Flat Joshua's Tour of Stirling

Hello everyone! Today was a pretty relaxed day for me.  I did research for my essays and worked on my presentation in the morning and took Flat Joshua around Stirling this afternoon.  So, let me explain about Flat Joshua.  Remember that book series called Flat Stanley? Basically it's about this kid that mails himself different places (because he's flat) and has all of these great adventures.  Well, my little cousin's (Joshua) second grade class is reading Flat Stanley.  As part of their studying of Flat Stanley, they created flat versions of themselves and mailed them to different places.  In class they are learning about the different places that their flat people go to.  So, I received Flat Joshua (which I'm really excited about, because this is such a fun project.  Plus, there's so many stereotypical Scottish things that Flat Joshua can do...he will definitely be sent back to West Terrace wearing a kilt) in the mail with the instructions to show him something cool in my hometown (or my version of show-off-Scotland and take pictures of cool things everywhere).  This weekend I took him to Linlithgow and to the Ceilidh.

Here is Flat Joshua in Linlithgow. (Ok, I'll admit I hadn't exactly gotten the whole "how to take pictures of Flat Joshua" thing quite down yet, so he's kind of awkwardly in the lower center of the picture.)

Here he is leaving Linlithgow.  (See, I finally got the picture thing down better here.)

Here is he is dancing at the Ceilidh! (At least, that's why I'm saying the picture is kind of blurry.)

But today, Flat Joshua got the tour of Stirling.  So, when thinking about "something cool in my hometown" my first thought was, well there's a castle...now that's pretty cool.  I convinced some of my friends to make the trek up the hill to the castle again to show Flat Joshua Stirling Castle.  Here are some pictures of the things Flat Joshua got to experience on the way to and at the castle.

Here Flat Joshua is seeing the cannons a little ways down from the castle.

He insisted that we stop and take a picture by the bagpipe shop.

This is a picture at the Old Jail. (He thought that it was kind of a dump, but I thought it was quite roomy compared to my dorm.)

Here he is at the view point of the castle from the cemetery. (Note: The sky was actually blue today! Flat Joshua is really lucking out with the weather.)

Here he is at the front of the castle.

Here's a picture of Flat Joshua that over looks Stirling and the William Wallace Monument on the hill in the background. 

Here's Flat Joshua posing with Robert the Bruce.

Here is Flat Joshua at Stirling Bridge. (I finally took pictures of the bridge today! It's the sight of the historic battle between William Wallace (Braveheart) and the English.  Flat Joshua was very excited to hear this history.)

The fog was really intense tonight! (So, bad that you can't see Flat Joshua.) That's the bridge from the picture above in the background.

I think that Flat Joshua throughly enjoyed his tour.  I'll be taking him to get fish and chips later this week and to go get his kilt fitted.  We also stopped by a store to pick up some souvenirs.  Tonight, we went to my IFSA friend's flat for dinner with all of our IFSA group.  She lives off campus, so we got to finally see her flat! She made us chicken nuggets (which were awesome) and we had a good time just sitting around and chatting.  Tomorrow I have class all day and then my goal is to finish my presentation! Wish me luck! (As for Flat Joshua, he's feeling a little tired after his big day today, so he'll probably just tour around campus a little tomorrow.)