First Day of Classes

Hello! The title of this post is kind of misleading, because I actually didn't have any classes today, even though classes did officially start today. I do have one lecture tomorrow and on Friday, but most of my stuff doesn't start until next week.  So, today was a pretty relaxed day for me. But since everybody I'm sure is dying to see my schedule (ok probably not, but it's posted anyway), I posted it below.

The purple boxes are seminars, the grey boxes are lectures, and the blue box is a computer lab.  The letters are my class codes.  EUC is post-war European cinema, LEI is leisure studies, and PMA is public management and administration.   

One thing I discovered today, is that birds are really obnoxious here.  There was a bird that had to have been perched on my window that made weird bird noises at 6:30 this morning.  (Also, there are swans on campus that live in the loch.  They are really territorial and will approach anybody that crosses their path.) I pretty much had a great start to my morning also when the fire alarm went off. Luckily I didn't have to go outside. (Which was great because I was way too busy watching Glee, and it was raining.)

Later in the day, I did a bus tour of the area as part of an optional orientation event.  I admit I had high expectations for this. (As in I expected to sit on a warm bus and get a free meal.) Unfortunately, we had to actually get off the bus to go see some things.  First, we went to this church in Dunblane which is a small town right outside of Stirling. (fun fact: This is where my parents and I are staying when they come for Spring Break.)

This is the inside of the church.  I admit that the only reason I posted this picture is because I risked my life getting it.  I had to climb up this tiny little staircase and while that doesn't sound too bad, imagine 50 international kids standing on the wide part of the steps while you attempt to climb (stumble) down.

Next, we went to see the statue of Robert the Bruce.  This is the man who was actually the villain in Braveheart, but everybody here loves this man.  He was very similar to William Wallace (Braveheart) except he eventually became King. 

This is the statue.

After that, we went to Stirling Castle, which I already went to yesterday.  Lastly we went to this center downtown for a "reception".  I was really disappointed when I saw that all the food I was going to get was cheese balls and chips (and no I'm not kidding.)  Needless to say, the tour was kind of stupid.  However, they did have these buttons in a bowl that say Stirling, Scotland's heart (Yes, they have that trademarked. It comes from the old quote from when Stirling was the capitol of Scotland. It's something like "whoever holds Stirling holds Scotland".) I saw this as a great opportunity to bring back everyone free souvenirs. So, I now have about 15 Stirling, heart of Scotland buttons sitting in my purse.  This means that the tour was not completely pointless.  

Another thing that I did learn on the tour (from my tour guide), was that Stirling's dorms were actually designed after Swedish prison cells.  I don't know who looked at Swedish prison cells and thought "wow these would make great dorms" but it actually explains a lot. 

This is a picture of a Swedish prison cell that I got off of Google. Does it look familiar?