended the conversation. But as he and his pals were leaving the creepy drunk one decided that he would take a shot at me and he extended his greasy, sticky hand and asked me my name. I told him it was Annie and immediately said that I had to leave at which point I pulled my hand from his and retreated to the safety of the club. As the dawn grew closer I started to get tired and by the time the club closed at three I was ready to leave though I had had a good time, except for the multiple times when I almost lost my shoes because the carpet was so sticky from years upon years of spilt drinks and who knows what else.

            So that was week one which took me a total of two hours to type up, crimany no wonder I get behind on my blogs they take so long to write. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with this weekly blog and won’t run into the same problem I did last term.

Blog I Term II: Spain

For the better part of a month I was convinced that I was going to spend the rest of my nine months abroad unhappy and the saddest part of this is that I was okay with that but in the past week my sanity has returned thanks to the sun. Before coming to Edinburgh I would complain about the sun on weekly bases expressing how much I loved the rain and clouds and cold; no more of this from now on I will embrace the sun and its healing powers.

For the final stretch of my winter break my dad and I departed from the cold, dark, rain of Britain for the warmth and sunshine in south western Spain. We arrived in the city of Malaga which sits on the Costa del Sol on the Mediterranean on 3 January and immediately made our way to the beautiful city of Marbella where the rich and famous often spend their summer holidays. We were in Marbella for three nights and during the two days that we spent there we just walked up and down the coast soaking in the healing sun and looking out at the stunning Mediterranean. Within a day of my ‘Spanish Sun Therapy’ I was already beginning to feel like my old confident self again sure that the coming term would be much better and that I was strong enough to take any further curve balls thrown at me. On the third day we departed Marbella and drove three hours to the small ‘desert’ town by the sea, San Jose where we spent two nights in a beautiful hotel surrounded by the silence of the wilderness. San Jose was a lot like Death Valley in California and I often found myself pondering if I wasn’t actually in Spain but was instead back in the United States, the all-Spanish channels on the television cleared that confusion up real quick though. On the one day that we were in San Jose my dad and I went for a four hour walk along the coast. Though San Jose was beautiful and the freedom from the pollution and noise of the city was refreshing and enjoying the silence was unnerving and I was constantly afraid that I would wake up in the night and see a pale face looking in my window (we were on the first floor); I’ve obviously watched too much CSI.

On the second day in San Jose we drove to our final destination away from the Mediterranean into the mountains of Spain. Our final stop for four nights before returning to Britain is the beautiful old Islamic city of Granada. A city that is not only filled with dozens of breath taking views but whose Islamic and Spanish history has made it a gem in the western world. The streets are filled with the mixed tongues of Spanish and Arabic braiding themselves together and breathing throughout the city making the return to an English language country similar to going from Raphael to the modern form of art which is just a canvas painted red or blue.  Though we arrived in Granada early Sunday I was tired from not sleeping a lot the previous night in San Jose and decided to call it an early day and retired my lovely apartment/hotel room (has a kitchen and dining/living room plus a separate bedroom) to watch the BBC in English and the Simpsons and Top Gear in Spanish (a true fan will watch it in any language) with a doner kebab. The next day we encountered the colder weather of the mountains and shivered our way to the Granada Cathedral which was colder inside than it was outside.  The Cathedral ceilings were easily as tall as those in St. Peter’s at the Vatican and were all white with six or so columns reaching from the deteriorating marble floor to the arching white ceiling high above, this was the stunning part: the massive columns reaching up to the light of heaven being let in by the windows around the ceiling. Though this part of the Cathedral was stunning the rest was gaudy and a bit painful to the eye, at the apex there were floor to ceiling gold decorations and multiple paintings hanging in between the golden decoration. Though this Cathedral’s architecture was mesmerizing the frigid temperature would not be ignored and soon it become unbearable and we left the Cathedral hoping to encounter some warmth outside but we were only greeted by the cold shadows of buildings. Not getting deferred from the cold my dad directed us toward the Real Capilla de Granada, or the Royal chapel which is part of the Cathedral, where the famous King and Queen Ferdinand and Isabella are buried. After visiting these two monuments we weaved our way in and out of gift shops slowly making our way back to the hotel originally to put on warmer clothes but later to use the toilets. For the rest of the day we just wandered around Granada and climbed to the Alhambra the royal fortress and palace of the last Islamic Sultans in the 13^th century which was written about by Sleepy Hallow author Washington Irving in 1829 while he was living in the royal chambers. We ended our day with another doner kebab for dinner and some BBC news and Top Gear. Today we went and visited La Alhambra which is one of the most impressive royal fortresses I have ever seen with stunning sweeping views of Granada and the surrounding areas including the Sierra Nevada. The Alhambra begins its history in 1238 with the Nasrid emir Ibn al-Ahmar establishing himself in Granada and ordering a fortress for his court to be built on the hill. From this his successors enlarged the precinct finally forming a “citadel possessing all the facilities befitting a medieval town, with walls, castle, palaces for the royal family and aristocracy, servant districts, mosques, baths, schools and exchange markets, as well as a network of streets, a channeled water supply, orchards and cemetery” (Olmedo). After the handover of the city to the Spanish nobility in the 14^th century Charles V made some reforms to the Nasrid monument which had been mistreated after abandonment. The most stunning part of this bewildering fortress is the Nasrid Palaces which is a series of rooms, arches, and walls covered with the intricate artwork of Arabic calligraphy and design too small and detailed to ever be captured by a camera. Like the stunning structure of St. Paul’s in Rome the Nasrid palaces are a sight that is not only worth seeing but must be seen in person because there is simply no picture, painting, interpretive dance, etc. substitute.

During this trip in Spain I have found myself wondering over and over again: why am I not studying in Spain? Not only is the weather nicer but also the men are more attractive- tall, dark, and handsome just the way I like them and they have a general healthy glow about them that British men are missing (probably due to the sun exposure and reduced alcohol intake) – the culture is rich and colorful and it overall has a certain spice that Britain not only doesn’t have but probably never will. But since I don’t know Spanish and my major is English Literature/Education Edinburgh was the school to choose for study abroad and I am close enough to make another Spanish visit soon with my dear friend who is studying in France this term.

Citation:

Olmedo, Fernando. Granada. Ediciones Aldeasa. Spain: 2007.

Blog XV: London

London is one of the greatest cities in the world along with Paris, Rome, and New York and like all those other cities you either love it or you hate it. I’ve already been to London three times before the trip this year and during those previous trips I successfully did all of the tourist things (or all of them that I wanted to do): Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, the Tower of London, the London Bridge, the O2 (where Michael Jackson was going to perform), the London Eye, Shakespeare’s Globe, Fleet St. and the old Bailey, St. Paul’s, etc. So when I arrived this time and was left to my own devices as my uncle worked (my mom isn’t arriving until today) I was at a loss for what to do. For the first couple of days I wandered around Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, and Regent St. but all the Christmas crowds wore me out and I usually retuned to my uncle’s flat about half three and ended up taking a nap; I refer to this time as my Scotland to England train-lag (similar to jet-lag). But finally on Monday my energy returned and I left the flat at ten and made my way to Shakespeare’s Globe to check out the gift store and have a coffee. While I was enjoying my caffeinated drink I decided that I wanted to journey all the way to Canary Warf where my dad and I stayed the last time we were in London. So I started the two hour or so trek along the Thames. This was a bad day to go for such a long walk because not only was it cold and cloudy but it started to rain at about noon and didn’t stop but I wasn’t complaining the walk was nice and I got to pass the Tower of London and the London bridge. But as the time ticked by and the sky began to get darker and the business towers were replaced by residential houses I began to get tired. Finally at about two I arrived at Canary Warf, with no desire to walk back to central London, so I postponed my return to the flat with the logic that since I had made it this far I should just go all the way and return for a second time to the O2 which is also the area where they are beginning building for the Olympic Stadium. But the walk there would be far too long so I just got a ticket for the very convenient Thames Klipper, which is a boat that goes up and down the Thames and stops at multiple hotspots like the London eye, tower of London, London bridge, Greenwich, O2, etc. At this point I was so exhausted that when I boarded the boat I almost fell asleep. The O2 was less magnificent than I remembered, basically it is a giant round structure that has a lot of restaurants, a movie theatre, and primarily is used for concerts and other performances. Since I had nothing else to do I decided, after walking around the whole of the structure, to stop in the Starbucks and have a coffee. I left the O2 about half three and was back at my uncle’s flat by four.

Tuesday was Charles Dickens’ Day. The previous day on my walk I had noticed an add for the Charles Dickens’ house so I decided to make a day out of Dickens since the British Library has a display on him as well and since it is almost Christmas such a day seemed necessary. My first stop was the Dickens’ museum which wasn’t very good but like many authors Dickens’ moved around a lot so the majority of his belongings weren’t in this particular building (where they were I’m not sure). I finished that and then headed up to the British Library to gaze at the Magna Carta, drool over some of Beethoven’s original music sheets, and look in wonder at other original documents from literature, religion, and history. By the time I was done the sky had darkened outside, the warmth had withdrawn leaving cold wind and the rain was coming so I started to head back to the flat where I ended the day not with Dickens’ but with Charlotte Bronte.

Today before going to Paddington station to pick up my mom at four I was originally just going to hang around the flat to clean and tidy up and finish reading my book (because my mom has a tendency to talk all the time and reading is rarely accomplished). But I decided that I really wanted to go to the Freud museum and my mother probably wouldn’t want to go so I changed my plans and prepared for the hour and a half walk to its location at 20 Maresfield Gardens. The walk was one of the more interesting because I accidently went through the middle eastern part of the city (which is located at the end of Oxford Circus) which was really cool and I discovered that I can still read Arabic…a little. Though the walk began to get tedious after an hour had passed I finally arrived at Maresfield Gardens which is an absolutely stunning residential street that makes you feel like you aren’t even in London. The Freud Museum was absolutely phenomenal; it was located in the house that Sigmund Freud spent his last year in so all of his things are there like the rug covered couch that he would have patients like the Rat-girl and the Wolf-man sit, and two of the paintings that the notorious Wolf-man painted of his dream with the six wolves in a tree. The museum also had a very interesting video room that explained Freud’s life and how he ended up in England. After the Freud museum I still had time to burn before I needed to be at Paddington so I decided to go look at the major Mosque in London and walk down Baker’s Street to check out the Sherlock Holmes’ museum shop (already went in the museum) and get a coffee.

After this I decided it would be smart to start heading to Paddington since I didn’t know how far of a walk it would be, so of course naturally I arrived early. But it turned out that both my uncle and I arrived early because my mom didn’t arrive at the station until about six.

London is a fantastic city and it has so much more to offer than just the typical tourist stuff, the key is to just know where to look.

Blog XIV: Traveling

Half of the reason to study abroad is to travel around, for instance practically every visiting student at Edinburgh spends a few of their weekends traveling around Europe because it is not only easy but reasonably priced as well. I, unlike most, came to Edinburgh for the spectacular education and the world renowned literature programme, not the travel. I have been fortunate enough to have travelled a lot before coming to Edinburgh so I have been to Paris, London, and Barcelona multiple times as well as having driven around France, Spain and all of Scotland, I have also been to Rome, Sicily, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Belgium and Ireland. So while everyone else has been boarding trains and planes to zip around Europe and Britain I have been stressing over essays and class. But with the approach of December this self-induced hell caused by remaining for four months in the same city with no change has finally come to an end. Yesterday at noon I boarded the train to London where I am spending Christmas with my uncle and my mom at my uncle’s flat near Buckingham palace. Since this was my first time traveling outside of Edinburgh on my own (all my previous traveling was with my parents so of course they had planned everything) I encountered a few bumps before even getting on the train. The major bump was more like a mountain; I was originally going to leave Monday 19 December on the eight am train even though I knew when I bought this ticket that I had no exams am thus had nothing to do past Friday 2 December, the end of classes. But I was under the impression at this early time, that I would be loving all my free time in Edinburgh and had a list of things that I was going to do: go to the gym every day, write my Scottish Literature essay that is due the 23 of January, finish writing my blogs, etc. Like everything this year, nothing followed my original plan so instead jumping for joy at the end of classes on Friday I was counting down the days until I would get to leave my insane asylum and go to London. Finally after days of constant complaining my parents forced me into changing my ticket so that I arrived in London on the 15^th instead of the 19^th. Though I did have a catch: I wouldn’t change my ticket if I had to buy a different ticket, 47 pounds is 47 pounds and I refused to let that money go to waste, it cost 10 pounds to change my ticket. So instead of 15 days until I left I was now leaving in T-minus 11 days, my mood definitely improved. And with this decrease in time my list of things to do suddenly was doing what I originally wanted it to do, fill my days and evenings so I didn’t notice the passing of time. Finally the day of my departure (yesterday) arrived and I was so ecstatic to be leaving that I arrived at the train station forty minutes before the train left but it was no problem I just got a coffee and hung about while people watching. At eleven fifty the train arrived and at exactly noon it departed the station and we were on our way to London!!! I was all settled in with my book and my Gregg’s donut and my coffee but about thirty minutes in I started to feel a bit motion sick so I had to stop reading and just listened to my iPod. As the time slowly crept by and we moved out of Scotland into England, I was settling in more and more when there was an announcement on the intercom informing us that due to some rail issues up ahead the train we were on was going to be terminated at New Castle and we would just have to catch the next train to London there. Though it was a bit of a setback there was a train to London every forty minutes. I didn’t board the next train to London because it was far too full but instead boarded the 2:45 train (so I would arrive about an hour late). Since this one was running late itself and because of our terminated train there were no seat assignments which was good news for me because I was able to sit in a seat and not worry that at some point someone would come and say that I was in their seat and had to move. As the hours progressed and we moved further and further south the train got busier and busier, in fact, the train was so busy that people were forced to stand in the aisles. But after we passed York the train started to get less crowded and soon everyone had a seat. At about half five we entered London and I was off the train by six. Since it was late-ish in the evening and my uncle had his office Christmas party that night my dad decided that it would be better for me to just stay in a hotel so that I wouldn’t be wandering the streets of London alone at night and so that my uncle would have the night to enjoy himself before the dreaded family began to arrive.

So my first travel experience went pretty well, though the four and a half hour train ride was not as carefree and enjoyable as I originally thought but I’m sure it will be better on the 28 of December when my mom and I return to Edinburgh for Hegemony and when we once again journey to London on 2 January where I will meet my dad to fly off to Spain. Though this last term seemed like being trapped in an insane asylum I have hopes that this coming term will be better because I am going to be traveling more. One of my dear friends is studying abroad in France this term and we are going to meet in Paris at the end of January to celebrate her birthday than we will hopefully get together again in February when she has her spring break and then I have my spring break in April and plan to travel either with my mom or my dad. After all you can’t study abroad and not travel to the surrounding areas.

Blog XIII: Essays

Last Wednesday my second Scottish Literature essay was returned to me, being the third and final of my three essays that I wrote and turned in November 14. Since my Scottish literature class is a first year course we write more than one essay a term and they are only worth about 10% of our final grade, while in third year courses we write one mid-term type essay worth 30% of our final grade and the rest is determined by the final exam at the end of the year. But at least one essay in the first and second year courses is due on the exact same day as all the mid-term essays in the third and fourth year courses, so November 14 is literally a hell day because every single person in a literature class is turning in at least one essay. The weeks leading up to this final day, which happened to be a Monday this year, are filled with stress and anxiety due to the amount of work that needs to go into these essays. Unlike in the States (or at least at my school in Colorado) you can’t just look up things on the internet and write a B paper the day before its due; rather you have to spend a week if not more on each individual paper. Each paper demands 3 or more secondary sources and must be 1,500 words for first year courses or 2,500 words for third year courses, that’s about six to eight pages of intellectual writing. This is a lot of pressure so I have come up with a few bits of advice for how to approach and finish these papers.

1. Start Early

Since the University of Edinburgh has arguably the best library in Great Britain every professor expects you to use books as your sources and basically demand that you not use the internet at all. As a result the time needed for research increases not by hours but by days or even weeks because since everyone else is writing an essay as well the books in the library disappear really fast. So the best advice I can give is to start research early. I started research for my essays five weeks before they were due, this was a really good plan because not only did I get practically every book that I wanted but also I was done will my research and had begun the outlines of my papers by the time my classmates were starting their research. Though starting early didn’t decrease my stress nor did I get much sleep during these five weeks.

2. Get the Books that Professors Recommend

This is the main reason why research should be started early because the library only has at most ten copies of the really good secondary sources, the ones that the Professor suggests and there are usually about 15-18 students in each course. The books that the Professors recommend are often the clearest, the most helpful, and the most interesting.

3. Do a Wide Variety of Research

In the States I was used to looking through the multiple essays questions and choosing the one I liked the most, this is a bad idea in Edinburgh. The best way to go is to look over the questions a couple times and choose the one that you like the most the start to look for secondary sources that fit the question but don’t immediately rule out the other questions, just allow yourself to swim in the information for a while before choosing a specific stream to follow because often the information will lead you in an entirely different direction.

4. Take Detailed Notes and Mark Pages

One of the most important things with research is to take detailed notes while reading through the sources because if you don’t then you waste time and often won’t be able to re-find key quotes that you want for your essay. There was one quote about Chaucer that I discovered midway through my essay that was really important but since I hadn’t written the quote down I never found it again.

5. Make a Detailed Outline

In High School I was always forced to make outlines and I hated it because my outlines never did anything except confuse me. But I have found that at Edinburgh they are mandatory because with the large amount of information that is going into each essay and the progression of though development demanded the essay often loses focus is it is just written out without any backbone to go off of. My outlines often just consisted of the different quotes that I planned to use so that I wasn’t fumbling through pages of notes trying to find the quote I wanted when I finally sat down to write the essay.

6. Just Write It

The preparation to write an essay is often the most time consuming and the most difficult, writing the actual essay is usually viewed as the easiest part because you have all your information and now you just need to connect it all together into on coherent piece. But sometimes the research doesn’t go that well and you get more and more stressed because the essay is due soon and you don’t know what you are going to write. This is what happened with my second Scottish Literature paper. The question I had chosen what about literary value but I could not for the life of me figure out what literary value was (and to be honest I still don’t know what it is), I Google searched it, I asked my tutor multiple times (she was no bloody help), and I spent hours trying to find a book on it, but I ended up two nights before the essay was due with no more of an understanding of what it was than when I started. So finally I ignored the question (which you really should never do) and just focused on doing research on the two texts that I wanted to write about: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (one of my new favourite authors) and the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. The research was fascinating and I discovered hoards of interesting information and possible things I’d love to write an essay on, but, unlike with third year courses in which you can make up a prompt of your on, in first year courses you must answer one of the given prompts. So sticking with the literary value prompt I picked out how Spark and Beckett reacted to World War II in their texts and wrote about that with regards to how it influences or affects the reader (which is sort of what literary value is) and finally I just wrote the essay two days before it was due. The important thing to remember is that an essay cannot go unwritten; it must be turned in no matter what grade is received. I was sure that I would barely pass with this essay (a 40 is passing) but knew that if I didn’t write it I would just all together fail, turned out I got a whopping 62 which is a B and the person who graded it said that I showed a good understanding of the literary value in the texts, which I found very comical since I have no idea what literary value is.

I ended up getting a 61 on my Shakespeare essay, a 62 on my Scottish Literature essay and a jaw dropping 68 on my Chaucer essay. The five pieces of advice I have given may not help anyone else obtain their desired grade but when it comes to writing an essay it’s all about preparation. My biggest piece of advice is to enjoy what you are writing your essay on because it makes the research more enjoyable and you end up doing more of it since you are interested and the result is you have a surplus quotes and fact to choose from, that’s how I got through my Scottish Literature essay. Most important to remember, even if they don’t seem like it, everyone is in the exact same boat as you are: they are stressed, scared and anxious. All of this is evident after the deadline to turn in essays because every single person is suffering from “Essay Hangover” which is like a literal hangover: no one is really functioning and everyone has a glazed look.

Blog XII: Going Out/ Clubbing

You cannot live in a city and not experience the night life, no matter how much of a hermit you are the night life must be seen and more than that, it must be seen more than once. You may recall my earlier blog titled ‘Fresher’s Week’ in which I described the terrible experience that I had going to the club Cabaret Voltaire and probably wrote something along the lines of: ‘club life isn’t for me’. Well I have gone out twice more after that and have discovered that not every club is like Cabaret, though a good deal of them are similar. After the horrid Cabaret experience I attended the club Silk and the club Why Not? (yeah I know stupid name and rather disappointing club).

SILK

The majority of the time, if you are not a clubbing and partying junky, everyone goes to the clubs over the weekend because it is a full night into the wee hours of the morning ordeal; but the clubs often have special nights so there is like a theme or something and those tend to fall on weekdays, this is what happened with Silk. I went to the club Silk, which is on Grassmarket street right underneath the castle mound, on an early October night with Ghaz and Paula because a acquaintance of theirs from the RMS was playing the African drums along with the DJ playing the regular club techno music. This was my favourite night out mostly because since it was on a weekday and Ghaz and Paula had early lectures the next day we were only going to stay until half one. The night started as most going out nights do, Ghaz and Paula took forever to get ready then we headed down to flat 9, or ‘the party flat’ as I like to call it because the residence are always going out and practically always hammered, for pre-drinks before heading off because some of the boys there wanted to join us. Since we were planning on returning home early Ghaz and Paula were trying to make sure we got to the club by about eleven so that we would get a full time of dancing and such and primarily get our five pounds admittance fee worth of fun (when it comes to going out I just follow them, which sometimes ends up being a bit of a poor decision since they are generally intoxicated while I am not). Finally both Paula and Ghaz began to get so antsy that they just decided we three would leave and if the others wanted to come than they could just show up later. So we informed the intoxicated individuals of the flat 9 kitchen that we were leaving and departed the flat to call the cab (it was a free cab ride if you said you were going to Silk that night). As we were waiting Ghaz decided she needed to go back to our flat for something and Paula decided to change her shoes so I was left to wait alone and hold the cab when it came. As I waited those from the kitchen of Flat 9 began to funnel out of the entrance of the building, I guess they had decided that they wanted to join us. So when the girls returned us three piled in the cab with one of the boys while the others waited for another cab. Turns out that the boys were right when they told us back before we left; it was too early to leave. The club had just opened and no one was there, it was actually a bit creepy. So we all headed to a pub about a block away for more alcohol and after about thirty minutes we returned to Silk, which now had a line, and since we had already paid and got stamps we bypassed the line and went right in. Silk is a pretty nice club, there are three dance floors and three bars and they play pretty good music, I was surprised to discover that I was actually enjoying myself. The mixture of the drums with the music was really cool as well, I was happy about that since it was the only reason I went. Before I knew it the time was half one and we were all ready to go home, so we (Ghaz, Paula, and I) informed the boys that we were leaving and started the short walk back to the flats. Of the three clubs I’ve gone to Silk was my favourite mostly because it was clean and I didn’t feel like I could catch and STD just standing in the room.

WHY NOT?

My liking of the club Why Not? is probably seriously skewed by the fact that I went there on Halloween and not only was it crowded to an uncomfortable point but everyone was so drunk it was surprising that they could even stand (and one girl no longer could and took a rather hilarious fall on the dance floor). Since it was Halloween things were a bit different than usual, first and foremost everyone drank about ten times more than they usually seem to. Pre-drinks this time started in my flat with Paula, Ghaz, and Me (of course us three) and two others. We than gathered one of Paula’s flatmates and her boyfriend from their flat before venturing over to the catered accommodation of Pollock where more medics were met and more drinks were gulped down. By about this time I had already started to fade, I had really wanted to do something for Halloween and was over the moon when Ghaz had asked me earlier to go out with them but since all we were doing was sitting around I was starting to nod off a bit, the only downside to not drinking and it’s really not much of a downside. Anyway, finally about half eleven everyone decided that it was time to go to the club. So we went outside and all piled into a cab, which was really funny to watch because everyone was so drunk, in fact one of our party was so intoxicated that he missed the seat in the cab and fell on the floor. After about a three minute cab drive we arrived at the club Why Not?, which is a block up from Princes St. which was completely packed, which I’ve already mentioned. Though I suppose that most likely every club was packed, I mean its Halloween and trick-or-treating is rather inappropriate after the age of 16, probably younger, so all the college kids go out instead. My feeling towards Why Not? are similar to that of Cabaret Voltaire, not a big fan; the floors were sticky, there were too many people, the multitude of different lights were nauseating, the placement of the smoke machine was stupid (people were getting hit in the sprayed in the face and mouth with the stuff, not a good way to avoid vomiting on the dance floor). On the bright side there was a good music selection, I was a bit worried when I walked in and they were playing songs from Grease but things quickly got better they even played ‘Ghostbusters’, but it was after midnight when the DJ put that on so it was no longer Halloween but I was probably the only one who noticed. Though the music was good the other aspects of the club were starting to get to me and at about one I was so exhausted and claustrophobic that I separated from my drunken group and found a seat away from the dance floor where I remained for about twenty minutes arguing with myself about whether or not I should just head back by myself because I would never last until three. Finally I got up and told Ghaz that I was leaving, which turned out to be a good plan because I barely had the energy to take off my costume when I got home before I passed out on my bed.

I have decided that I actually enjoy going out, though not all the time, and am really itching to go out next term since the last time I was out was Halloween, I just need to do shots of coffee while everyone else does shots of vodka.

Blog XI: Pre-Christmas in Edinburgh

Since I can remember Christmas has always been my favourite holiday; I never cared much for Halloween Easter was always a day during which I got candy, sometimes a stuffed animal, and painted/hunted eggs, and Thanksgiving always just seemed like a pointless holiday built on lies and deception. As I’ve gotten older I still hold these general views though I dislike Halloween now versus just feeling apathetic about it, I don’t really even celebrate Easter anymore, and Thanksgiving though a nice holiday to remind us to be thankful (but honestly we shouldn’t need a holiday to remember to be thankful) it is still a relatively pointless holiday. Christmas on the other hand is and always has been, absolutely fantastic. When I was a child I loved it because I loved the snow and eggnog and most of all the presents (basically I was like every other child in the western world whose family celebrated Christmas). As I’ve gotten older my love of Christmas has altered from the materialistic joys to the atmospheric joys during the build-up to the big day, in fact, I don’t really even enjoy Christmas day anymore I see it as an expected but detested end. The atmosphere of pre-Christmas is always warm and cosy; the air has started to become colder making extra blankets and heaters necessary so that your house and other buildings have warmth they didn’t have before. The streets become lit up with hundreds of white and tri-coloured Christmas lights, students begin to get excited about winter break, there is the sound of joy and laughter echoing in the air, and there is just an overall feeling of happiness and love. I realize that this view is a bit overly positive and I will admit I have glossed over the avarice, greed and general unhappiness that plagues this time of year but if I did add in this side of the holiday than the blog would take a rather dark and unlikable turn, so I’m sticking to the light centre and avoiding the dark corners.

Christmas in Edinburgh has not been as natural as Christmas’ in the past because my Christmas routine is specific for the States and has proven not to work here in Edinburgh. So instead of my Christmas traditions running smoothly I’ve walked off a few cliffs and had some trouble climbing back up to the original starting point. Since Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Scotland I stated my Christmas traditions at the beginning of November, this was yet another one of my poor decisions made while here in Edinburgh (ugh I am so not used to running into so many hypothetical brick walls). So I started watching my favourite Christmas movies: A Christmas Story, White Christmas, The Family Stone, and The Polar Express; finished the small amount of Christmas shopping I needed to do (Christmas shopping was incredibly easy this year though because I just got everyone something from the University of Edinburgh) and sent out all my Christmas cards before the first of December so everyone got them before going home for the holidays. Though I enjoyed my usual traditions I had grown rather sick of them and finished basically everything before the first of December, so by the time it was actually appropriate to start the Christmas celebrations, I had finished. The last week of November and first few weeks of December proved to be my worst here in Edinburgh because not only did I have nothing to do since my school work was basically finished for the term but also all of my Christmas cheer had been spent. Regardless of my obviously dead spirit I tirelessly tried to reignite it but continued to be unsuccessful which just made me feel worse. Finally, after what seemed like weeks of despair my spirit reignited warming my entire being because of a) the RMS (Royal Medical Society) Christmas party that I attended with Paula and Ghaz and b) Princes St. and the German Market.

The RMS Christmas party helped to reignite the flame of my Christmas spirit not because it was exceptionally good or anything but because the atmosphere of joy and warmth was everywhere. Though every medic that I talked to kept telling me that RMS parties aren’t as dull as this one, I thought it was absolutely fantastic; partially because the RMS building was actually warm (my flat is always like walking into the Arctic) and partially because there were no mice (that we knew of). But it was also very nice because when we walked into the building out of the Edinburgh cold it was warm and smelled of spices because of the mulled wine (which was absolutely terrible). The entire night everyone was in a good mood, full of cheer (and wine) just having nice chats while Louis (a second year medical student) played Christmas tunes on the piano. Half of the Christmas spirit comes from being with other people and just having a nice time laughing and talking; this is exactly what encouraged my Christmas spirit to breathe again. Though the night did take a bit of a strange and ‘negative’ turn right before Paula and I left, but it isn’t worth recording.

Though the RMS Christmas Party helped to revive my damaged spirit, Princes St. and the German Market are the true reason behind it returning to its usual warm glowing self. The German Market is Edinburgh’s yearly Christmas Market, there are about twenty little stalls selling either food/hot drinks/mulled wine or Christmas gifts like jewellery and alcohol scented coffee. There is also a Ferris wheel, a Merry-Go-Round, and some other rides whose names I do not know. It is all just a glorious sight when you are walking either from the Royal Mile or down Princes St. after dark because the whole of Princes St. has white Christmas lights that lead to the spectacular sight of the illuminated Ferris wheel that is throwing shadows onto the towering Scott Monument. There really are no words and no camera powerful enough to every capture the beauty of Princes St. during Christmas time. The power of the Princes St. spectacle is so beautiful and fills me with such a warmth and joy that for the past couple of weeks I have journeyed from my ‘infested flat’, as it has come to be known, to my favourite Starbucks at the end of Princes St. that has four floor to ceiling bay windows that look out at the castle and the illuminated street, and I just sit there for hours looking out at the castle and writing my blogs with one of the delicious holiday drinks sucking up the warmth and joy of the season.

Though as the Christmas holiday draws steadily nearer Princes St. has started to get busier and busier and I can never figure out where all the people are coming from nor can I decipher what they are buying. I swear that each weekend I see the exact same people loaded over with bags from practically every store on the street, how many Christmas gifts are these people buying?! No matter my continual puzzlement and minor annoyance at the avarice that everyone is displaying with their multitude of purchases I still love coming to Princes St. and force myself down here as much as possible because by the time I return from Christmas in London on the 28th it will all be gone and the New Year will begin without small star like lights illuminating the night.

Blog X: Ghaz’s 19th Birthday

Monday (5 November) was my flatmate, Ghaz’s 19th birthday. At the beginning of term she had talked about going to the club ‘Why Not?’ where we had gone for Halloween. But as the term drew to an end she decided that it was too close to exams to go out, so we (mostly me but also Ghaz and Paula) decided that we would go to the German Market and have a lovely night enjoying the multitudes of food and go on the Ferris wheel after dark to see the city lit up. Though to be honest Ghaz didn’t seem too keen on this idea and she decided that instead of going to the German market we would just go down to Flat 6 (our RA Andy and Katie’s flat) for their ‘Minced Pies and Mulled Wine in Flat 6’ party for an unspeakable reason that, unfortunately, involved me. On the morning of her birthday I got up extra early to ensure that Ghaz got her present, a nice little bracelet, before going to the Hugh Rob. (a computer lab of some sort) to study. As the day wore on I went to the gym and then came home to get ready to spend my evening celebrating Ghaz’s birthday in flat 6 with minced pies and mulled wine. But while at the gym I got three incomprehensible texts from Ghaz that read as follows:

Wagamama for 7? I’ll be home before, but Carl Kai Jack and Juliet were going to come so made it late enough? We’ll still get to the mince pies…X

Oh btw Kaitlyn Carl Kai and Jack are on our course and Juliet is just a mate from Pollock J

And Abhinav and maybe the girls from flat 23 J

I re-read these texts about five times before concluding that I wouldn’t be able to make hid or hair of them any time soon so I just responded that I had no clue what she meant and told her to just knock on my door when she got home. Later that night while in the kitchen with my other flatmates, Amanda and Lindsay, we were discussing the questionable comments Ghaz had made on Facebook and I read them out her texts which were just as bizarre as her Facebook posts. We finally concluded that she must be drunk or intoxicated in some way. Right at that moment Ghaz and two girls from her Karate society walked in and she explained that Wagamama was a restaurant that we were all going to dinner at, though this explained the texts she still seemed to be acting a bit odd. I’ve since concluded that it was just birthday excitement. As more of Ghaz’s guests started to arrive to our flat before we all headed to the restaurant, I went into my room to grab my coat and purse when I realized that I didn’t have my watch. At that terrible moment it dawned on me that my watch had fallen out of my pocket in the locker at the gym. I was so distressed at this that I rushed into the kitchen and frantically asked if anyone knew the number for the gym. Ghaz quickly looked it up and I immediately rushed back into my room to call them to ask if anyone had found it. They were no help. All they told me was that I needed to come in to claim it even though there was a possibility that it hadn’t even been turned in. I felt terrible because not only had I foolishly lost my watch (which is a very nice and rather expensive watch) but I had also just destroyed the present opening part of Ghaz’s birthday by busting into the kitchen and making the moment about me. Worst of all, I was so distressed about losing my watch that I wasn’t sure that I would be able to enjoy Ghaz’s birthday, I felt that my anger at myself would just wreck the whole night because I would be in a pissy mood. Luckily this didn’t happen because I immediately called my mom and she instantly calmed me down so within ten minutes I had gone from distressed wreck to joyful birthday goer. (The following morning I went to the gym and some lovely individual had found my watch and turned it in. Such a thing would never happen in the States, someone would’ve taken it and run, but here the people are very considerate and kind). With my reappearance in the kitchen it was decided that we would all head down to flat 6 before going to the restaurant because we were waiting on the last few people and the pictures of the homemade minced pies that Katie had put on Facebook just looked too good to pass up. So the seven or so of us filed out of the flat and journeyed down to the main level and flat 6. Katie and Andy had decorated their kitchen so nicely that I felt like we were in a different building. Not only was their kitchen warm (which ours never is because a) we are on the third floor and b) the three vents in the kitchen let in all the cold air which just blows away and sucks up the small bit of warmth given off by the heater) but they also had Christmas lights and tinsel set up, it was very lovely. But most importantly, the minced pies were fantastic and the mulled wine (though I don’t drink I did try a sip of Lindsay’s because I was curious about the taste) was very enjoyable. We spent about thirty minutes or so in the flat and while there I discovered that the only way Andy will every really remember me is as the girl who was terrified by the mouse, ugh. We were talking about the other mouse incidents we’ve been having since the first one when Andy came to my rescue and I was telling the story about how Ghaz had decided to scare me be informing me there was a mouse in the kitchen and I was saying how freaked out Ghaz was when Andy popped in and said “you were pretty freaked out by the mouse”. Thank you Andy, the bloody thing was in my room! But anyway, at about half seven maybe eight, Ghaz and us party goers decided that we should get going and we left Lindsay and the girls from flat 20 or something to enjoy the warmth, mulled wine, minced pies, and RA company.

We got to the restaurant, which was all the way on the other side of Princes St. on Lothian Rd., so about a twenty/thirty minute walk, about half eight and met the rest of the party (in total there were twelve of us). We were all seated soon after arriving and put in our orders quickly after that, but the food could not come fast enough. By the time the food arrived, I was the last to get served, it was about 9pm and I was absolutely starved. In fact, the three other girls that I was sitting with at the end of the table were similarly starved so when our food finally arrived all conversation stopped and all our focus was on eating. The food was very good and surprisingly reasonably priced. Dinner was followed by a ‘Caterpillar Cake’ which is apparently a big thing over here; everyone has a Caterpillar cake at least once for their birthday; I quickly understood why, it was delicious! It was a chocolate cake covered in hard milk chocolate with M&Ms on top, yum! The night then quickly drew to a close with everyone heading their separate ways home (it was after ten after all). Though Ghaz and I sat with Paula for a while in her kitchen just chatting but then at half eleven we decided to call it a night and headed back to our flat where we separated and went to bed.

Blog IX: Frequent Fire Alarms

This morning at the ripe hour of 6:23am marked the seventh or so fire alarm here at South Clerk Street and the second early morning fire alarm. A blog on fire alarms may seem boring and stupid but here the fire alarms, along with the mice, are one of the most exciting things that the whole building gets to experience together. Every term there is a practice alarm¸ just like in the States so that people know what it sounds like and know where to go when they exit the building. I have to say in retrospect I’m very happy that we had this practice or else the first couple of real alarms would’ve scared the crap out of me because I wouldn’t have known what that terrifying screaming sound in my room was…okay that may be pushing it when the alarm goes off you do know what it is, but still. Anyway, the practice alarm was on a Friday morning and involved me running around my room like a chicken with its head chopped off because I couldn’t seem to figure out how to react. This fire drill was then dutifully followed by an actual alarm the following Saturday afternoon. That alarm was then followed by three others in the next few weeks, in fact, by the third fire alarm the mass of residence were really getting good at exiting the building, though we all still demanded to block the entire sidewalk so that Andy had to continually walk around the giant group of us and tell us to move so that a) people could get past us and b) the firemen could get into the building. In the month of October alone the SCS building had a ridiculous total of five fire alarms, and somehow every time there was someone in a towel. Which brings me to my favourite point about fire alarms: Edinburgh is a busy city (unless its 4am but I’ll get to that) and the SCS building is located on one of the busiest streets so there are always loads of people mulling about, acknowledging this wouldn’t it make sense to take a minute or so to run to your room and throw on some clothes so that you are not completely exposed to the elements and most importantly, the people? Apparently not. Having become the master fire alarm individual that I was since I was always in for every fire alarm I figured that I had it down, I wasn’t even surprised by the blaring siren when it went off in my room I would just acknowledge it and gather my things before heading for the street to wait for the fire brigade, oh how foolish I was to get so comfortable with the alarm. On the morning of Saturday 5 November at half three in the morning that screaming bell of danger alerted and aroused the entire building of a possible fire, though it was at a horrid hour and one of the scariest moments of my life I have to say this is one of my favourite memories. Ever since I was a little girl I was terrified of fires and most of all I was terrified of the fire alarm going off in the night because when you are sleeping is when you are most vulnerable, the alarm on the 5 of November made these fears a reality and actually extinguished them…to a point. When the blood curdling alarm blared throughout the building that morning and filled my room with the red light of screaming danger (there are fire alarms in every room) I mechanically arose from my bed without really knowing what I was doing, grabbed my coat, keys and phone and went into the hall to make sure that everyone else got out okay, but while in the hall I realized I had forgotten my glasses so I rushed back into my room and retrieved them before getting out of the building. The city at that time was dark and silent but the serenity of that hour was shattered by the unhappy and drunken shouts of practically every South Clerk Street resident. Since the previous night had been a Friday everyone had gone out to the clubs and since the clubs close at 3am all of those individuals had just come home and passed out in their beds before the alarm screamed them awake, so they were all in that state of still drunk but starting to sober up, the worst of both worlds. In their drunken state many of them decided to scream out their frustration and for the half hour or so that we were out on the street that morning waiting for the firemen there was a continual screech of displeasure. The funniest bit though was this one guy that was still so drunk, his breath smelled like straight vodka, that he only had a towel wrapped around his waist, so along with screaming curses into the disrupted silence he also expressed how cold he was to the entire crowd. Finally one girl gave him her coat and our RA Katie gave him her slippers (it was quite cold out). It took thirty minutes for the whole ordeal to pass before we could all finally return to our beds. Ever since that alarm I have been on my toes anticipating another one, but one hadn’t come, and so that fear was replaced by the vermin infestation, though I still had a plan laid out for what I would do if an alarm went off while I was in the shower.

Finally my anticipation for another alarm was granted this morning which I find a hoot because just last night while I was putting on my pjs I thought the last time that I had worn these specific pants was when we had the three am fire alarm and before I went to bed I consciously made sure that my glasses and phone were in the perfect position so that I could quickly grab them if there was an alarm, which they were. So when the alarm brought the building to life like a giant alarm clock, I was basically completely prepared; I had my phone, my glasses, my super warm sweater/vest mix, my slippers and my keys the only thing I wasn’t prepared for was the one thing you should always anticipate living in Edinburgh, rain. So even though I was awake and enjoying the alarm (they are a rather enjoyable event in student life here) while walking out of the building with Lindsay I noticed just before I got out the door that it was pouring down rain, within minutes my slippers and my socks were soaked through, it was like having a marsh in my shoes. But no matter we were all (Lindsay, Andy and I at least) in pretty good spirits and I managed to crack some good jokes so that Lindsay and I were giggling for most of the time, especially when Andy came over and told us that we could wait in the lobby of the building and I responded jokingly that I would rather just stay outside and suffer, we all laughed. The alarm didn’t last that long and we were all back in our rooms by 6:40 which gave me twenty minutes to sleep before my 7am alarm went off (which I set because I had planned to hike up to Arthur’s Seat and watch the sunrise but it was still pouring and there are high wind warnings so instead I just decided to sit down and write this blog). Fire alarms in Edinburgh are far more exciting than at Colorado State University because not only is everyone usually recovering from drinking but also you never know if you will have your socks and slippers hanging over your heater and a good feeling in your heart from the hearty morning wake up.

(Finished) Friday 9 December 2011

Blog VIII: Mice. The Sequel

Despite my excellent denial techniques, mice have once again made their presence in flat the known. In the past week there have been two more noticed mice events, though luckily they haven’t been sighted again. The first mouse incident this week was late Tuesday night and the second was Saturday morning. Tuesday night’s, or more accurately, Wednesday morning’s incident was far more traumatizing than Saturday morning’s.

Tuesday, as a whole, had been a pretty good day; I only had my Chaucerian Romance class at 2pm because my treacherous Tutorial was moved to Wednesday, so I decided to hit the gym in the morning and had a fantastic workout (which recently has been few and far between). Then I had a wonderful last Chaucer class and came home to a nice and relaxing dinner that wasn’t filled with anxiety due to mouse fear. In fact, I had recovered enough from the first mouse ‘attack’ that I was not only comfortable being alone in the flat but I was also looking forward to going to sleep and was planning on calling it an early night so that I could finally, after over a month of not getting a lot of sleep, pay some of that sleep debt. Sadly, Lady Fortune had another plan for me and suddenly my day took a turn for the un-delightful. It was about half ten and I was emerging from the toilet after making the final ‘before bed preparation’ of brushing my teeth when Paula and Ghaz burst in the front door, returning from their late night tutorial. They immediately asked me to join them in the kitchen and I foolishly threw my early night plans out the window (getting to bed any time before midnight is considered an early night in my flat) and followed them in the kitchen, wrong move. When I arrived in the kitchen Ghaz was in the process of making coffee for the two of them, at eleven o’clock at night, and the small kitchen table held two packets of twenty or so little sugared donuts from Tesco. I looked about dumbly for a moment or two before they explained to me that their tutorial, which had been taught by the second years who were telling them about their upcoming exams, had really ignited a fire of fear in their souls so that now they were going to drink coffee and fuel their current sugar high with donuts so that they could pull and all-nighter and study. As an experienced coffee addict I know that one should never drink coffee seven and for those, like Paula and Ghaz, who have never drank coffee they shouldn’t start at eleven o’clock at night; sadly this realization didn’t come to me until both were already dunking their wee donuts into their steaming cups. Since they were already in the process of drinking their first cups I decided to let it slide but made a mental note that if they tried this again or worse tried to have a second cup that night I wouldn’t allow it. As they inhaled their cups of coffee I feverously tried to muster enough energy to be able to try to follow their conversation but with all the caffeine and sugar they had ingested I had no chance so I just slouched back in my chair and observed their drunken like behaviour. At about half eleven Paula asked for a coffee refill and Ghaz decided that she wanted another as well, this is where I put my foot down, and before either could react I snatched the coffee off the counter and put it under my shirt so that they couldn’t get to it. This caused an animal like reaction from Ghaz who proceeded to hurl herself on me and attempt to, unsuccessfully, rip the coffee from my grasp. At this point I concluded I was far too tired to keep up with their hyped up minds and grabbed all the coffee in the kitchen and went to my room to watch the movie White Christmas, which soon put me to sleep. At about one in the morning I was awoken by the need to use the toilet, so I turned off the movie and journeyed to the toilet which was at that moment quitted by a rather frantic looking Ghaz who, at the sight of me, proceeded to block the door. In my fuzzy and half-conscious mind all I could really comprehend of the situation was that I needed to use the toilet but Ghaz was blocking my way for some reason that I didn’t want to know about, annoyingly she made the decision that I needed to know the reason. As my mind began to clear due to the interruption of my usual night toilet routine I realized that Ghaz was frantically trying to tell me something but before I could fully understand what she was saying I stopped her because I knew that; a) if I let her finish I wouldn’t want to go back to bed and b) whatever she was trying to tell me had to do with the vermin infestation. So I put my hand up and said that I didn’t want to know, she didn’t accept this answer and pushed forward until she had successfully communicated that there was a mouse in our kitchen. With this confession off her chest Ghaz was about to relate the story to me when she realized that I still hadn’t gotten to use the toilet, so she finally stopped talking (too late though since she had already related the bad news) and moved aside so I could get at least some relief at that moment. When finally alone with my own thoughts the reality of what Ghaz had just said sank in and my entire body began to shake uncontrollably. When I exited the toilet a moment or so later Ghaz was still standing like a terrified statue outside the door and immediately began to retaliate what had happened after I had left the kitchen.

After I had left and taken the coffee with me, Paula and Ghaz had both calmed down enough to do some studying while playing music on their fancy smancy phones. All was going relatively well when Paula stopped and asked Ghaz if she heard something. Both girls stopped and listened and they heard a loud scuffling sound, a scuffling that sounded like a mouse sniffing around in a cardboard poison box. They waited for another heartbeat before concluding that the sound was coming from over near the refrigerator, which just so happens to be one of the spots in which we have a cardboard poison box, at this realization everything fell into place and they proceeded to run out of the kitchen and probably do quite a bit of squealing and freaking out (I don’t really know I was asleep). Apparently they were making enough freaked out sounds that they woke Lindsay for a milla-second before she put in her earplugs and went back to sleep. Soon after leaving the kitchen Ghaz quickly returned to grab Paula’s things and said that she didn’t hear anything but she didn’t hang around to explore. After getting her things, Paula quickly left our mouse house flat for her own vermin free flat. This is about the point when poor unfortunate me ran into Ghaz.

After hearing the description behind the original statement of a mouse in the kitchen I returned to my room and turned on the movie The Family Stone to try to calm my rattled nerves, it didn’t work. Minutes into the movie my mind started to run at a thousand miles a second and my heart began to race which woke my entire body up so that I could hardly remain still due to fear. At this un-rational point in the wee hours of Wednesday morning I decided that I needed to mouse proof my room and proceeded to stuff plastic bags under my door so that a mouse couldn’t get under it, again. In the middle of this process my mind created the unrealistic belief that the mouse would be attracted by the plastic bags and then come to check them out getting stuck in the plastic and suffocate so when I woke up in the morning and opened my door I would find a mouse lying dead in the heap of plastic (I have a very overactive imagination, this is why I’m an English major). So I began to remove the bags from under the door when I heard a small voice ask if I wanted help. I threw open the door, shocked at how badly my legs were shaking, and immediately began to lay into Ghaz for telling me about the mouse, she stood their quietly and listened. When I was done freaking out, or at least when I had run out of air and need to stop talking so I could catch my breath, she took the chance to apologize and inform me that she had debated telling me (she had even considered knocking on my door right after Paula had left) and had concluded that it would be best if I knew about the mouse. I have since diagnosed the reason behind Ghaz telling me: it was because she was afraid and since Paula had left she didn’t want to be alone with the information, it always helps to have someone else know and most of all to have someone else to talk through it with you so that you calm down. Though I was upset with her for going through with such a selfish act I know what it is like to deal with something that scares you alone and I would always prefer her to scare me out of my wits with undesirable information to help her calm down than to let her suffer alone, I know she would always do the same for me. Anyway, we ended up standing in my doorway for two hours talking the whole thing through trying to come up with a logical explanation and trying to decide whether or not we should go in the kitchen to check it out. From one to three in the morning we circled around the argument that: nothing had come out of the kitchen which must mean that the mouse, if there was one, was still in there and if we went in we wouldn’t be brave enough to really do anything except scream which would then scare it out of the kitchen and probably into someone else’s room. But finally after a few hours we concluded that hopefully the mouse had gone back to where it had come from (probably via the hole behind the cooker), once again if there was a mouse, so we chose to venture into the unknown (mostly because I wanted to return the coffee I had stolen earlier in the night back to the kitchen) and see what we would find. But before we quitted our guard of my room I took the printer box and the post box from my dad off the top of my wardrobe and fit them perfectly in front of my door so that they blocked the opening so if a mouse was scared from the kitchen and ran out into the hall it wouldn’t go into my room. It has since been dubbed by Lindsay my ‘impenetrable mouse barrier’, despite the cruel jokes I refuse to remove it. What we found when we entered the kitchen was a whole lot of nothing. Yup, the kitchen was completely empty and silent. We searched all the areas and made noise to see if anything was hiding anywhere but the only living vertebrates in that room were the two of us. But we were still unsure if a mouse had been in the kitchen and had just returned to its home through the wall behind the cooker, and Ghaz thought that the poison box next to the refrigerator looked like it had been moved. I looked at it and concluded, with our best interest in mind, that it hadn’t. So we returned we left the kitchen with the conclusion that there hadn’t been a mouse in the kitchen but that the giant hole behind our cooker needed to be fixed immediately.

Though the terror was over I still couldn’t and didn’t really sleep that much that night because deep down I knew that that poison box had been moved and that some of the poison was missing. So instead of sleeping I emailed the building manager, Sandra, and informed her that I had previously complained about the hole behind the cooker and though someone had come and looked at it nothing further had happened and it was possibly that we had had another mouse that night. As day broke I finally was able to fall asleep and slept until ten since I didn’t have to be anywhere until 2. In the cool light of day I admitted out loud that there had been a mouse in the kitchen and was once again overtaken with fear, fear about the coming night which could hold any number of terrors (one of which was the multitude of mice that ran back and forth in the ceiling). At about noon, when my fear had bubbled over to ridiculousness and my mind was consumed with imagined images of mouse terrors, there was a knock at the front door; a knock that had been made by a very lovely looking Scot. It is amazing how quickly a girl’s mind can be distracted; it is also amazing how often men seem to come to the rescue in this country. This lovely man and his associate were there to fix the hole behind the cooker, woo men! I don’t know if I’ve ever appreciated men so much in my life. After explaining the situation about the hole and its probable link with our mouse infestation, they disappeared from my view into the kitchen to rescue the damsels of my flat (namely me according to everyone) that had been brought to distress by the mighty mouse terror. Oh how my heart flew and fluttered in my chest! Through my haze of desire for the maintenance man and fear of the mice I realized that I needed to get going so that I could take out the recycling and collect my Chaucer paper before going to figure out what was wrong with my computer. So I quickly finished getting ready, put all my stuff in my backpack, and put on my fifty layers of winter clothing before heading into the kitchen to collect the recycling. The surprise that was waiting for me in the kitchen can hardly be described because the illusion of it lies within my mind as a piece of art, but I will do my best to make it reality. That Wednesday afternoon was a rather dreary one, it was cloudy with the promise of rain but when I entered the kitchen there was a stream of white light coming in through the window. As I came to the end of the hall and entered into the main area I saw the gorgeous Scot standing engulfed in the light, only a dark shape interrupting the stream of heavenly light. This glorious illusion lasted for only a second, though it’s a second that has become frozen in my memory, before it was broken by him noticing my entrance and turning from the window to face me. He then proceeded to talk to me and we discussed the reason behind the whole being fixed, he commented that the mice were coming up pretty high which seemed a bit odd. Though I took in what he was saying I was only half paying attention because my mind was away on the beautiful stream that was his thick Scottish accent. Suffice to say I really didn’t want this moment to end. But with the realization that time was ticking and I had a very strict schedule to stick to I kept half turning away trying to leave (oh how I need to drop my strict schedule demands and enjoy what comes to me) but every time I began to turn around he would make me turn around again by continuing the conversation. Unfortunately I finally pushed enough and ended the conversation and left the flat (I really should’ve just stopped trying to leave because he obviously was happy talking to me and I was very happy being with him). When I returned from my gruesome day, my poetic muse was gone but the hole was fixed and I still look at the fix lovingly, partially because the whole is no longer there and I’m not plagued with the image of a mouse squeezing through, and partially because it reminds me of the lovely Scot.

So Wednesday’s incident, though terrifying and traumatic, seems to be only a shadow in the glowing memory of the maintanance man. Saturday’s incident wasn’t half as traumatic or poetic. With the boarding up of the hole behind the cooker and the installation of my mouse barrier, I immediately began to relax and again convince myself that we would have no more mice, wrong yet again (I’m rather sick of being wrong). During a lone breakfast Saturaday morning I happened to look under the heater in the kitchen where one of the poison boxes is located and discovered that not only was there a ball of fuzz next to it but also there was mouse poison EVERYWHERE. Immediately my heart began to race and my hands started to shake, but after a second of panic I told myself that I needed to stop letting this fear control me. So I sat there at the kitchen table and forced myself to face the truth that a) there were mice in the building and b) I would not allow them to chase me off and terrify me. With this I began to eat again and had a rather enjoyable breakfast and lovely day. Though I did once again email Sandra and ask her how often the pest guy came because there was poison all over the floor underneath the heater which meant that there wasn’t much in the box anymore, I also made a comical post on Facebook:

Dear mouse that was in our kitchen sometime during the night, You are a very messy eater and seem to be shedding. You left a slew of poison pellets under the kitchen heater and a big chunk of fur. If you demand to feast on the poison in our flat please try to be a cleaner eater. Sincerely Flat 15 PS. Is it possible that the mouse would stay and die in the poison box or do they just go back to their homes within the walls?

On Monday I got a rather discouraging reply from Sandra who told me that the pest guy comes every two weeks and will continue coming to our flat until none of the poison in all of the boxes is gone, she also commented that we really seem to be having a serious problem in our flat and used an exclamation mark. Comforting. Possibly the cleanest flat in the building and we have the worst problem, or at least the worst one that is known about since I email Sandra practically every time we have a mouse.

Tomorrow will mark a week since I saw the third piece of evidence of mouse activity in our flat and honestly this really doesn’t mean much to me. I still check my room every time I come home and always check the kitchen before cooking and continually make noise while in there. The only discouraging thing I’ve found this week of mouse activity was when I was obsessively cleaning the kitchen on Wednesday and moved the couch closest to the heater and found a pile of mouse poison which was a bit odd, but I vacuumed it all up plus the fluff that was under the heater. I still hear the mice scuttling about in the ceiling but hope that I will not encounter anymore while I am here.