Day 2: I joined Dumbledore's Army.

Hello again! Before anything new, I added some pictures from yesterday.  (I finally dug out my memory card from the deep dark depths of my suitcase.)

This is the view of Edinburgh Castle from the hotel where I'm staying. I took this from the room where I eat breakfast.

This is again of Edinburgh castle.

Today was a fun day in Scotland. This morning I had orientation until lunch.  We basically just went over Scottish history and other random things (like how people in Glasgow call everybody pal), but I finally get my class schedule tomorrow!

After orientation today, my IFSA friends and I went to Arthur's Seat, which is this look-out point over Edinburgh. I didn't climb to the top (because I saw that there was a road and knew that when my parents get here over spring break, we can take the car.) I did however go to a small hill and looked out over Edinburgh and it seemed pretty cool. After that we decided to go into the castle tomorrow after orientation so we have lots of time to look around.  So, while some of the group hiked to the top of said hill/mountain, my group went to the shopping area of Edinburgh which was really nice. Some of the members of my grouped needed to buy phones, so they went into a store to buy them.  One of my friends here is from New Jersey where they film the Jersey Shore.  The sales person we were working with told us he is the biggest Jersey shore fan.  Scotland Fact: avid fans of Jersey Shore think that Americans are really like that...scary.  He even told us that his password on his computer is "sitch" (spelled wrong by the way) for "the situation", his favorite cast member.

After that, we went to the Elephant House.  This is the place where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book.  It's this cool little cafe that has Harry Potter stuff in that bathroom (pictures to follow this paragraph).  We had dinner there (and it was really cheap actually because we got student discounts, which is really nice).

This is a picture outside of the Elephant House. I know it's kind of blurry.

This is the toilet in the bathroom of the Elephant House.  As you can see, it's decorated with Harry Potter characters.

There was a list on one of the doors of Dumbledore's Army.

As you can see, I am member 129 of Dumbledore's Army.

This was one of the doors in the bathroom.  People wrote messages to J.K. Rowling and made Harry Potter jokes/references on them.

Tomorrow I have orientation until after lunch and then we're headed to the castle!